Movies fuel $20 billion toy industry

Three giant yellow minions were bobbing to and fro at the New York Toy Fair last week, posing for photos with children in a showy promotion tied to the next iteration of Despicable Me.

Minion dolls and plush toys sat on display next to singing minions and mystery minion packs. Children cheerily bashed remote-controlled minions into one another on the floor.

It's the biggest line of 'Despicable Me” toys yet, hitting stores alongside the third installment of the animated series. Elsewhere in the room, Universal Pictures showed off the rest of its toy lineup, such as its 'Fast & Furious” cars and action figures, 'The Mummy” figurines, and colorful 'Trolls” with blazing hair.

A typical year sees seven or eight movies with toy tie-ins. This year there are about 25, an unprecedented number for the $20 billion toy industry.

'This is the studios leading the charge,” said Jim Silver, a toy industry veteran who runs the website Time to Play. 'Making movies that are family-oriented - that kids want to play out at home - (is) becoming a major revenue stream.”

Once, the Walt Disney Co. was the champion of fashioning playthings from films, squeezing dollars out of lucrative such franchises as Disney Princesses, Marvel and now 'Star Wars.” Its Pixar movies have long done well with toys. Now Warner Bros., Universal, Fox, and others are jumping on board.

The barrage of licensed toys this year is such that the Toy Industry Association added 'movie mania” as one of its 2017 trends, a list of industry-defining topics it releases every year during toy fair.