August is a month of highs on the TnP magazine front – driven mainly by the hugely popular Games & Puzzles feature.
There are the excellent feature intro interviews and pages of individual product promos – but the real joys are the extras around it. There is a column from The Insights Family’s Needa Khan titled “The enduring allure of board games.” it will take you on a stats-driven journey through nostalgia and modern-day fun.
Then there’s the beautifully written and heartfelt interview with Rob Trounce of Hachette Boardgames UK. Our advice? Bounce straight over to Trounce. Finally, there’s The Ambassadors Special, which has two families coming to smiley blows playing Cheatwell’s bestselling game, Tension.
Our features this month cover Paddington, dress-up & role play and eco & sustainability. We take a look in detail, at these categories.
Our front cover this month is Zimpli Kids and we look at the full range and find out why kids are going to love their latest product, Glowy, the glow-in-the-dark slime (well, why wouldn’t, they, it’s awesome. See their cover story on page 17 for more).
Retail Week columnist, John Ryan, looks into the shoplifting epidemic. And Amanda Alexander of Giddy Goat Toys has a searing Indie ‘say’ this month. She starts with good news before moving swiftly on to a scorching commentary on the damage that the sagging economy has done to certain business practices that lead to tensions between suppliers and retailers.
There is also two in depth retail interviews with Karen Dom of the Forgotten Toy Shop and Peter Allinson of Whirligig.
Films and licensing are increasingly important as we all know. In the early summer weeks we have had the huge openings of Disney Pixar’s Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4 and, most recently, Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
The licensing tills will be ringing merrily in toy shops and beyond as a result of these successes. And there is a particularly interesting aspect with regards to Deadpool & Wolverine. After chatting with young people in their late teens in the past few days, it is clear to us that the kidult market will be getting a boost on the collectibles and dress-up front.