Cost of living: Will parents spend less on kids' toys?

Ria Painter-Coates was once a technical illustrator, drawing the assembly instructions for flat-pack furniture. Now, her talents are put to better use designing unusual animal cards and colouring books for children.

Her card games and unexpected facts about the natural world are a lot more fun than a visual guide to building a wardrobe.

But this home-schooling mother-of-two understands that even toys can bring frustration for parents, not least owing to the cost. So she tries to sell her products for no more than £15.

"When you home educate your kids, you have to buy your own resources," she says. "I did not want these to be too expensive for any parents."

Her business - called Button and Squirt after her children's nicknames - is a one-woman operation. She draws all the animals featured on the cards, and researches the facts that accompany them.

These are not your typical household pets. Flicking through a pack of cards at London's Toy Fair trade show, she picks out the cockeyed squid, and the panda ant - which is neither a panda nor an ant, but actually a species of wasp found in South America.

The sting in the tail for Mrs Painter-Coates has been getting such a business off the ground during a pandemic, it's been tough.

Now, even though shops are open again, there is the subsequent challenge of a cost of living crisis facing her customers. By keeping her prices low, she hopes to overcome that too.

Evidence shows that even during times of economic turmoil in the past, the toy sector has come through relatively unscathed in terms of sales. Parents and grandparents will reduce their spending on lots of other things before cutting back on birthday or Christmas presents for their youngsters.

The universal squeeze on household budgets caused primarily by rising energy bills is likely to put that theory to the test this year, given that UK toy sales have already recorded a 3% year-on-year drop.

So far, parents have been more concerned about product quality than affordability, according to data from The Insights Family, which conducts regular surveys of children and parents.

Nazneen Yasin, founder of Fabula Toys, which makes inclusive pre-school products based on nursery rhymes, says: "Most parents are looking for a good reason to buy, not just something colourful and bright that will just go to the back of a toy box after a week."

Children tend to want to open a lot of smaller presents, data from The Insights Family show, even though bicycles and games consoles are high up on kids' wish lists.

A stroll around the numerous stands at the Toy Fair in London's Olympia suggests toymakers are keen to land successes with big-ticket, relatively high cost items.

Of the 23 "hero toys" selected by the show's organisers - the British Toy and Hobby Association - only one had a retail price of less than £14.99.

Yet, when asked which items on his display were the most popular, Toy Fair exhibitor Jon Sumner points to a £1.99 erasable pen.

Mr Sumner, from Pen Paper Gift Limited - a small business with three full-time members of staff, says it will be interesting to see whether lower-priced items benefit when the cost of household bills really starts to bite.

Smaller, impulse buys dropped at the height of the pandemic when shops were closed but were rising again by the end of 2021, according to The Insights Family's data.

Among those to benefit are Panini - the sticker collection company - which had a bumper summer thanks to the men's England football team's run to the final of the Euro championships.

A packet of stickers costs 70p and, being sold in supermarkets and newsagents, are often bought on a parental whim.

"They are the most inexpensive memorabilia if a home nation does well in a major tournament," says Lewi Hillier, sales director at Click Distribution, which has an exclusive distribution deal with Panini.

Of course, low-cost items are not necessarily more affordable if you end up buying a lot of them, and he says that many collectors - including adults - choose bulk purchases to keep the price of completing a whole album down.

With the next men's football World Cup coming next winter, some of those albums may well go unfinished as parents save hard for Christmas instead, at a time when family finances will be under significant pressure.