Toy Makers Pivot to Adults as Housing Costs Delay Traditional Milestones

Toy companies are quietly restructuring their businesses around a new core customer: adults with disposable income and deferred life milestones. The shift goes well beyond nostalgic marketing. Hasbro, Mattel and a wave of specialty manufacturers now design product lines, packaging and retail formats specifically for buyers in their 30s and 40s who collect, display and trade rather than play.

The economics are blunt. The median first-time U.S. homebuyer reached 40 years old in 2024, the highest on record, while first-time buyers fell to just 21% of purchases, according to the National Association of Realtors. Bank of America card data shows Americans aged 35 to 44 — older millennials — spend more per customer on hobbies than any other generation, averaging over twice the per-customer outlay of Gen Z in the three months through August. Overall hobby spending rose 7.9% year-over-year that month, more than double the 3.4% transaction growth.

“Older millennials seem to have more in common with younger Gen Xers than they do with Gen Z or even younger millennials,” Bank of America Institute economist Joe Wadford told Fortune. The data cannot separate spending on themselves from spending on children, but BofA says it likely reflects both.

Blind boxes — sealed packages with randomized contents — have become the category’s highest-margin engine. Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z and millennials bought a blind box or mystery box for themselves in the past year, compared with 16% of Gen X and boomers, according to a Harris Poll survey of 2,158 U.S. adults conducted June 25–27. The format mimics slot-machine mechanics: low unit cost, variable reward, high repeat purchase. “It’s like a fun, physical lotto ticket that you can buy and then play with and then display,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll.

Retail is following the margin. Claw-machine stores with 20 to 30 machines on a single floor have opened in New York, Los Angeles and other major cities, Rodney said. Customers pay roughly $70 for 20 minutes of play. The model converts foot traffic into high-velocity, low-inventory transactions — essentially arcade economics applied to collectibles.

Boston Consulting Group estimates “location-based entertainment,” the category spanning theme parks and immersive venues, generates $3.47 in revenue per hour of consumer time — about nine times video’s 39 cents. BCG global sector leader for media Ernesto Pagano said consumers regret time spent on social media and gaming but not on physical experiences. “What you find is they don’t regret the experiences,” he told Fortune.

A separate Harris survey for printing company Quad, released Oct. 14, found 68% of Americans collect at least one type of physical item. Toys and figures (26%) and trading cards (22%) ranked among the top categories. Nostalgia was the leading driver at 46%. Among millennials, 87% say they feel more emotionally connected to a brand when it taps childhood memories, and 86% appreciate adult versions of things they loved as kids.

The stigma has largely dissolved. The 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin made an action-figure collection the punchline; today, 49% of Americans and 60% of millennials say they sometimes feel judged for childish interests, but only 12% say embarrassment stops them from spending more. University of Copenhagen criminologist Keith Hayward argued in his 2024 book Infantilised that Western culture has stopped people from growing up. Rodney rejected the premise: “There’s just so many more ways to adult in this world than we’ve ever imagined.”

Affordability now shapes the category. Fifty-one percent of millennials told Harris they would rather spend on kidult things than save the money. Among all who play, 46% said affordability makes them more likely to buy, second only to relaxation. Fifty-three percent of Gen Z and millennials would rather do kidult activities than go out for drinks. “I think a lot of this money is being redirected from bars and other things into play,” Rodney said.