My Airbnb host in Nuremberg just cancelled my booking for Toy Fair 2027. Booked a year out, gone, no explanation.
Try finding anything similar for the same price now. You can’t. Old town, two minutes from the U-Bahn straight to the fair, walking distance to every restaurant and networking spot that matters in the evening. That room doubled in price the moment mine came free.
May a thousand fleas find a home in his armpit.
Learning Resources is suing the US government over tariffs. Again. Second time. They already won once, took the last round all the way to the Supreme Court and got it struck down.
Notice who isn’t in that courtroom. Not Hasbro. Not Mattel. Not Spin Master. The billion-dollar players quietly raise wholesale prices, shift a bit more sourcing to Vietnam, and let a toymaker from Vernon Hills spend its own money fighting a battle that benefits the whole industry. That’s not caution. That’s letting somebody smaller carry the risk for you.
Hasbro isn’t suing anyone. It’s just quietly changing its supply chain instead. Told investors this quarter it’s taking China down from roughly 50% to 30% of total sourcing by year end. That’s not really a Hasbro story anymore, it’s the whole industry’s story. Everyone wants a factory that isn’t hostage to whatever Washington decides next.
We’ve been building exactly that. A solid injection moulding partner with its own in-house printing for packaging, ready to take on smaller production runs, not just container-loads for the giants. If you want to move even a slice of production outside China, we’re ready and waiting.
And while the big players hedge their supply chains, French retail is betting on an entirely different customer. King Jouet opened its first “King’Dultes” store in Marseille last week, a toy shop built for teenagers and adults, not children. Grown-ups buying toys for themselves stopped being a side trend a while back. Now a major chain is opening dedicated stores for it.
We’ve got skin in that game too. Three collectable ranges of our own now, Momo Toy, Lucky Emma and Dragon Kingdom, sitting exactly on that same kidult shelf King Jouet just built a whole store around.
Good luck to Learning Resources. Good luck to the industry finding its way out of this tariff mess.
The Airbnb host doesn’t get my good wishes. I hope every one of those fleas learns to bite exactly where he can’t reach.
