The 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger with a motif of your choice, the never-wilting bouquet of Lego bricks, the next generation of dinosaurs from animal figure manufacturer Schleich - all of these were toys that were particularly popular in 2021.

With new toys, which the industry association of the toy industry DVSI even raised to the status of “therapeutic” in the corona pandemic, the companies apparently met the tastes of their customers very well.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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So good, in fact, that some could not keep up before Christmas due to bottlenecks in the global supply chains to bring sufficient supplies to the shelves of shops and warehouses of online retailers.

The industry trade magazine "Planet Toys" has already diagnosed a "boom with two faces".

downsides in the game

We hear about sales records from manufacturers everywhere.

This is reported by the bosses of the Bobbycar maker Simba-Dickie, from Kosmos-Verlag with Siedler von Catan games and experiment kits, from horse and now also dinosaur specialists Schleich and from the board game and puzzle giant Ravensburger.

Customers in Germany spent almost 3.9 billion euros on toys in 2021, more than ever before and 46 percent more than at the beginning of the last decade.

The role of talking about downsides in the game falls to those responsible for finance.

Manfred Duschl, master of the numbers at the Fürth Simba-Dickie Group with annual sales of EUR 754 million, reports on the "pressure on margins" that will continue in 2022 and 2023.

High sales figures do not lead to record profits, surpluses are shrinking.

Plastic granules that are formed into toys in injection molding machines, cardboard for game boards and boxes, electronics for remote control cars - everything has become more expensive, reports Duschl.

The freight costs to bring containers from China to Europe have exploded.

Hanspeter Mürle, responsible for Ravensburger finances, says: “Even as a large toy manufacturer, we are a small player on the global commodity markets.

We don't see much concession on the part of the suppliers."

The toy makers are feeling just like the Monopoly player who, in a series of lucky moves, filled his streets on the board with houses and hotels, and then drew the event card to have to spend extra on renovating all the buildings.

"If costs rise and sales remain more or less the same, we will no longer be able to achieve the same level of profitability," says Ravensburger manager Mürle's outlook, which is as gloomy as it is simple.

Gaming becomes more expensive

Price increases are intended to ensure that there is still something left over from the sales price of a kit or a car model as profit.

For customers who got the impression even before Christmas that toys now cost more, there is no all-clear.

"The higher procurement costs have not yet fully arrived in the product prices," says Simba-Dickie boss Florian Sieber, who also runs Märklin as a separate company.

Manufacturers such as Märklin or Schleich, who increased their income by well over 10 percent, did not primarily manage this through price increases, but because they were lucky in choosing business partners in times of logistics bottlenecks.