From dolls to games, toy industry frets about tariff impact on costs, prices

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Toy makers are worried, as everything from dolls to board games is about to get more expensive. Hundreds of toy companies, ranging from giants such as Hasbro, Mattel and Lego, down to the smallest tinkerers, gathered at New York’s Toy Fair in recent days with the spectre of tariffs looming large.

The concerns expressed on the convention center’s floor ranged from what countries they could source their toy cars and playsets from, to how high prices could go before shoppers cut back on buying toys. “Everyone is trying to pull the same levers to minimize the impact, but you can only do so much," Hasbro’s President of Toys, Licensing & Entertainment Tim Kilpin said. “At some point, there’s no way that consumers won’t see this come through in the prices that they’re paying for toys." Hasbro and other larger toy companies have some tools at play that could help blunt the impact of tariffs, which the Trump administration has imposed on products coming in from China, as well as Canada and Mexico.

The companies are renegotiating with vendors and reconfiguring global supply chains to shift production to countries where they can avoid pain points. Smaller players, however, may not have the resources or ability to follow suit. “There really is no safe haven right now from tariffs on toys, and that has created some uncertainty in the business," said Greg Ahearn, chief executive of the Toy Association, the industry trade group that hosted the event.

The U.S. toy industry is coming off two years of basically flat sales, following a boom during the pandemic as parents splurged on toys for their kids. Now, tariffs have emerged as a key threat to any momentum, with the potential to both raise costs for