Toy Directory has an article discussing the toy industry and how it’s being affected by “age compression”. The article mostly retreads old ground — age compression has been a factor for several years now — but this line caught my eye:
In 2004, 14 percent of the 127 million units of action figures bought in the United States were done so by and for adults …
Facts and numbers about the adult collector segment of the action figure market are hard to come by so it was nice to get this.
Now, 14 per cent might not seem like much but bear in mind the action figure (and accessories) category saw US$1.2 billion in sales in 2004. This means adults bought about US$168 million worth of action figures last year. That’s just the action figure category of the toy industry. And that’s just in the US.
