Corporate Financier's Notes

The Lookout

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3 NOVEMBER 2026

Childhood calling? Perhaps not

New research complicates the usual explanation for a demographic shift big enough to more than double adults’ share of European toy spending in a decade.

This isn't the usual Thursday note. The Lookout lands on a Tuesday instead, roughly once a month — a slower companion to CFN that reads the research nobody has time for and asks what it means for where money might actually be made next, without naming the fish. This first one is free, and it's a test. If you want the next one, there's a link for that at the end.

Why Now

A decade ago, adults accounted for just 9% of toy spending across Europe's five biggest markets. Last year, that share had more than doubled.

THE ECONOMIST / FEBRUARY 2026

This is not a story about one viral toy. It is a demographic shift large enough that market-research firms now track it as its own category. New academic research says the usual explanation for it — adults chasing their own childhoods — is not quite right.

The Evidence

“Kidults” is the industry's word for adults who buy toys and collectibles for themselves, not for a child in their life. It is not a fringe habit anymore. Circana, the retail data firm the industry uses to track itself, now reports it as a distinct, growing category rather than a footnote.

Across the EU5 (Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy) the toy market for teens and adults reached €4.5 billion in 2023, or 28.5% of the region's entire toy market. This is a broader slice than The Economist's over-18s-only number above, but shares the same trajectory. In the US, Circana recorded an 18% rise in sales to over-18s in the first half of 2025 alone. That cohort accounted for 19% of the entire US toy industry's sales over the period.

Within the adult toys category, soft toys specifically have been the standout. The global soft-toy market was worth almost $12 billion in 2023 and is forecast to grow 8% a year to 2030. The UK market alone has been up roughly 58% since 2021 (The Economist, Jan 2025).

Why adults, and why now? A 2025 study in the Journal of Business Strategies surveyed 210 American adults, split evenly between older consumers (Baby Boomers and Generation X) and younger ones (Millennials and Generation Z), to test a common assumption: that younger adults buy toys because they are more nostalgic for their own childhoods. That assumption did not hold up. Personal nostalgia — fond feelings about one's own younger years — showed no statistically significant difference between the two age groups. Both scored it highly.

What did differ, significantly, was something else: “historical nostalgia” — longing for an era before you were even born — and a willingness to self-identify as a “kidult” at all. Younger consumers scored meaningfully higher on both. All age groups were missing their own childhoods equally. But it is younger adults who are embracing nostalgia for periods they never lived through. And being more comfortable naming the habit out loud.

Katriina Heljakka, who studies adult play at Tampere and Turku universities, argues that adults who buy themselves toys “are not regressing into childhood but redefining adulthood”. They are driven by a need for “wow and wonder” that persists through life (The Economist, Feb 2026). The stigma that once made admitting to a toy purchase as an adult feel embarrassing has retreated furthest among the young, which is exactly the cohort the research says is both more drawn to eras it never lived through, and most willing to say so out loud.

The market evidence lines up with the research. LEGO built a dedicated adult product line back in 2020, long before “kidult” was an industry term. Its FY2025 results show consumer sales up 16% — more than double the broader toy market's growth, with adult sets now roughly 15% of its portfolio. Jellycat — a London plush toy maker with nothing in common with LEGO except the buyer — posted £200 million in revenue for 2023, up 37%, with U.S. sales growing 41% against 2% growth for the general stuffed-animal category, according to Fortune. By October 2025, CNBC reported Jellycat's revenue had surged a further 66% to £333 million, with pre-tax profit more than doubling to £139 million.

The pattern shows up well outside soft toys and bricks, too. Games Workshop, the British maker of the Warhammer tabletop game, has seen its share price rise roughly 3,000% since 2016 on the back of adult hobbyist demand. This is what the Financial Times has called a “Warhammer economy” of painters, coaches and tournament players built around it.

None of this rests on one company, or one country. A Finnish academic's survey data, a British plush-toy maker's accounts, and a tabletop war game's decade-long stock run aren't telling the same story by coincidence — they're measuring the same shift from different angles, in different markets, using different methods.

What to Expect

Expect more of this, and expect it to compound. The research suggests the pipeline gets fuller, not thinner. Younger cohorts already self-identify as kidults at higher rates than the adults who came before them. So the buyer base grows as they age into more spending power, not a one-generation spike. The next confirmation is more likely to be another quiet, legacy brand formalising an adult line than another viral character. Watch for that pattern, not for whichever name is trending this month.

Where to Fish

It is neither LEGO nor Jellycat specifically, but the pattern they illustrate. The products are built to be displayed as much as played with. The packaging and pricing assume a buyer with real discretionary income, not a parent on a budget. Three places that pattern points to, beyond the companies already named:

Heritage brands sitting on unused nostalgia. Any company with a decades-old back catalogue — toys, games, even defunct media franchises — has raw material for exactly the “historical nostalgia” effect the research describes, whether it's touched that material yet or not. Watch for owners and licensors of old IP quietly relaunching dormant lines for an adult buyer, the way LEGO built an adult range in 2020, years before “kidult” was a word anyone used.

The packaging and display layer, not just the product. If adults are buying to display as much as to play, the companies making premium packaging, display cases and boutique retail fixtures for collectibles are a second-order bet on the same shift. This one does not require guessing which character or toy line actually wins.

The ecosystem around hobbyist communities. Games Workshop's “Warhammer economy” is as much about painters, coaches and tournament organisers as it is about the miniatures. The same pattern shows up wherever adult hobbyists cluster — specialty tools and materials, events, authentication and resale platforms for collectibles. Status and community keep people spending well after the first purchase.

Meanwhile, it is worth pondering which European toy, hobby, or gift manufacturers have not made this pivot yet. And what happens to the ones that do not.

Is there an era you never actually lived through that you still feel drawn to — and would you call yourself a “kidult” about anything, if someone asked you outright?

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The Lookout is educational and informational only. It describes trends and research and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Views are personal.