With the rise of Generation Z, trendy toys have gradually entered the public eye from niche consumption.

Among them, building block toys, as a classic trendy toy, create various creative shapes and structures by combining and building parts. Because of its diverse value, wide age coverage, and strong playability, it is widely welcomed by young players, and building blocks are becoming a new outlet for the trend track.

Strong social attributes and collection value, Chinese building block players are growing rapidly

The global toy market has broad space and steady growth. The "Building Block Toy Industry White Paper" shows that the scale of the Chinese market has exceeded 10 billion US dollars, ranking among the top three in the world. In the past decade, China's per capita toy consumption has grown rapidly, but it is still far lower than that of developed markets such as the United States. China's toy industry still has huge room for growth.

Building block toys can be divided into a variety of material types, such as wood, plastic, etc. Among them, plastic building blocks are more popular because of their excellent texture and conducive to scene performance. According to the way of playing, building block toys can be further divided into stacking building blocks, assembly building blocks, plug-in building blocks and active building blocks. According to the size of the particles, they can be divided into large particles, medium particles, small particles, mini particles and micro building block particles.

Due to the diverse value and wide age range of building block toys, the global and Chinese building block toy market size continues to grow, and the growth rate far exceeds the overall level of toys. The growth rate of Chinese building blocks is higher than the global level, among which the growth rate of large-particle building blocks is particularly significant.

Building block players are not just children. With the rapid development of China's social economy, the Chinese people's parenting concept has gradually changed, and the willingness to spend on children's products has continued to increase. As a consumer product for children's leisure and entertainment, the market demand for toys continues to grow. At the same time, China's toy audience has expanded rapidly, from children and teenagers in the past to people of all ages, and the market size has developed steadily.

Why can building block toys attract people of different ages? The White Paper believes that with the continuous development of social economy and culture, the Chinese people's demand for cultural and entertainment products and services that are creative, personalized, have strong social attributes, have emotional resonance, and have cultural value and collection value is increasing.

At the same time, with the continuous evolution of consumption concepts, China's residents' consumption has undergone structural changes, and cultural and entertainment expenditures have continued to increase; at the same time, compared with the per capita cultural and entertainment expenditures in the United States, China's cultural and entertainment expenditures still have a large room for development, and the global market is even more imaginative. Entertainment is a golden track full of opportunities.

With the further development and maturity of the IP derivatives market, China's toy and entertainment consumption will benefit the most, and its IP penetration rate is expected to further increase. As one of the most important toy subcategories, building blocks have taken the lead in showing a gratifying level of IPization, and IP and building blocks are expected to further promote each other.

Technology and intelligence "empower" Chinese building blocks to create rich scenes and more interesting gameplay

China's assembly building block market is relatively young. Since the 1980s, the building block market has experienced barbaric development to flourishing, becoming increasingly mature, and constantly exploring, changing, and restructuring in the direction of branding.

Today, the core demand scenarios of players for toys continue to change with their age increase and cognitive ability improvement; building block toys can bring diversified value due to their category nature, and naturally adapt to the needs of user groups of all ages. The diversification of expandable scenarios makes the product life cycle longer.

In recent years, with the rise of short videos, short video platforms have become a new "battlefield", e-commerce channel traffic has skyrocketed, and offline channels have also established a new "moat", and channel distribution has become more diversified.

Human-shaped building blocks with movable joints, bionic building blocks with high-precision parts, home appliance building blocks with motor optical fibers, mechanical device capsule building blocks... The opportunity for Chinese building block brands to break through the circle is inseparable from the differentiated development of innovation and technological intelligence. Not only are they innovative in gameplay, compressing and reorganizing multiple functions into building blocks, but they are also increasing their investment in research and development and manufacturing, integrating many intelligent hardware technology elements. For example, by assembling building blocks and writing corresponding programs, movable robots and interactive devices can be created. The programming function has different levels of difficulty for children and adult players, which can not only cultivate children's logical thinking and problem-solving skills, but also meet the more complex creative needs of adults.

Pet bowls in the shape of building blocks, bouquets of building blocks - modular design realizes the multi-scene reshaping of building blocks, building blocks are more in line with real life, providing more interesting ways to play, and compatible building blocks can create larger and more complex structures.

The development of 3D printing technology has also enriched the playability of building block toys. Integrated with digital design software, players can create custom shapes and structures and materialize them using 3D printing technology. Children can design their own building block shapes and understand the basic instructions of 3D modeling and printing, while adults can design and create unique works of art or functional works.

At the same time, cooperation with popular IPs is also essential. IP licensing is not only one of the main ways to generate IP business income, but also a key core to expand IP influence and expand the boundaries of IP ecology. The IP licensing market is growing rapidly, and IP licensing has a significant effect on boosting product sales. Many leading building block brands have begun cross-border marketing to seek brand synergy effects of strong alliances. In the future, the building block field is expected to gradually build a rich IP world.

For domestic manufacturers, for example, Senbao building blocks have cooperated with SpongeBob SquarePants, Shandong Ship, Wandering Earth, Aerospace Cultural Creation, Aviation Cultural Creation, Weapon Cultural Creation, and Forbidden City Cultural Creation, etc., and Enlightenment Keepley building blocks have "joined hands" with animation and game IPs such as the Forbidden City, Onmyoji, Detective Conan, Pok¨¦mon, Doraemon, and Crayon Shin-chan; Jiaqi building blocks have also had cross-border joint names with catering brands such as Three Squirrels and Mixue Ice City.

In addition, following the development of the industry and the trend of pan-entertainment, many Chinese companies have acquired overseas IP copyrights, either leveraging their power to expand their operations in the Chinese market or using them to enter the global market. For example, ByteDance acquired the Korean comic IP Kidari in 2022. The investment will be used to open content production studios in China and Japan, and to issue NFTs based on webtoons. At the same time, Kidari has also reached a content cooperation with ByteDance, and will license about 1,300 comics to ByteDance's platforms.

Female-oriented building blocks are exquisitely designed, and the mortise and tenon building blocks are very "Chinese style"

The progress of the country's economic and technological level will surely bring about the prosperity of the cultural industry. With the continuous enhancement of China's comprehensive strength in the past three decades, China's cultural industry has been rising, and Chinese cultural enterprises are expected to become a new generation of cultural giants.

Compared with the current development status of overseas markets, the European and American markets are large in scale, and the US market is growing the fastest. Market education has almost been completed, and differentiated products are urgently needed; the Asian market is relatively fragmented and has low barriers to entry; the Latin American, Middle Eastern and African markets are growing faster than Asia, but the current scale is not as large as Asia, and growth is expected and there is a lot of room for expansion.

What innovations and characteristics do domestic building block brands have? Chibi Maruko's home, scenes from the Legend of Zhen Huan series, building block paintings from the Art Museum series, building block mini bags... A building block brand entered the blank market with products for women, quickly opened up the market with exquisite design and fun, and then gradually enriched the IP that matches the brand's tone and improved the product line, thus covering groups with different consumer needs. Eventually, the building block brand gradually accumulated popularity and established a differentiated brand image.

The building block brand has created a number of popular product IPs with its unique product design system: the 80s and 90s themes are designed with Han Meimei and Li Lei as the protagonists, inspiring players' childhood memories and retro feelings; a handbag shape with a high degree of restoration, which contains small scene ornaments when opened, turning the bag into a candy store. In addition, the brand has vigorously expanded its online channels, and has doubled the "collection line" and "trendy play line" to stabilize fan groups with different preferences. At the same time, it has cooperated with offline channels to promote "potential players" and promote the brand's sales to continue to rise through ultra-high user stickiness.

The mortise and tenon building block is a building block with Chinese characteristics. While other mortise and tenon building block brands are still focusing on the restoration of ancient Chinese buildings, a certain brand has taken a different approach, emphasizing the use of building blocks to tell stories, breaking the product form restrictions of mortise and tenon building blocks, and launching a variety of forms such as Ming-style official hat chairs, tanks, and karts. The building blocks have achieved a small number of particles and high reusability through extreme parts standardization; at the same time, high-precision parts further enhance the product strength of the building block brand. In addition, the brand has reached cooperation with many authoritative museums to give the building blocks the background of Chinese stories. For example, it has cooperated with the Forbidden City and the National Museum to cut into the Chinese classical cultural scenes and launched mortise and tenon decorative paintings and ancient Chinese terracotta warrior series. Based on the attributes of cultural and creative achievements, the products are given different values such as "edutainment" and "emotional collection".

At present, IP combination, big-children, multi-brand development, and innovative gameplay to broaden product boundaries have become fixed development trends in the building block industry. More and more domestic brands are brave in innovation, focus on original design, improve technology research and development, and boldly create new gameplay, which has promoted the innovation and development of the entire industry. Moreover, young people have become the main consumer group of building block toys. At present, classic IP collection-level building blocks, retro-themed building blocks, trendy and cool building blocks, and mecha-style building blocks are all types of building blocks that young people prefer. Industry insiders believe that unique brand positioning and continuous innovation are the "moat" that constitutes the competitiveness of original brands in the domestic building block toy industry. Article/Reporter Chen Si

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