Sustainability at London Toy Fair 2023
Sustainability at Toy Fair 2023
Last week the Designworks team made our annual trip to London’s Toy Fair, hosted at the world famous Olympia in Kensington. Nearly in it’s 70th year, the exhibition is a showcase for all things toys and games, a sneak peek for toy companies, distributors and inventors alike!
Over a 32 year period Designworks have established strong roots in the toy industry. We’ve made prototypes for small start-ups to show at Toy Fair as well as develop product ranges for the likes of Hasbro, Mattel, Vivid Imaginations, Character Options and most recently, The Lego Group.
Constantly keeping our finger on the pulse of releases, trends and insights; we have curated a small list of some of our favourites that have considered using more sustainable materials and processes, plus a few from the Designworks archives!
With the pandemic lockdowns heavily influencing toy sales and driving a shift toward board games in the prior three years, it has been interesting to watch the industry recovering, and to see what trends are most prominent in 2023.
As hoped, sustainability has seemingly returned as a driving force in UK toy sales from the likes of Hape, Janod, 8th Wonder, Lilliputiens and Paper Engine.
Similarly we have seen a notable rise in our own clients requesting sustainable materials and recyclable plastics.
in 2019 we worked extensively with Character Options developing a new, alternative wooden range of toys for licenses such as Batman and Peppa Pig, and It has been great to see this trend of wooden vehicles, figurines and playsets expand across the industry as companies cut down on their plastic use.
In recent years we have also seen an encouraging increase in the use of bamboo, cork, paper buildable toys, and PLA (a corn starch based bio plastic).
Designworks first integrated mass produced PLA in production in 2020 when we developed the ‘Findits’ range of ‘toys in shoes’ for Clarks’, back-to-school range.
Whilst sustainability in the UK toy industry appears to be moving in the right direction again, the companies producing responsible products are still in the minority. We hope that with trends towards consuming less, higher quality toys will encourage buyers to make better choices and thereby influence corporations to make positive changes for the environment. We hope to see real advances in technology in the coming years, hopefully with material science aligning itself with the positive changes in attitudes towards waste and consumption we have seen amongst customers.
If you wish to find out more about responsible toy design or alternative materials, please get in touch via the link below.