Our country does produce toys, but since 2013 the sector has not recovered its glory, however, foreign investment could be the solution to the problem.
Year after year, the Mexican toy industry has been overshadowed by China, which now exports more than 80.2% of the products consumed to the country.
But far from giving up, Mexico is seeking to retake the reins of the sector and reposition itself as an important producer in the world.
The batteries are reactivated
According to Statista, in 2016 there was a production of toys with a value of 4 thousand 130 million pesos, however, today its value has drastically decreased.
In 2020 its value barely exceeded one thousand 800 million pesos.
And the reasons have been many. On the one hand, the toys that Mexican children prefer are of foreign origin, but a change has also been detected in what was given away before and what is given now.
The preference is for electronics. In recent years, sales of video game consoles, smartphones, and tablets have increased considerably.
An example of this is that in 2021 alone, smartphone sales were more than 97 billion pesos and, according to The CIU, the trade in these products occurs mainly in the Guadalupe-Reyes period, that is, at Christmas and Three Kings’ Day.
Similarly, AMIJU mentions that the pandemic brought many problems to the industry with the rise in prices of products such as steel, plastic, and polyethylene, as well as the chip crisis that also hit the toy sector.
But, not everything has been bad news, since also with the running of the bulls, the sale of toys through e-commerce increased considerably.
According to data from the statistical portal The NPD Group, the growth of toy sales through e-commerce increased by 104% during 2020, compared to the pre-pandemic period in 2019.
And in Mexico, it mainly increased the sale of table games, which only in the first months of the pandemic in 2020 increased their sales by 18% compared to the previous year, according to AMIJU data.
The most successful games were puzzles, snakes and ladders, lottery, and the goose, among others.
Also in the country are Hasbro factories that produce board games like Monopoly, Guess Who, Clue, and Jenga.
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