Collections & Our Stores Sign up for our emailsLego Says 2015 Was Its ‘Best Year Ever,’ With Huge Sales JumpLego Group reported astounding revenue growth for 2015, up 25% from the prior year as it estimated the company's popular construction sets and toys reached an estimated 100 million children.The strong performance built upon years of success as the Danish-based toy maker has cultivated a very loyal following by selling a mix of traditional Lego sets and licensed properties linked to Star Wars, The Avengers, Batman and other popular franchises. Lego's results also extended a strong sales jump in 2014, when toy sales were up 13% as results were greatly boosted by the company's first major motion picture film, "The Lego Movie.""This has been the best year ever for the Lego Group," Lego Chief Executive Jørgen Vig Knudstorp told analysts during a video presentation. Vig Knudstorp was so enthusiastic about the results that he leaped into the air in front of the press, saying "If I could sing and dance, I should be singing and dancing because it is a fantastic number of results."
Lego's growth has been astonishing. It reported annual sales of about $2.3 billion in 2010 and just five years later, reported revenue of about $5.2 billion (those figures were converted from the Danish krone).What's fueling the growth? Parents are putting greater emphasis on toys that inspire learning, especially under the umbrella of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Lego has also benefited from blockbuster films like the latest Star Wars, as well as a greater push to address the girls' market.But also notably, Lego can't yet claim the title of world's largest toy maker. Barbie and Hot Wheels maker Mattel (mat) is still larger, with $5.7 billion in revenue for 2015. Mattel's sales have faced challenges however, dropping 5% last year. Transformers and My Little Pony owner Hasbro (has) ranks third in the toy aisle, with $4.45 billion in revenue.The toy industry is in a period of strength as it benefits from big sales from two hot Walt Disney (dis) properties: "Frozen," a princess-themed movie that drove demand in 2014 and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which lifted sales late in 2015 and should be a strong tailwind for this year as well.
Bikes, Scooters + Ride On's Dress Up + Imagination Kids Sofas + Sleepover Preschool + Baby Toys Vehicles + Remote Control Toys Hamsters In A House Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 - 3 years 4 - 5 years 5 - 8 years 9 - 11 years 4 stars or above 3 stars or above 2 stars or above 1 star or above Let your imagination run wild with the huge range of exciting toys at Target. Our toy department is one of the biggest in Australia with plenty of fun, creative and educational toys. You'll find toys for every age group, from babies all the way through to primary school age and up. SHOP BY AGE BABY PRESCHOOL 5-8YEARS 9-11YEARS 12+YEARS Page 1 of 31 Fisher-Price L&L Learn to Dress Sis Bright Beats Bat & Boogie Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Percy Small Rated 5 out of 5 stars Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Thomas Small Bunch O Balloons Splat Bat Disney Princess Splash Surprise Ariel
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LEGO® Technic Power Functions Air Race Jet 42066You might never have really thought about it as a kid, but the toys and Collectible cards of your childhood might be worth more today - a lot more, considering the internet's viral reaction to a collector finding an ultra-valuable Magic card last week. Here's 11 Cards and Figures that are worth a pretty penny today. Header Image: Kenner's infamous 'Early Bird Certificate' Package for their new Star Wars toys released for Christmas 1977. Photo by D. Martin Myatt for Rebel Scum. As a precursor to this list, I'll note that I've not included Sports trading cards here, as they're a whole other ball game (ba-dum-tish) - there's some amazingly pricey cards out there envied by collectors the world over, from $100,000 Rookie Michael Jordan cards, to the famous T206 Honus Wagner card worth a whopping $2.8 million. They make a lot of the toys and cards here look like chump change, despite their plentiful worth. So that aside, let's take a look shall we?
Ah, the infamous Boba Fett. This figure's taken on a huge cult status amongst Star Wars figure fans thanks to its rarity - Kenner's plan to release the figure with the advertised firing Rocket jetpack (originally part of a mail-away offer ahead of The Empire Strikes Back) were quickly scuppered as the figure went into production with a spate of incidents where children were being injured by spring-loaded projectiles in toys. Fearing a backlash, Kenner hastily recalled as many firing Fetts as they could and replaced him with an alternate where the rocket was glued into the backpack.As such, this Boba Fett figure is now extremely rare - only a few are still out in the wild (despite Kenner's attempts to deny they ever made one) amongst painted an unpainted prototypes that feature the L-Shaped firing mechanism. A rocket firing figure, depending on the condition, can fetch anywhere between $5-10,000 or even higher - a prototype sold on eBay a year ago for $22,000. In what was in hindsight an incredible devious move by Blizzard and Cryptozoic, World of Warcraft's Trading Card Game came with 'loot cards' in each set - cards that you could use as normal cards in the game, but which had a code for an in-game item, usually a vanity cosmetic pet or an effect to put on your character.
Some however, came with one of the most coveted items you can get - an in-game mount. The most prized mount from the TCG was the Swift Spectral Tiger, which came in the Fires of Outland series - already incredibly rare for a Loot card, but now even rarer thanks to the fact that the TCG is out of print. Players desperate for such a unique mount whipped up a frenzy to get an unscratched card, and although the value has lowered since the height of its popularity, an unused card can still net you a whopping $700. At first you might think that it's odd for Captain America and Iron Man minifigures to be so rare since there's been dozens of them across a variety of Lego sets in recent years - but these specific figures are definitely rarer than the average Lego figure. The two figures were from Lego's New York Toy Fair preview in 2012, a teaser for the their upcoming line of Lego Marvel Superheroes sets they'd revealed at SDCC 2011. Two things make these figures stand out against the 'normal' Cap and Iron man figures: They were prototypes based on the then-current comic book designs for the characters rather than the movie incarnations, but secondly Iron Man's head.
It's unique as Lego chose against printing the helmet on a normal Lego figure head for production, instead creating an openable helmet that slotted over the usual head (which reveals the smirking face of Tony Stark underneath it now). As such, combined with the popularity of Lego Marvel figures, these two command a lofty price of anywhere between $1000 to $1,500 if they come with the Toy fair pass and bag they originally came with. The first ever run of Pokémon Cards has a bunch of valuable items in it, but one of the most coveted is the first ever Shiny Charizard found in Edition 1 - and even rarer than that, a version of the card that is 'shadowless' - where the main image of the Pokémon was not accompanied by a shadowed bevel.Depending on the condition, the price can vary wildly - an ungraded, non-mint card can still fetch around $60, but Max-graded minted versions of the Shadowless Charizard can sell for up to $3,000. This prototype toy from LJN's Thundercats line never made it to market - the bubble-blowing effect they had planned was considered infeasible for mass production - but several prototyped designs have gotten their way into Collector's hands over the years as a holy grail for Thundercats fans.
Prototypes themselves are extremely hard to come by - they're so popular that even custom made version of the toy from the original molds can sell for roughly $800. That's a lot even for a reproduction! The very first Garbage Pail Kids series of cards commands a pretty decent price these days, thanks to a recent resurgence in the franchise and a reprint of the originals a few years ago - sparked by an Adam Bomb Card going for almost $5000 in 2012. Although the card's value has since dropped, a full set of the original series can still go for anywhere between $200 and $800 dollars. Okay, so I said we wouldn't do sports cards, but sports figures totally count, right? The above pictured Babe Ruth from McFarlane's 'Sports Picks' series isn't a rare one - the rare is a variant version of the figure with a blue hat. Only 5 were ever produced: 2 stayed in McFarlane's archives, and 3 went into random retail packs of the figures. When one finally appeared on eBay, it sold for $13,600.
The Black Lotus returns! The Lotus card appeared in two different series of Magic: The Gathering - the first limited edition Alpha, like the card that rustled everyone's jimmies last week (also seen above), but also the Beta. Although not worth as much as some highly graded Alpha Lotuses, the Beta Black Lotus can still demand a pretty good price - around $5,000 even for a middle-of-the-road PSA grading. Perfect 10-graded card can be worth a huge amount though, as Pristine Comics tried to find out last week as well, putting a BGS-10 Black Lotus up for sale at $100,000. Okay, so this one is impossible to find as it's a one of a kind, but it earns a place on the list for still being one of the rarest and highest valued toys of all time: The first ever G.I. Joe doll. Don Levine, the man behind the legendary action figure, hand sculpted the prototype (which looks vaguely like Sean Connery, if you ask me) before the doll went into production and on sale in 1964. Since then, Joe's been updated and updated to match current Army standards over the years, but this one of a kind original still commands huge value: it sold for $200,000 at auction in 2003, making it the most expensive figure in the world at the time.
From the rarest figure, to the rarest Pokémon card! The Pikachu Illustrator card made news last year when one appeared on eBay, an incredibly rare occurence. Made for a CoroCoro promotion in Japan in the very early days of the TCG, the Illustrator card was a prize given to winners in a Pokémon card art contest (alongside getting a Pokémon card with your art printed in a series), only 6 were believed to exist. The graded card on eBay went unsold for a long time, before eventually selling for under the $90,000 askin price, but even ungraded version of the card have sold for $20,000 thanks to its extreme rarity. We started this list with Star Wars, let's end it with it too - there's plenty of highly valued figures in Kenner's original wave of figures, but perhaps no so much as the very first Darth Vader figure. The earliest figures of Luke, Obi-Wan and Vader all had built in 'extending lightsabers' as a feature - kids could slide a lever in the figure's wrist to pop out the full lightsaber, like the blade was igniting as it did in the movies.