Toy Freight 101: How Logistics Brings Joy to the World
The holiday season has arrived, and that means presents! Specifically, the ones that you’ll commonly find under the tree from Santa, whether that’s building block sets, video games, a skateboard, dolls, or whatever! Children’s toys are a major priority for parents, many of whom cut back on their usual budgets before they consider scaling back on toys for the holidays. It’s certainly an important consideration for the holidays, especially for retailers. Many businesses plan ahead for the season, ensuring that they don’t sell out too easily or overstock on an item.
But the toys don’t just magically arrive on their own, unless you’re talking to a kid, in which case they absolutely do because Santa, of course! In this Toy Freight 101, we will look at the process of how a toy arrives at its destination. From the manufacturing plant to your front door, we take a look at the journey that toys take to make it to you!
The Design
Before anything even gets shipped, the toy has to first be made, and before it can even be made, it has to be thought of. The journey of a toy starts with many artists and designers collaborating and coming up with ideas of what a kid would want. Who’s the demographic? What kind of toy will it be? Is it fully electronic, a traditional toy, or a mix of both? What materials will be used to make it? All these questions and more are considered when making a new toy.
Traditionally, it would take a company 18 months to produce a toy from design to release. And it’s understandable why it would take so long, especially when a toy is complex or a toy company collaborates with other companies like Disney or Nintendo under their licensing agreements. Many of these toys have to be sketched, designed, and redesigned over and over until all parties approve the design. Some toys may even take longer to make because a company decides to forego financial risk and instead crowdsource money to make it, like for collectible figurines.
However, modern innovations, nearshoring, and reshoring have also changed the toy manufacturing landscape to allow for toys to be made faster, so the creation of a toy can wildly vary depending on the kind of toy you make and if you solely own the copyrights and trademarks or are collaborating with another company’s Intellectual Property (IP). So once the toy is designed and prototyped, and things like figuring out all of the tools and steps needed to create the toy are determined, you move on to the manufacturing stage!
The Creation
Once the toy has been approved, it’s time to start manufacturing. Every company has its own way of manufacturing its toys, many of which make models in-house to have a copy of what the final toy should look like. A lot of toy manufacturing happens worldwide, with the three biggest exporters of toys, sports equipment, and games being China, the U.S., and Germany.
Once the design is ready to produce, the toy company will send the designs and models to the manufacturing plant so they know what the toy should look like and how to produce it. Different types of materials dictate how the toy will be created. For example, if it’s made out of wood, a manufacturer will have the wood cut, carved, sanded, and painted until the piece is ready for the next step. Most modern toys are made of colored plastic and are typically molded or injection-molded.
Toys can also have decorations added , like stamping on shapes and designs with paint, adding fibers, beads, buttons, or adding many other kinds of accessories and decorations. You can watch this clip from How It’s Made where they make a toy dinosaur, or this clip from Miniland on how they manufacture some of their toys to better understand the manufacturing process. Once the toy is put together, they put it in its own packaging, which designers create as well, put them in large shipment boxes, and have them start their journey.
The Journey
Wrapped up and ready to go, these toys now need to get from point A to point B, requiring meticulous focus and tracking. Most of the time, toys are shipped from overseas from places like China, Vietnam, or Mexico. So, unless the toy is manufactured in the area where it will be sold, it will likely be shipped internationally. Expedited service and air freight are available options that will deliver the merchandise more quickly, with average times of 1 to 3 days for expedited shipping and 5 to 10 days for air freight. However, these services cost more, and most companies plan ahead to save on costs.
Thus, most companies usually go with ocean freight. With ocean freight, the product will be loaded into shipping containers designed to stack and fit on a cargo ship with other containers. Since ocean freight typically takes 20 to 45 days on average to arrive, the costs are much lower and more attractive for businesses to use.
Once the cargo has reached its delivery port, the containers will be inspected by port authorities and the business to ensure the product is safe and that the correct amount has been delivered. The cargo will then be unloaded into a truck, where it will be transported to a warehouse or facility for further processing. These facilities will take the toys that arrive at them, package them to where they need to go, like a store or a residence, and send them out by truck again.
For store delivery, the store will receive a large number of toys that they expect to sell. For home delivery, different stores collaborate with carriers, like UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc., to make that last-mile delivery on their behalf. Thus, the journey of the toy is now complete!
From computer to manufacturer to shipping and delivery, we can see that the journey of a toy is not an easy one. Dozens to hundreds and even thousands of people work together every day to create and bring the toys we love and cherish all around the world! These toys don’t just give kids a distraction for parents to focus on important tasks. They shape kids’ worlds and affect how they interact with themselves, each other, and the world at large! They are an important cultural touchstone for billions of kids, and it’s thanks to toy makers and freight that this joy continues to spread all around the world!
