Easter Gifts Make Retailers Hop for Joy
When the Easter Bunny arrives on Sunday, handing out chocolates and marshmallow eggs, he’ll also give many children--and toy makers--a second chance for those presents that Santa never left under the tree.
Easter has become another occasion for children, especially young children, to receive toys and other gifts. It’s unlikely to reach the magnitude of Christmas, but the holiday still gives retailers and manufacturers a small but welcome lift in sales.
Parents have been giving children plush bunnies and similar toys for Easter for years--it is the biggest holiday in the plush business. But other toys increasingly are making their way into Easter baskets.
For some families, Easter gifts are a new tradition. Donna Weber, a Greenlawn, N.Y., mother of two, said she started giving Easter gifts to her children because “what we’re trying to do is stay away from all this candy.” She buys small gifts such as books and crayons.
Easter gift-giving is not limited to children. Mervyn’s, the 276-store chain owned by Dayton Hudson Corp. that sells mostly clothing, stocks up on ceramic gift ware and plush items for the holiday. “We have seen the business in toys and gifts increase over the last few years,” spokeswoman Kathy Blackburn said.
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Bloomingdale’s and other upscale stores are advertising Waterford crystal Easter eggs and other trinkets aimed at adults. Hallmark sells Easter tree decorations and other collectibles.
Still, it is the toy business that sees the biggest opportunities at Easter.
Toys R Us Inc. circulated its spring catalogue well before the holiday and placed inserts advertising a range of toys--including prominently displayed pastel-colored bunnies--inside Sunday newspapers. John Taylor, a toy industry analyst for L.H. Alton & Co., called the advertising “the first major effort that people have made in a while” to encourage toy-buying for Easter.
Playmates Toys Inc. is using Easter to relaunch the Pound Puppies line of plush mutts and another stuffed toy line, Magic Heart Helplings.
“Toy manufacturers have noticed that for a long time, there’s usually a (sales) blip around the Easter season, partly because there’s more retail traffic,” said Diane Teigiser, director of merchandising for Playmates.
Toy makers are “taking advantage of the fact that more people are in the stores buying clothing for the Easter holidays,” she said.
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The Toy Manufacturers of America, a trade group, said that last year manufacturers shipped 9% of their merchandise during March in preparation for Easter. That compared to 6% in February and 5% in April.
This year, Tiger Electronics Inc. offered a $10 rebate on its popular Toby Terrier toy specifically for the Easter season, spokesman Mark Rosenberg said. The company also is bringing out a line of preschool electronic games in time for the holiday.
“It’s really something we’ve focused on in the last three or four years because Easter has become a major buying holiday,” Rosenberg said.
Part of the toy makers’ push at Easter comes from their desire to spread the risks of a business that historically has been concentrated at Christmas. Most of their new product introductions are scheduled for the fourth quarter.
The industry “latched on to other seasons for people to buy toys,” said Bruce Maguire, a spokesman for Tyco Toys Inc. Tyco sells plush toys around Easter, but it has also promoted Magna-Doodle, a drawing toy, as an Easter gift in commercials this spring.
