The Elusive Tween: Here Today, Here Tomorrow?

NEW YORK—The single most concerning change in the toy industry in the past 10 years has been the desertion by tweens of toys. In the 1980s, kids as old as 13 and 14 enjoyed playing with action figures and dolls. Today, conventional wisdom advises that young teens have given up toys for video games and music.

Except for one thing: It is not entirely true.

The rallying cries of the marketing industry have been KGOY (kids growing older younger) and age compression. Kids are aspiring to be older; acting older, dressing older, playing older. The marketing industry followed kids to those realities in product and product appeal. Or, is it that the marketing industry has promoted kids to those behaviors? What do tweens really think, believe and want? There is a very real counterbalance to the popular mythology of the elusive tween toy audience—it comes from the kids themselves.

It is true that a very real evolution in kid behavior has prompted the new tween label. But it’s an adult construct and a marketing designation, not a moniker created, or even identified with, by kids. Kids don’t characterize themselves as tweens. Many of them have never even heard of the label; others resent the classification.

Nevertheless, tweens are a key market segment today. They are the “silver bullet” of kids marketing; the kid sweet spot for product development and marketing. Capture the hearts and mind of an 11-year-old girl or a 10-year-old boy and entire markets open up to your branded message.

Today’s tweens are aware, articulate and influential. This is the age where some of the brands they begin to use will stay with them for the long haul—from cradle to grave. So, product relevance to a tween can be pretty powerful stuff. Capture this life stage and a brand can capture a lifetime.

The tween phenomenon is a direct by-product of KGOY. Where traditional kids were once 6-12 years old, today’s youth step into traditional kid roles and play patterns starting at age 3. The 8-year-old who has been playing with action figures or dolls since he or she was 3 years of age, may be looking for something new. They’ve run the table on kid toys and role-play. So, they push the toys aside and look for entertainment that can provide a much bigger kick and offers ever more badge value to accompany their growing up.

Yet, they don’t abandon dolls and action figures. Tween “society” may suggest that it’s time to move on, but toys still play a very active and important role in tweens’ world-view. The difference is that playing with such items is now confined to the comforts of one’s own bedroom, not the mainstay of kids in public. They are now closet Barbie and GI Joe players. These toys still provide the comforts of youth, but they don’t deliver the badge of growing up.

Toy play is still a very active part of tween life. It’s just not the top-of-mind empowered part of their transitional lives. In new research—designed by KidShop, fielded by the KidzEyes Division of C&R Research, Chicago—we uncovered some very interesting truths among today’s tweens and toys. Ask them what excites them as far as activities go and toy play comes up very little. Ask them if they play with toys and to what extent, a startling reversal is demonstrated. They are actively involved in and committed to the world of toys.

We asked more than 900 tweens how they would characterize a perfect Saturday, and 60 percent cited some kind of media interface—playing video games, watching TV all day, watching movies or cartoons—as top of the activities list.

Next up was food. According to the tweens questioned, 50 percent wanted a favorite breakfast, to go out for lunch, dinner or pizza as components of the perfect Saturday, 42 percent want to go places, while 38 percent said they just wanted to rest or relax. Thirty-eight percent also said they wanted to do something with family or friends. Thirty-one percent cited outdoor activities as part of the perfect day. Only 4 percent wanted to play with games or toys.

When we asked tweens what they most like to do with their free time, the toy and game picture got brighter, but there are plenty of other activity “competitors” that score better.

Interestingly, the picture got way brighter when we asked the question: “On a typical weekday, how many hours do you spend playing with toys?” Eighty-four percent of boys and girls play with toys every day! Forty-nine percent play with toys more than an hour a day. Of that percentage, 54 percent are boys and 44 percent are girls.

The new data totally fly in the face of “conventional KGOY wisdom.” The presumption has been among tweens that with boys, toys are “over” and done—guys go to video games and outdoor activities. They’re inline skating, boarding and doing things little kids can’t—and most adults can’t either, for that matter.

Hand-eye coordination and athletic skill help define and fulfill this stage of life. For girls, it’s on to music and fashion, magazines and shopping. They become active players in the mall and influential in family shopping. The new activities are indeed part of the tween transition, but they haven’t left toys behind. Toys are still fun and they comfort and enable tweens to be kids.

There’s been a very real developmental epidemic in an earlier onset of puberty among young girls. Research is increasingly showing that this early onset of puberty is due to unbalanced diet and social pressures. If this is our new reality, it offers a significant dilemma for a Barbie-playing girl to start having to deal with her own emerging Barbie body.

Increasingly, 8- to 10-year-olds are physically maturing earlier. But they are nowhere near ready to take on the mantle of things adult. These discrepancies of biology may now be caused in part by new environmental pressures on the body. But, isn’t that what evolution has always been about? Now, even nature has wreaked havoc with the once immutable laws of child development. And, the implications of these changes are already far reaching in the dynamic of understanding and being responsive to today’s young people.

Puberty is a passage—so are the tween years. This is the lifestage where we see tall, mature young women alongside short, childish boys. The range of kid looks and maturity in the tween years is staggering. And, what about the boys? They seem almost neglected in the tween space. Their puberty time clock has not changed. Today’s increasingly integrated girl is stepping into new roles and relationships.

Today’s boys are locked in the same-old, same-old of macho values, sports, action play and fantasy. But beyond video games and skateboards, there is a whole new menu of recreation and identity-building products and provinces for the in-between young boy.

Tweens are indeed today’s kid influentials, the “sweet spot” in the kid marketing mix. Today’s tween is not in a hurry to leave behind “kid-dom” to take on the teen mantle as some marketers may presume. “Closet” toy play is a great indicator that the toy industry has bought the hype of time compression and abandoned kids who want new, fresh, kid play that they can take into public.

There is a great opportunity to celebrate kid play and innovate with products that are tween cool, yet kid-centered. The elusive tween market is out there and is ready to be embraced both in product and in advertising.