Global toy sales grew 14% in the first six months of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025, according to Circana’s retail tracking across the 14 markets it monitors, published on 10 August 2026. Over the twelve months ending June 2026 the figure was +9.5%. Two days later, Circana reported that US dollar sales rose 17% year on year in the first half — the strongest first half in six years — with units up 12% and average selling price up 4%.
For a buyer building an educational toys wholesale programme, the headline number matters far less than the split underneath it. Growth in 2026 is concentrated in a handful of supercategories, and it points in different directions in different regions. Ordering against “the market is up” is how importers end up with a container of the wrong SKUs.
The 2026 numbers: growth is real, but unevenly spread
Circana’s 10 August regional release put a different supercategory on top in every major market it tracks:
- North America — Games & Puzzles ranked as the largest supercategory.
- Latin America — Dolls led by value; December alone accounts for 32% of annual toy sales in the region.
- Europe — Building Sets ranked first; annual spend per child under 10 reached roughly USD 240 in 2025, the second-highest level globally.
- Australia — Building Sets also first, with the market up 13% in value in H1 2026 (units +7%, ASP +6%); Games & Puzzles and Building Sets together delivered about 70% of supercategory gains.
- China — Infant, Toddler & Preschool Toys remained the largest supercategory by size, but ranked fourth by growth as birth rates declined.
That last point deserves a second read. Circana attributed the segment’s resilience to increasing demand for higher-quality and educational products, which lifted average selling prices even as sales volume fell. In the world’s largest toy-producing market, the pre-school category is no longer growing on volume — it is growing on value per unit.
Where “educational” actually shows up in the data
Circana does not publish a line item called “educational toys”. The demand surfaces across several supercategories, and the US breakdown published on 12 August 2026 shows which ones moved:
- Games & Puzzles +45% — puzzles, logic games and strategy formats sit squarely in the learning bracket.
- Explorative & Other Toys +58% — the largest gainer in the US market.
- Building Sets +22% — the top supercategory in both Europe and Australia, and the construction/engineering end of the category.
- Arts & Crafts +20% — and in China, Arts & Crafts was named one of the three fastest-growing supercategories, partly driven by adult buyers.
Two cautions before you read that as a blanket green light. First, a large share of the US increase came from trading cards and collectibles rather than learning toys; licensed products grew 24% and reached 39% of total US toy sales. Second, older buyers are doing much of the work: adult-only households accounted for 55% of US toy sales, sales to adults 18+ grew 25%, sales to 12–17 year-olds grew 33%, and those two groups together generated nearly 60% of the incremental dollar gains. A range aimed strictly at three- to six-year-olds competes in the most price-sensitive, slowest-growing slice of a fast-growing market.
Three implications for importers and distributors
- Buy the ASP, not the unit price. Average selling prices rose in every region Circana tracks — +4% in the US, +6% in Australia, and higher ASP in China’s pre-school segment despite falling volume. Buyers who trade up on material and finish are moving with the market; buyers who chase the cheapest quote are moving against it.
- Match the format to the region. Construction and building formats lead Europe and Australia. Games and puzzles lead North America. Dolls lead Latin America, where seasonality is extreme and roughly a third of annual sales land in December. One global assortment will underperform in three of those four markets.
- Plan the calendar backwards. Circana found that 95% of gift purchases involve advance consideration and only 5% are pure impulse. For Q4 2026 that window has effectively closed; the planning that still pays off is for Q1–Q2 2027 programmes.
The other half of the story: enforcement is tightening
Demand data only helps if the goods clear the border and stay on the shelf. The last eight weeks have been busy on both sides of the Atlantic.
On 5 August 2026 the US Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a consumer safety alert on fake and counterfeit squishy toys. CPSC said it had identified 55 shipments of violative squishy toys at US ports and worked with Customs and Border Protection to prevent 355,683 units from entering the country, and had issued notices of violation to the companies responsible. The listed failure modes read like a due-diligence checklist in reverse: water beads and small parts, excess lead, prohibited phthalates, no age grading, no tracking information, no manufacturer identification, and no third-party testing or certification.
In the EU, the Safety Gate notifications for weeks 33 and 34 — reproduced by Ningbo Customs on 11 September 2026 — show a familiar pattern. Toy entries across those two weeks included plush toy sets and plush keyrings notified by France, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain and Lithuania for choking risk, a plush toy notified by France for chemical risk, and sand-filled toys notified by Germany for health risk. Measures ranged from withdrawal from the market and recall from end users to destruction of the goods and rejection at the border. A separate alert published 4 September 2026 (SR/02365/26, a dart-shooting toy set notified by Germany) cited small parts that detach easily and non-compliance with EN 71-1.
The lesson for an educational toys wholesale buyer is not that soft or novelty products are inherently unsafe. It is that the products being stopped are the ones bought on price from sellers who cannot produce a test report. Choking and chemical hazards hit toddler and pre-school ranges hardest — the same age band that carries the best ASP story in Circana’s China data.
A pre-order due-diligence checklist
Before you release a deposit on a learning-toy programme, ask the factory for these six items in writing:
- A test report from an accredited laboratory issued within the last 12 months, covering the same tooling, the same materials and every colourway you intend to buy.
- The standard cited by name and version — ASTM F963 and the applicable CPSIA sections for the US, EN 71-1, -2 and -3 for the EU — not a generic “passed safety test”.
- A construction review focused on small parts and seam strength: sewn-on features, suction cups, magnets and battery compartments are where choking and ingestion findings originate.
- Artwork and packaging proofs showing age grading, warnings, importer identification and a permanent tracking label on both product and pack.
- Confirmation of which components are sub-supplied rather than made in-house, since that is where phthalate and heavy-metal failures usually come from.
- A pre-shipment inspection booked against a written AQL, with a laboratory pull taken from the production lot rather than from a pre-production sample.
If a supplier cannot produce items 1, 2 and 4, the low price is not a discount — it is an unpriced risk. CPSC’s 355,683 stopped units were somebody’s order.
You can see how we approach testing and inspection on our toy quality control and safety compliance page, and browse current learning formats on the educational toys category page. Adjacent ranges worth comparing side by side include baby and infant toys and plastic toys. If you need a format that does not exist yet — a private-mould construction set, a licensed craft kit, or a re-worked version of a design you already sell — the OEM & ODM page explains how that is handled.
What to send before you ask for a quote
The fastest way to a usable price is a short, specific brief: target age band, target retail price point, destination market and the standard it must meet, quantity per SKU and total order quantity, packaging format, and whether you need OEM branding or a modified mould. Add a photo or drawing of a reference product if you have one. That is enough for a factory to tell you within a day whether the item is viable at your price — and it filters out suppliers who will quote anything before they have understood the brief.
Planning a 2027 educational toy programme? Send your brief, target market and quantity through the contact page and we will come back with a specification review and a landed-cost estimate you can compare against your current supplier.
