Written by Ashton Mathai

Note: An adapted version of this blog was published in People of Play’s Bloom Report.

Toy Fair is the biggest media event of the year for toy brands. This year, it’s happening March 1-4, 2025 at the Javits Center in New York City. 

For brands, it’s more than just a trade show. It’s where iconic manufacturers, inventors, and licensors like Disney, Marvel, and Nickelodeon come together to showcase the latest products. You might even catch big names like Miss Rachel wandering the floor.

It also represents the chance for everyone – brands, media, content creators, and the Toy Association itself – to see the latest toy trends and products that will shape buyer behavior for the year ahead. 

Carvers Amy Friedland and Scott Goldberg have represented more than 100 brands at Toy Fair. During a Carved Out Conversations LinkedIn Live session, they covered the essentials for making the most of your coverage opportunities at Toy Fair 2025.

Tips to Stand Out to Toy Fair Media

Anchor Your Strategy to Your End Goals and Audience

Unlike other shows that focus primarily on sales, Toy Fair is a unique combination of media, content creators (or influencers), and buyers.

Some brands attend the show because they want buyers to put in a purchase order to get their products on shelves. Others’ end game might be creating awareness so consumers notice – and buy – their products on shelves.

Whatever your goals, make sure you understand your primary goal and structure your media strategy around that. Your goals might include: 

• Sell-in: Increasing the number of product purchase orders from buyers so your product ends up on retail shelves.

• Sell-through: Generating awareness for your products so they will be bought in stores. Maybe your inventory is already available on Amazon and your priority is to encourage more sales.

Or, you could have some combination of the two. Regardless, identifying your main priorities early impacts the products you feature, the reporters you target, the connections you make at the show itself, and what success looks like at the end.

Get Picky About Your “Hero” Products

Once you understand your ultimate goals for Toy Fair, it’s time to choose which hero products you’re going to showcase at the event.

Pick less than five products; ideally, three or four. It’s tempting to choose more but resist the urge. 

If you choose too many, reporters will likely have a harder time differentiating your products. Or worse, your options make the choice tougher for reporters — and they scrap the coverage idea.

“If you choose too many, you won’t be able to get through all your products,” Executive VP Amy Friedland said in our Carved Out Conversation. “Media and creators don’t have half an hour to spend at your booth. You want to nail your top priorities.”

To narrow your focus, ask questions like:

• Which products best match the priorities you set? Eliminate the ones that don’t.

• Which are the easiest to describe? Imagine: You only have 30 seconds to hook a reporter in a loud room. What are you choosing to explain? 

• Which grab and hold attention the best? (Or the “sexiest” as Amy put it.)

• Which are most TV-friendly? Nowadays, media outlets send reporters to shows like Toy Fair with camera crews – or simply an iPhone – to capture social coverage. Visuals let your product sell itself. 

As a rule, only pick one product per category. You don’t want two sensory products fighting each other for coverage or four tech toys overwhelming media.

The products you pick also become the lens through which you reach out to reporters. If you have a strong tech product, chances are, you’ll also reach out to reporters who love and cover tech toys. Focus on the media who reach your target audience. 

Remember, there are more than 1,000 booths at the show. When honing in on your hero product strategy, really take the time to get into the mindset of the media you're targeting. 

Fit Your Product Into Viable Toy Trends

Now that you’ve pinned down the products you’re prioritizing at the show, it’s time to focus on which Toy Fair narratives fit those products. One of the best ways to do that is by identifying which toy trends are relevant to your product. 

The Toy Association shares these before the event, often by gathering data from many different companies to see what’s rising to the top. They analyze past trends over the years to see what’s growing in popularity and what’s now irrelevant. 

TLDR? Toy Fair trends determine what’s hot… and what’s not. 

Instagrammers, TikTokers, and YouTubers want to design creative social strategies with visual content around trendy products. They’re what determine the products you see more of (or less) on the shelves at big-name retailers like Target or Walmart. 

Reporters obviously care about trends, too; it’s often what makes one product worth featuring over another. Find the trends your hero products can fit into – or put your own spin on – and you can boost your coverage chances.

Here are a few of the latest toy trends on our radars for Toy Fair 2025:

Be Prepared for Anything, Especially at the Show

Remember Murphy’s Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong. 

As with every trade show, don’t expect everything to go smoothly. But make sure you’re partnering with media to get them what they need when they need it. They’ll appreciate it.

1. Before the show, coordinate desk sides and Zoom demos. Fitting these in will help your product appear in more pre-show trend stories.

2. Schedule appointments with the media at the event. It might be old-school, but it works. You want to get face-to-face time with reporters to see your products IRL.

3. Prep your elevator pitches. There was a time when elevator pitches were exactly that… the length of an elevator ride. Today, you still have just as much time to hook a reporter, if not less. Make your pitch count.

4. Show up to all appointments. Each appointment is a relationship-building opportunity with a reporter. Sometimes schedules change, so be sure to have open lines of communication so you can pivot in the event of a switch-up. 

PRO TIP: In the spirit of true relationships, make conversation with the reporter at an appointment. Go beyond what you need from them and ask what they’re writing about outside of Toy Fair. Later down the line, they may want your brand’s expertise. 

In between the hustle and bustle of Toy Fair, find moments for your products to shine. 

We like to host media in a smaller, less-crowded setting not far from the Toy Fair site. There, we showcase our clients’ products in natural environments — board games in a living room, dolls in a bedroom, active play toys in an “outside” area. We call it “Carve X.” This gives media the chance to take everything in and ask questions while giving products more dedicated attention. 

Remember Your Media Strategy Doesn’t Stop After the Show

Just because Toy Fair ends doesn’t mean the chance for coverage does. Following up with reporters can solidify both immediate coverage and long-term opportunities, like setting the scene to include your product in gift guides (pitching starts in the summer).

Send personalized follow-ups to the reporters you met – or even missed – at Toy Fair. Check the notes you took from the booth to include any conversation highlights or next steps you discussed. Scan for coverage and see which trends were most popular and use that information to refine your PR plan ahead for the year; do any of your other products fit in? 

Be mindful of any sales opportunities stemming from Toy Fair. If you want to make the most of it:

• Gather all the coverage you secured. Include traditional and broadcast media, plus any social coverage.

• Use that to create a highlights sheet with a few of those links featured alongside some shots of your products.

• Email this to any potential, existing, or hard-to-convince buyers to show them the demand you’ve created for your product. 

PRO TIP: Make sure you have a strong media monitoring strategy in place – you don’t want coverage to slip through the cracks. Consider enlisting your “at-home” or agency team to continuously monitor and flag coverage as it arises – this way you can focus on opportunities on the show floor while still being proactive. 

Toy Fair is an opportunity to get your products noticed, build momentum, create media and buyer connections that last well beyond the show, and of course… have some fun. With some thoughtful planning, Toy Fair can be the start of a big year for your brand.