Are you curious about how COVID-19 might impact toy sales this Christmas and beyond? Whether you're a corporate toy professional or an independent toy-preneur, this is the episode for you. To kick off today’s conversation, we jump into a year review of the impact that COVID-19, stay at home orders, remote learning, and working all made on the toy industry. The Toy Coach highlights the top growing toy categories and the reason they experienced double-digit growth. Get ready to dive into a really important conversation on what the toy industry needs to do to hold onto the growth gained this year.

Currently, the People of Play Young Inventors Challenge is in full swing. Kids from all over have submitted their toy inventions and game ideas for a chance to be named Young Inventor of The Year. Which makes this week the perfect week to celebrate young inventors. And what better way to do that than to have my first kid inventor on the podcast? I have two guests today, kid inventor Sebastian Flores, and his supportive mompreneur Melanie Flores, the creators of the patented line of greeting cards, OctoGifts. Octo Gifts offers DIY, 3 dimensional, functional greeting cards that dispense candy.

When you are creating your toy, you want to make sure it is safe for everyone and that it follows all regulations. This can be a bit complicated for who's beginning and even for more experienced toy veterans. Bill Baxter will walk us through everything you need to pay attention to when creating your toy.

In today's episode, I will explain everything about THE event that is known for connecting inventors to pitch their toy ideas to large and small toy companies. People of Play, formerly known as CHITAG, is a weeklong toy fair for industry inventors, manufacturers, and it’s open to the public. With 2020 knocking out all hopes for an in-person fair this year, the CHITAG group, put together a massive innovation summit dubbed People of Play week. This event is designed to keep inventors and toy professionals up to date with the latest in the industry via daily virtual conferences, as well as connect them to plan meetings and pitch ideas much like the original in-person show.