Toy sellers fed up with popular dolls and CEO behind them
The hottest toy of the last two-plus years is starting to annoy rival toy sellers — as is the CEO behind it.
A wildly popular collectible toy called LOL Surprise is the industry’s top-selling product and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
The miniature doll phenomenon is has been dragging on for so long, rival toy sellers say they are tired of hearing about it.
“At this point LOL is so hot it’s taking almost all the oxygen in the category,” Basic Fun Chief Executive Jay Foreman told The Post.
If that’s not bad enough, the man behind LOL Surprise, MGA Entertainment Chief Executive Isaac Larian seems to enjoy gloating about his success at a time of slowing sales due in part to the bankruptcy of retail giant Toys ‘R’ Us.
Larian, who famously launched a GoFundMe to acquire Toys ‘R’ Us after it declared bankruptcy in 2017, recently mocked rivals in an emoji-laden press release ahead of this week’s earnings reports for blaming their problems on the Toys ‘R’ Us’s downfall — before touting his own success.
“Lately, it is fashionable by most publicly traded toy companies to blame the demise of Toys ‘R’ Us for everything,” Larian declared in the emoji-laden press release. “Thankfully, due to our continued innovations, our worldwide shipping was up 46 percent for the first quarter.”
In an interview with The Post, Larian said he wasn’t gloating in his statement but rather he intended to “wake up the industry to come out with new, original innovations.”
“Some people won’t like that,” he added.
Retail sales of the LOL Surprise franchise, which also includes revenue from licensed products, topped $4 billion last year and are expected to expand to $5 billion in 2019. “We are struggling to meet the demand,” Larian said.
Toy sales overall dropped by 2% last year following Toys ‘R’ Us’ bankruptcy, to $21.6 billion, the first decline in four years. This year, there are signs of a potential comeback — including a 2.3% increase in Hasbro’s first-quarter sales, but experts say it is too soon to tell.
One problem facing toy sellers is the limited space available for them at stores like Target and Walmart, especially when shelves are being set aside for LOL Surprise at the expense of other products.
“LOL has taken a good portion of the girls toy business from all of us and it’s still so hot,” said WowWee Chief Executive Richard Yanofsky, whose Fingerling toy was a top seller in 2018.
LOL sales inroads also are eroding rivals’ markets in the UK and other countries. Recently, Basic Fun’s Lucky Lunch Boxes, one of the company’s big new products, took a backseat to the MGA franchise overseas.
“They asked us to hold the Boxes until next year in order to allow LOL to peak so that if it levels off or slows they can fill the gaps,” Basic Fun’s Foreman said.
MGA, which also is behind Bratz dolls, is keeping the franchise hot by adding new versions of its LOL Surprise doll every few months. They range in price from $10 or less for a single doll, whose identity is a surprise until after purchase, to roughly $200 for a set that includes more than 85 pieces, all of which come with several layers of wrapping.
Other toy companies are frantically trying to compete by launching their own collectible dolls, according to Jim Silver of TTPM, a toy review website.
About a half a dozen such toys are out now but up to 20 are in the pipeline, Silver said. “A toy like LOL has to be eating someone else’s share,” he said.