The Newest Play In Toys

The toy industry is waking up to a potential goldmine niche market – playthings for golden agers.

Toy companies from the largest to the smallest are realizing the potential for games that help older people socialize, and strengthen their cognitive abilities.

The trend, dubbed eldertainment, is being fueled in part by social media posts showing games being used to connect grandparents and grandchildren, or to help dementia and assisted living residents stay engaged.

HasbroHAS recently announced a partnership with Ageless Innovation, one of the pioneers in the older adult space, to release new versions of Hasbro’s classic Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and The Game of Life board games to make them more senior-friendly and to encourage intergenerational play.

Educational Insights, a 61-year-old company that specializes in “learning through play” toys for preschoolers, began noticing about a year ago that it was seeing thousands of reviews on AmazonAMZN for one of its memory games, Brain Bolt, touting its benefits for older loved ones.

Viral Brain Challenge

Another Educational Insights game, the Kanoodle puzzle game, has become a viral brain challenge on TikTok, with over 1 billion TikTok views since 2022. That led to Educational Insights recently becoming the first toy brand to launch a store on TikTok.

With 10,000 Americans turning 65 every day, and the elderly population on pace to outnumber kids, toy manufacturers and toy retailers need to position themselves to serve the entire family, from babies to seniors, James Zahn, editor-in-chief of The Toy Book, a leading toy industry trade publication, said in an interview.

“There was this market that was right in front of the industry forever that was not being acknowledged – it was sort of hidden in plain sight – and that was the older audience,” Zahn said.

Baby boomers changed the toy industry in the 1950s and 1960s with their great numbers, cementing the success of many classic toys. “Now they are grandparents and they’re looking for ways to connect with the new generations in their family,” Zahn said.

Eldertainment is natural extension of efforts by the toy industry to make play more inclusive, Jennifer Lynch, Content Developer and Toy Trends Specialist for industry group The Toy Association said in an interview. There is a new emphasis in the industry, Lynch said, on the importance of play for all ages, and on “using play as a tool to support our mental and physical well-being at any age,” Lynch said.

Promoting multigenerational play is one of the goals of the Ageless Innovation and Hasbro partnership announced in May. Ageless Innovation, which has won the license to adapt classic Hasbro games for older adults, is preparing to release The Game of Life: Generations, and Trivial Pursuit Generations. Both of the adapted games let players pick the generation they want to play, from the Greatest Generation to Gen Z, with references to their generation in the game play.

Ageless Innovation started in 2015 as a division of Hasbro tasked with finding new markets and channels for Hasbro properties. It was spun off into a separate company in 2018. It created the Joy For All Companion Pets line of robotic toy dogs, cats, and birds that have been used widely with elderly dementia patients. In October it announced its 500,000 “adoption” of a Joy For All pet toy.

Ted Fischer, co-founder and CEO or Ageless Innovation, who was part of the original Ageless Innovation team at Hasbro, said in an interview that back in 2015 the older adult market wasn’t something toymakers thought much about. That has changed dramatically, and not just in the toy category, he said.

“The number of entrepreneurs and innovators that are trying to create great products and services for older adults and their families is 10 times what it was 8 years ago,” Fischer said.

Investor Interest In Aging Market

In 2015, an aging conference Fischer attended attracted only one private equity group with a fund specifically focused on older adults, he said.

This month, at the same conference, there were 20 to 30 such investment groups “who had really dedicated focus on this space,” he said.

With the Hasbro collaboration, Ageless Innovation has adapted Scrabble into a set that includes three senior-friendly ways to play the word game: a Classic Scrabble set with redesigned tiles that are easier to grasp and to see; Scrabble Pass, a fast-play version of the game; and Scrabble Bingo, where a bag of tiles is passed from player to player to see who can be the first to make a word.

The new Scrabble games, as well as the new versions of The Game of Life and Trivial Pursuit, are designed to provide “a range of ways people can play them, with a range of cognitive abilities,” Fischer said.

In researching the needs of older adults “two things we heard unequivocally was that older adults wanted more play in their lives, and that there was a huge need for interactive companionship because there was such an incredible epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” he said.

Ageless Innovation plans to release three to five new versions of Hasbro games per year, Fischer said. The first games in the collaboration – the Scrabble, The Game of Life and Trivial Pursuit adaptations – are expected to be available starting in August.

In the September, in timing with National Grandparents Day, Ageless Innovation will be promoting a campaign to encourage people to play with the older adults in their lives, with events nationwide, in cooperation with long-term care providers and state agencies.

Brain Game Popularity

Educational Insights, which has seen its Brain Bolt, Kanoodle, and other playthings resonate with older adults, had been using the phrase “for ages 7 to 107” on its packaging for years, but has only recently realized the extent of the popularity of is products with older adults and their caregivers.

“The whole idea of 7 to 107 started off as a silly play on numbers, but now it’s really serious,” said Lee Parkhurst, Senior Marketing Manager at Educational Insights in an interview. “We have octogenarians reaching out to us about our games.”

Educational Insights, Parkhurst said, began seeing reviews and social media comments from people saying that they had bought Brain Bolt or Kanoodle for their children, and now were playing with it themselves, or passing it along to the grandparents.

“Our customer – who’s generally the mom – that mom now is looking to us not just to support her kids, but also to see how she can support her parents and the aging community,” Parkhurst said.

Educational Insights is working on developing new games with older adults in mind, and is seeking partnerships in the elder care community, he said. It also is looking at how it can reposition some of its existing best sellers and award winning children’s toys for older adults.

Untapped ‘Wild West’ Market

Lynch of the Toy Association said the association has not yet estimated the potential size of the eldertainment market but it is expected to be significant. The NPD Group (now Circana) reported last year that toys purchased by or for kidults – persons 12 years or older – accounted for one-fourth of all U.S. toy sales, or around $9 billion annually.

“Now that we have a few players that are being successful in this space you can expect others are going to join them,” said the Toy Book’s Zahn. He said he expects new offering in the category will surface at the upcoming Toy Fair in the fall.

“Essentially this is just an untapped Wild West market that no one knows how much money is there to capture,” he said.

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