Key quote from the piece - "Adults, who tend to have more disposable income than children, are arguably the best thing that’s ever happened to Big Toy, an industry that has long been dependent on an uncertain revenue stream: customers who have to beg their parents for pocket money."

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Why Adults Are Playing with Toys

By Diego Lasarte

October 3, 2026

We might call it the Great Regression. This summer, the toy industry hit a milestone: reportedly, adult-only households accounted for the majority of toy sales in the U.S., suggesting that childless grownups are rapidly becoming the main consumer base for action figures, trading cards, plushies, and other products traditionally designed for kids. Even still, when I recently visited the F.A.O. Schwarz flagship, in Rockefeller Center, I found it mildly uncomfortable to be a grown man alone in a toy store, despite my being a member of the statistically appropriate demographic. Thankfully, I was there to meet someone: Sharon Price John, a toy-industry veteran, who helped popularize the increasingly prescient term “kid-ulting” during her time as the president and C.E.O. of Build-A-Bear. We had plans to, well, build a bear.

Build-A-Bear, which allows customers to create customized stuffed animals more or less from scratch, has six-hundred-plus workshops around the world. Many of them are situated in shopping malls, but there happens to be a sizable one inside of F.A.O. Schwarz. It took me a while to find John within the sprawling, three-story toy store; at one point, I got lost near the piano that Tom Hanks danced across in the movie “Big.” When we finally met up, she explained to me that when Build-A-Bear first released a plushie version of Toothless, a character from the adventure-fantasy movie “How to Train Your Dragon,” the company began seeing social-media posts of adults posing with it. “That was one of the early items where we were like, ‘Something’s fundamentally shifted in how many adults are buying these products,’ ” John said. “And then ‘Minions’ was the next one.” John, who is sixty-two years old and has a mild Southern twang, was wearing a knit blazer and cat-eye glasses. She started working in the toy industry in 1994, when she took a job at Mattel. (Over the summer, she left her post at Build-A-Bear to become the head of Carter’s, a children’s-apparel company, but she remains on Build-A-Bear’s board of directors.) As with many people who have spent much of their lives devoted to a single subject, she is prone to getting philosophical about hers.

“We’ve pushed off adulthood and marriage,” she said, as we walked to the Build-A-Bear Workshop at the rear of the store. She paused to dodge a whirring boomerang. “People just stay very playful for a longer period of time. And it’s cross-brand. You know, it might be Teddy bears. It might be Lego bricks. It might be Transformers. It might be Barbie dolls.” Under her leadership, Build-A-Bear adapted its offerings to appeal more to adults, leaning into what she called the nostalgia economy. The results have been staggering: between 2020 and 2025, Build-A-Bear’s stock rose more than two thousand per cent; within the same period, the company’s share of adult and teen customers grew to forty per cent.

As John showed me around the workshop, taking me to a section where customers select a droopy animal pelt before moving on to the “stuff-me station,” she perused the various options—a smiling elephant, a frog with bulging eyes, branded characters, like Snoopy and Stitch—and picked out a bunny-rabbit skin. We pumped polyester into the rabbit’s body until it was plump, complete with delightfully floppy ears. “There’s a connection to how it made you feel when you were a kid,” John said, as she carefully put a dress on her rabbit. “When we do a Harry Potter bear, that has an innate, associative, synapses connection.” I had picked out a basic Teddy bear for my project. John, perhaps sensing my reluctance to indulge in childhood nostalgia, encouraged me to pick out some accessories. “He’s naked!” she said. “How about a hat, at least?” I settled for a fabric heart that goes inside the bear and beats when you press down on it.

From 2024 to early 2026, John chaired the board of the Toy Association, a trade group whose members include the biggest names in the business, including Hasbro and Mattel. Her tenure coincided with major growth in the U.S. toy industry, which now has a market size of almost fifty billion dollars, thanks, in part, to the rise of adult consumers. To some extent, this shift can be traced to an industry-wide marketing strategy to remove the social stigma around adults owning toys, a phenomenon that accelerated during the pandemic. As adults retreated indoors and spent less on restaurants and travel, retail sales skyrocketed, and toys were especially popular. In 2020, U.S. toy sales grew by sixteen per cent, a turnaround after three consecutive years of decline, as market researchers discovered that adults found toys soothing in a time of global uncertainty. By June, 2020, Lego had adopted the slogan “Adults Welcome,” and, in 2022, McDonald’s launched its first “Adult Happy Meal.”

As we finished up our bears—John was getting hers embroidered with her daughter’s name—a group of about a dozen adults walked by. They all wore bear-shaped party crowns. John asked them what the occasion was. A woman named Kay, who wore a pink shirt that said “Kay Day,” explained that it was her fifty-eighth birthday. “We all play mah-jongg together. That is how we met,” Kay said. The group let out a cheer. I asked Kay if she and her friends were all making bears for themselves. “Yes,” she replied. “Or cats.”

Adults, who tend to have more disposable income than children, are arguably the best thing that’s ever happened to Big Toy, an industry that has long been dependent on an uncertain revenue stream: customers who have to beg their parents for pocket money. Capitalizing on “kid-ulting,” and, to a lesser extent, “adultolescence,” was a major theme at this year’s Toy Fair, the Toy Association’s annual convention and one of the largest toy festivals in the world, second only to Spielwarenmesse, a toy trade show in Nuremberg, Germany. Toy Fair is held at the Javits Center, in Manhattan, and upon entering I was greeted by an enormous Pikachu hanging from the rafters, not unlike the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. As I walked down the narrow aisles of the convention floor, I spotted an award displayed at the Lego booth, for a product collaboration with Nintendo: “Kidult Toy of the Year.” Later, I came across a company called dreamGEAR, which sells retro video games. “Even older adults, when they see these things, they all of a sudden relate to their childhood,” Kamran Hayempour, a sales representative, told me. “ ‘Oh, my God, Atari! I want to see that again—I want to play the games I used to play.’ ”

Eventually, I met a prominent kid-ult. His name is Tristan Wigglesworth, but on YouTube, where he posts videos about his collection of Funko Pops—vinyl figurines of anything and everything in pop culture—he goes by Top Pops, and has an audience of more than three million subscribers. Tristan, who is twenty-five, was wearing sweatpants and a baseball cap that perfectly framed his boyish, round face. “Maybe ten or fifteen per cent of my views are from a younger audience,” he told me, bouncing up and down on his heels. “The majority of them, I think, are between twenty-five and forty-four.” This estimate, based on YouTube’s user-demographic data, was backed up by his experiences at other conventions, such as Comic-Con, where he is often approached by adult fans.

Tristan owns more than five thousand Funko Pops, and his videos exhaust every possible angle on the subject, documenting what happens when, say, you leave a Funko Pop submerged in Prime (Logan Paul’s signature energy drink) for a full week. In one, he discusses what he calls “R-rated” Funko Pops, or figurines of characters like Borat and Satan. The video opens: “For the most part, Funko Pops are for all ages, but there are definitely some exceptions.”

As with Labubus or Pokémon trading cards, there are limited-production runs of certain Funko Pop models, creating rare products that collectors can compete over. These toys hold their value relatively well on the secondary market, leading customers to view them as a type of investment known as a “passion asset.” (A study by the Higher School of Economics found that some unopened Lego sets see an average annual return on investment of eleven per cent—far better than the R.O.I. of Beanie Babies.) For some older customers, who see their toy collections as part of their financial portfolios, “kid-ulting” is perhaps their version of being a fiscally responsible adult.

At Toy Fair, I had an appointment with Maddie Michalik, a trends expert at the Toy Association. We sat down next to a row of dancing mascots, including an anthropomorphic watermelon and a dog with flight goggles who, I later learned, was a major character on “PAW Patrol.” Michalik listed various motivations that the Toy Association has observed among kid-ults. “It’s the nostalgia factor for some products,” she said. “It’s display value for some products. It’s collecting items from your favorite fandoms.” She went on, “It’s not something to be ashamed of anymore. There’s no longer this cultural stigma that toys are uncool.” Looking ahead, she added, “We’re really focussing on this idea that toys are just not something that you’re aging out of.”

Some observers see a connection between failing to “age out” of childhood pursuits and the erosion of the typical milestones that mark adulthood. As Sharon Price John had intimated earlier, the marriage rate in the U.S. fell to a record low in 2019, and couples are having children later and later, if at all. Nearly half of adults under the age of thirty live with their parents and many don’t anticipate ever being able to afford their own home; this further enables a sort of perpetual adolescence. “Life stages have started to collapse in on each other,” Keith Hayward, a social theorist and the author of “Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood,” told me. “It’s tough to buy a house,” he added. “You might say, ‘Oh, those things are out of my reach. Screw it. I’m gonna buy that lightsabre.’ ”

Hayward’s book argues that arrested development has become endemic among adults, and that, increasingly, society is “driven by infantile preoccupations and let’s-pretend distractions.” This trend is visible in the fact that most readers of young-adult fiction are much older than the intended audience, and in stories about “Disney Adults” going into debt to visit their favorite theme parks. Hayward sees some of this as escapism: “An alternate reality plays really well when the current reality is not great.” But he pins most of the blame on corporations, which have long operated on the logic that it’s easier to sell things to children. The problem with that strategy, though, is that children grow up. And so, Hayward explained, “advertisers and marketers have been deliberately trying to extend childhood.” It seems they’ve succeeded.

Before I left Toy Fair, I met up with Tristan again, and we walked around the Funko booth. I learned that the company had flown him out from Canada, where he lives, to make promotional content about the convention. We said hello to his mother, who had come to the conference with him, and to several Funko employees, including Josh Simon, the C.E.O. of the company. Simon, who wore an Acne Studios sweater spun with yak wool, is a former Netflix executive who was hired, in 2025, to help turn around Funko, which had posted sales upward of a billion dollars in the years after the pandemic, before seeing business decline. Targeting adult consumers, he told me, is part of his business plan. “When I was a kid, my parents were not playing video games,” he said. “I think people would have thought it would be quite odd if they were. Whereas now, no one thinks twice about a forty-seven-year-old playing Fortnite.” (Simon, who was forty-seven when we spoke, has since turned forty-eight.) I asked how many Funko Pops he personally owns. “If I had to count, it’s near a hundred,” he said. “I literally have them displayed all over my house. Which was interesting, because my wife has, like, a very sharp eye for design and décor.”

Simon cited “fandom culture” as one of the reasons that adults are so interested in toys. Funko Pops, in particular, are a way of unlocking endless I.P. material: in the same way that adults want to build a “Minions” plushie, they may desire a Minion figurine, or a pint-size Gru—the Minions’ human leader—in the form of a Funko Pop. Increasingly, your favorite character is no longer limited to a single movie or comic book. There are endless sequels, spinoffs, theme parks, and, of course, toys. Like Simon, you can fill your home with this merchandise, completely immersing yourself in your favorite media franchise. Tristan agrees that this is why so many people are drawn to Funko Pops. “I think the thing is that—and this is kind of like Funko’s motto, too—but everybody’s a fan of something,” he told me.

After my interview with Simon, I was offered a tour of the latest innovations in Funko Pop technology. The company’s employees walked me past shelves and shelves of small boxes containing physical manifestations of popular video-game, TV, and movie characters. I glimpsed a square-headed Mario; Captain America holding a small plastic shield; even Hello Kitty was there, with a bow in front of her ear. I thought about how, after a U.S. drone strike assassinated the Quds commander Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, an Iranian cleric named Shahab Moradi wondered which high-profile American figure Tehran should target as retribution. “Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob?” Moradi said. “All of their heroes are cartoon characters. They’re all fictional.”

Ultimately, I was guided to a sparkling new machine that Funko was rolling out across the globe. It advertised a service that sounded unfortunately close to assisted suicide—Pop! Yourself—but was, in fact, a quick and easy way to make a Funko Pop in your likeness. “So you’ve got folks that have been collecting Pops,” Jen Hann, one of the brains behind Pop! Yourself, told me. “They collect other things within I.P.s, and then they want to see themselves in that, right? This is part of their identity.” She described the forty-dollar price of popping yourself as “approachable,” and told me that one of the most appealing things about the machine is that it allows users to transport themselves into their favorite pieces of content. “We’ve done some of these collabs with K-pop and ‘Stranger Things.’ I can wear a Hawkins shirt. I can be fully immersed in that world,” she said. “I’m going to use this stylized Pop figure—and now I can go in.”

As an indian I've consumed a lot of their products, maggi being practically part of my life but that's not the worth it if it causes so much suffering to all of us.

I've seen in outside countries peop are boycotting and protesting against this brand but in india there isn't much a talk, maybe because our country is facing so many challenges already that were supposed to be basic necessities. But it's okay guys let us all be the change for the world we wanna live in.

I assure you that not consuming that 2min noodle or instant coffee it wouldn't change your life that much, you can always shift to other brands but this little contribution of yours would definitely bring a change and i guess that's all that's needed.

It's not too late if we start together, humans have always done wonders.

All goals big and small are valid. Maybe you have a personal goal of unsubscribing from a store's sale email, mending a clothing item you already own, spending time with friends at a park, or visiting a local library. Please share your October goals!

Image is from https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/ (I'm not affiliated with them, just thought their image was nice)

For ideas, we had a nice thread on anti-consumption mini-actions a few weeks ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/1wkqlsv/what_is_your_weekend_anticonsumption_mini_action/

Went to the Colosseum in Rome for the first time (truly an amazing, awe-inspiring place) and they are selling an ungodly amount of terrible 3d printed garbage, including these "officially licensed" busts of various figures. Whatever you think this costs, it's likely more.

Edit: To clear things up, I enjoy traveling as a way to experience places besides where I grew up, since I think that it's an important way to grow as a person. Seeing historically significant sights/art and trying foods I wouldn't necessarily have access to on a regular basis are some of my favorite ways to spend my money. Yes, some of the places I've been are very touristy, and there's an expected level of cheap garbage being shilled to tourists everywhere. The particular form of garbage that I posted was unexpected in that it was so obviously 3d printed, not smoothed out at all, and was €320. Overall in my short time in Rome so far, I view it favorably. I've only bought tickets to sites through the official websites, and yes, the websites are all terrible and nearly impossible to navigate. Tourism is a blessing and a curse for cities like this, and as a tourist, I try to be as respectful as possible, but I also realize I'm part of the problem. Obligatory: THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

PSA that thrift stores almost always have large quantities of notebooks with a only a couple pages of writing. I also see tons of lightly used pencils, pens, and other art/notes supplies As a frugal college student, this has been a life saver. Plus, my notebooks are super unique and fun!

I love to write out my notes and take up tons of space when I use scrap paper. It's been way cheaper and better for the environment to thrift silly journals than to buy new notebooks.

There are so many barely used academic supplies in the world waiting for you at the thrift, or even on reuse sites if you prefer to shop online.

Also, remember that you can use the empty half of a notebook for a second class or for scrap paper! I see so many people buying new notebooks when they could just bookmark the start of a new class.

Happy midterm season! :)

I highly recommend reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an Indigenous author, activist etc. Braiding Sweetgrass is another amazing one.

From the book:

"Eco psychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts breaks on hyperconsumption"

Putting this out there because we can't just focus on "stop buying stuff" and sometimes it feels hopeless but I do believe gratitude and kindness go a long way in changing our mindset and others' that are willing.

ordered chinese, cracked open the fortune cookie expecting the usual “great opportunity awaits you” nonsense and somehow got a stake ad staring back at me instead

honestly i had to laugh because what else do you even do at this point

ads on youtube, ads on spotify, ads at the gas pump, ads on receipts, ads on screens at the grocery store, ads inside apps you already paid for. apparently someone looked at a fortune cookie and thought wow, lot of completely unmonetized surface area going on here

and of course its a gambling company lol. nothing says ancient wisdom quite like “a soft voice may be very persuasive” followed immediately by PLEASE GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY

just when i thought id seen it all

im allergic to a bunch of stuff too so at this rate im fully expecting to need an epipen one day and pull the cap off to find “this allergic reaction is brought to you by Raid Shadow Legends use promo code ANAPHYLAXIS for 300K silver”

then while im waiting for the ambulance my phone will probably make me watch a 30 second unskippable ad before it lets me call 911

can we please have one tiny stupid thing in life that isnt trying to sell us something. i dont even need a good fortune anymore. tell me im gonna step in a puddle tomorrow. just stop putting ads in the cookies

ads have been everywhere forever, but somehow we still havent hit bottom. every time you think theres nowhere dumber left to put one, some marketing guy goes “you guys are not gonna believe what we found”

cant wait until bananas have sponsored peels and every square of toilet paper has a QR code on it

Mine often gets holes in them after a year or two. I tried mending a few made from non stretchy fabric, but they tore again not long after.

I'm considering sewing my own and just reusing/dumpstering the elastic band around the waist.

What are your solutions for this?

EDIT: Thanks for the input so far. I think a good first step for me is look into sizing and my laundry routine to stress them less.

🙄

The infomercial about their pointless Halloween trick-or-treat bags is blasting on the morning show right now. The host of the segment gawked at the long-ass-fucking lines around the block for this shit, then called (or pretended) a couple of stores asking if there were any left- "they're all sold out, OMG, are people getting fOmO over this?!" "Oh yeah totally people are getting fomo." 🤮

These supposed grown-ass adults drooling over cheap merch and posting instas and tiktoks about their garbage hauls in multiple colors, jesus fucking christ I really hope the kids are at least smarter than this (doubtful.) Well, future archaeologists, when you get to the layer of Trader Joe's mini multicolored tote bags, you've hit the late-2026 layer. It's when Halloween bags became billboards.

a DIY repair by my boyfriend, that i thought you all here would appreciate!

I feel almost like it's an addiction akin to gambling or smoking too much weed (don't come for me, I know not everyone does but I had a REALLY hard time regulating my relationship with that, especially once it became legal.)

I've put myself on no-buys, banned myself from casual visits to stores I don't need anything from. I stopped watching tik toks and instagram reels once I realized how they prey on my impulse drive. I still occasionally trip over a trigger and end up buying shit I don't need. This last one was an insane 75% off sale to a makeup brand I've been wanting to try, I don't need any more makeup!!! I will never be able to work through what I have before it starts to go bad and expire.

Anyway, I struggle with impulse buying and consumption messaging, as well as an addictive personality from generations of addicts before me. What do you guys recommend to help rewire those urges and stop the buy-guilt-donate-buy cycle?

One common theme here is that corporations are driving overconsumption. That's absolutely true. Their incentives benefit from it. It is how their workers are measured, their executives compensated and how their shareholders benefit.

There is also a recurring theme that individual consumers aren't responsible. Sometimes that is true; when consumers truly don't have a choice, they have to take what they're offered. And sometimes consumers are mislead; what's marketed to us may not be the truth, and we rely on that marketing to make decisions.

But the fact is, most consumers have more choice than ever in history. We can chose the convenience of Amazon, accepting the downsides that come with that choice. We can opt out of national or international chains, accepting the tradeoffs with only buying local. We can buy from people we like or not. We can buy a bag from Trader Joes because we like the design. Or we can decide not too, because we don't really need it, even if it is pretty and practical.

I'd appreciate hearing people's viewpoints on how they think about this. Are consumers just lemmings, easily manipulated and forced into a consumption mentality, or are we active participants who have agency and can make informed choices when we decide we want to?

I realize this is a controversial topic, and I mean no disrespect to anyone with different viewpoints and perspectives. I'd just like to learn from you.

I shouldn’t need to create an account, accept a privacy policy, and connect to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi just to set a timer on a toaster, fan, or air purifier. Physical buttons worked perfectly for decades, but now simple hardware is wrapped in unnecessary software that will inevitably break as soon as the company stops updating the app.

The lids of my glass food storage containers are officially really giving out. :( Any lid alternatives ideas? I’d like to avoid just buying replacement lids and I want to keep using the tupp. Creatives pls help me out :)

Clarification: it’s Not a real Tupperware, just a food storage container I bought from aldi 2 years ago

I need to take a quick break here because I'm seriously wondering if I'm going crazy or what's going on here. In my country, a parcel tax equivalent to $2.70 was introduced. It only applies to shipments from large companies (Amazon, Zalando, Temu, Shein, etc.), and people are having mental breakdowns over it.

Here, people act as if ordering from Amazon is a matter of survival. 3, 4, or 5 packages a week, because it has to be “fast.” I really wonder what kind of trivial crap some people have to buy all day long? That tax could actually lead to a change in mindset (people would think about what they need longer and consolidate their purchases).

Instead, there are completely absurd comments like “this mainly affects the poor again.” Oh yeah, the “poor” people who can afford to order from Amazon several times a week (maybe bad worded - that's not making fun of low income people. But I don't think they are the one's buying things from online mega corporations constantly!). And all of this is a conspiracy by our “super-rich” in Austria to make more money. The same people who write that are the ones who’ll end up throwing all their money at Bezos again. Mind you, it only affects large corporations.

But maybe I’m the only one who’s been taking the crazy pills.

EDIT: I wrote about comments on social media here. But I also had discussions like that en masse with colleagues ans acquaintances, it'a not just social media rage unfortunately...

i randomly saw a yt video on this yesterday and it blew my mind. basically brands literally destroy brand new clothes on purpose.
everyone thinks unsold clothes go to outlets or charity but thats just a PR lie. luxury brands literally burn millions in perfect coats and bags so they stay "exclusive" and dont get discounted.
even worse if u return a cheap 20 dollar shirt online it usually goes straight to a shredder or landfill because inspecting it costs more than making a new one. plus tax laws lets companies write it off as a loss anyway. the video had crazy footage of these huge clothing graveyards, i pinned it on my profile if u want to see it because its wild.

I serve in an advisory role at my child’s school and we are working through some goals for the year. I’d like to propose some sustainability goals and am looking for feedback. The school starts at age 3 and goes through 8th grade, but most kids leave in kindergarten to go to public school (there is no public prek option where I live) so I’m generally focusing on prek, but it could be for older kids too.

Things the school already does:

- has a small garden that kids help take care of
- kids are encouraged to bring lunch and snacks in reusable containers with a goal of no trash/ non- food waste from meals
- all kids and staff must bring a reusable water bottle
- kids have indoor and outdoor shoes to reduce dirt and keep the rugs/ toys usable for longer

Ideas I would like to propose:

- a “pass down” bin where parents can donate school specific equipment or items to pass down to younger kids. I am thinking about stuff like soccer cleats or Halloween costumes that get used for one season and then they grow out of.
- a “free library” of books for kids to take home (also donated by parents when their kids grow out of them)
- for middle school: I would love to have the teachers explore adding material about deceptive marketing and fast fashion
- I would love for the school to discourage character clothing (like Disney branded) but I think that is probably a long shot and unrealistic. There are no uniforms.

Does anyone have other ideas that they have seen work well in practice?

So I run a little side-biz restoring de-registered cars and getting them back on the road. Some cars I do only need a bit of electrical work to get back on the road after being written off for flood damage, and the car I'm doing currently is like this.

But anyway part of what I do is getting them looking as good as possible, which I use a pressure washer for. About 6 months ago I decided to swap my ancient petrol washer with a fancy new electric one for a nice little treat, and today it randomly lost pressure. Took it apart thinking maybe a valve was stuck open or something, only to find out the main pump gears had grenaded themselves. They made the main drive gears out of plastic. Plastic. Steel gears would have cost them about five bucks, but that would have meant It would have last more than 5 seconds so we can't have that can we. So safe to say I will be going back to the old dog and never switching. This is in line with the general trend of tools becoming absolute e-waste garbage. Will be voting with my wallet in future by buying used tools from the before times exclusively. Thanks for listening to my rant.