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Zuru in June released a “Gold Rush” edition of three dozen gold-toned rare minis. Previously it also released a toy minis line featuring miniature Crayola boxes, Frisbees, and other iconic toy brands. The toy took off as the world suddenly found itself nostalgic for grocery shopping, as the pandemic shifted a lot of supermarket trips to online. Unbox, build and customise: Build up your mini mart including store front, shelves, cash register, and accessories, then customize it by collecting more shelves, cash registers and accessories in 5 Surprise Mini Brands capsules to expand your mart Mini Brands capsules sold seperately.
The Mini Brands leverage three trends that rival toy companies were already capitalizing on: collectibles, surprise unboxings of small toys, and nostalgia. Heavily branded children’s toys aren’t new. In 1994, Mattel released a Barbie McDonald’s Restaurant Set, complete “with talking drive-thru” and miniature menu boards. Around the same time, ride-on toy cars for children became popular, and BMW, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz wasted no time slapping their logos on plastic bonnets. Daniel Cook, a professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University and author of The Commodification of Childhood, says: “Consumerism has been a part of children’s lives for as long as there has been modern consumption,” roughly since the mid-1800s. He references Victorian artist Kate Greenaway’s picture books of the 1880s, which had a tie-in line of clothing for girls produced by Liberty of London. He also points to Campbell’s Soup’s range of dolls, first sold in 1909.
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Giant success: ‘I like how the boxes look real,’ says one young fan. Photograph: Saty + Pratha/The Observer There had been plenty of earlier examples of toy companies using supermarket products in kid’s playthings, said James Zahn, deputy editor of the Toy Book, and senior editor of the Pop Insider. We know the brand’s on fire, but we don’t want to just saturate the market,” she said. “We need to make sure we manage that very fine line around scarcity,” by placing special editions like the Gold Rush in select retailers for very limited time periods, she said.
Toy industry experts Silver and Zahn both expect the Mini Brands popularity to continue through this year and beyond.
Unbox, build and customise: Build up your mini mart including store front, shelves, cash register and accessories, then customize it by collecting more accessories in 5 Surprise Mini Brands capsules to expand your mart!
According to author Simon Garfield, humans have always been drawn to tiny things. In his 2018 book In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World, Garfield explains that minis both educate and excite us – “The miniature world embraces control,” he writes, arguing that children who play with miniatures get a taste of adult power. I can’t deny I’m entertained by my miniature groceries. I marvel as I compare the mini Dove to the real one. Yet as children’s toys, they are more concerning and you can’t help wondering where playtime ends and consuming begins. Mini Brands turned out to "have this incredibly emotive connection with people," said Zuru CEO Anna ... [+] Mowbray. Zuru Another advantage for Mini Brands, Zahn said, is that they don’t take up a lot of space. “A lot of people are space challenged today,” he said, “They want to collect things – its human nature – but they don’t have anywhere to put them.” Over Skype, seven-year-old Ava, from the west coast of America, plays with her Mini Brands and Shopkins. Her favourite Mini Brand is Bosco chocolate syrup, because she likes eating it in real life (she doesn’t like the strawberry syrup toy because she doesn’t like strawberry syrup). “I like how the boxes look real,” she says.Paul Solomon, CEO of Moose Toys, which makes Shopkins Real Littles (tiny versions of real products), says the range was inspired by a desire to make “things that kids can relate to and see in their everyday lives”. With the added advantage that it may well be on their own shopping list in a few years’ time. The key is constantly refreshing it,” Silver said. “Keeping it fresh to keep the consumer interested.”
Micro play is both a play pattern for kids and a collectible for adults,” Zahn said. “It taps into that same mentality like when dollhouses were so popular. People would craft these intricate miniatures that would fit into those worlds.” Surprise Mini Brands Mini Mart is the ultimate way to store and display your Mini Brands collection, by making your very own little shopping world. Zuru’s strategy, Mowbray said, will be to continue to offer limited editions, and to maintain the right balance of product availability and scarcity that drives collectors to collect.
Mini Fashion
Store and collect all your mini brands: What better way to display your collection of real minin brands than in a mini shopping world? There are two bottles of Dove body wash in my home, and they are nearly identical. They have the same distinctive curved shape and flip lid, the same label, the same Unilever trademark. They differ in just one crucial way. One is 22cm tall and is designed to be used in my bath. The other measures 5.5cm – about the size of my little finger – and is a children’s toy. Zuru’s twist on the food miniatures idea was to make exact replicas of the supermarket brands, down to the nutritional information and the bar codes. Zuru's miniature grocery store items have gone viral on Tik Tok, with videos featuring the toys ... [+] viewed more than 1.6 billion times. Zuru
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