Sky Dancers, Tiny Tears Dolls, and Gooey Alien Eggs are amongst the nostalgic toys ‘making a comeback’ for Christmas 2022, new research has revealed.

With Christmas just around the corner, Little Wishlist – an online gift registry for pregnancy, babies, and children – analysed search volume data to discover which nostalgic toys have either retained long-term popularity or are due to be popular (or making a comeback) for Christmas 2022, focusing on 50 key nostalgic toys from the last 100 years (ranging from those released back in the 1920s to launches from the early 2000s).

Focusing on the toys which had the most searches year to date (total between January to September 2022), the most popular toys overall included Lego, Pokémon cards, and Barbie, all showing long-term popularity sine their launches. With over five million searches this year so far, Lego came out on top, followed by Pokémon Cards (with almost 1.6 million – 1,593,000 – searches year to date) and Barbie (almost 860k – 859,500 – searches year to date).

Those which saw growth over the last 3-month period, listed from biggest increase, included:
Sky Dancers – 125% 3-month increase
Tiny Tears Doll – 83% 3-month increase
Play-Doh / Etch A Sketch – 50% 3-month increase
Monopoly / Scalextric / Weebles – 49% 3-month increase
Fashion Wheel – 48% 3-month increase
Gooey Alien Egg – 24% 3-month increase
Tonka Trucks – 23% 3-month increase
Lego / Beyblades / Tamagotchi / Hot Wheels / Polly Pocket / Care Bears / Furby / Mr Potato Head / Jenga / Bop It / Stretch Armstrong – 22% 3-month increase
Those which saw growth over the last 12-month period, listed from biggest increase, included:
Sky Dancers – 238% year-on-year increase
Gooey Alien Egg – 50% year-on-year increase
Tamagotchi / Pokémon Cards / Rubik’s Cube – 49% year-on-year increase
Tonka Trucks – 23% year-on-year increase
Tiny Tears Doll / Weebles / Lego / Care Bears / Mr Potato Head / Barbie / Transformers / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 22% year-on-year increase
At the other end of the scale, searches for frisbees and hula hoop toys saw the biggest 3-month drops in search volume. Similarly, My Little Pony, Sea Monkeys, and Pogs experienced the biggest 12-month (year-on-year) drops of all 50 toys analysed.

Julia Boullemier, founder of Little Wishlist, commented:

“With Christmas just around the corner, we wanted to discover which nostalgic toys were most likely to be popular (or making a comeback) for Christmas 2022. Little Wishlist allows you to set-up and manage a list of the gifts you’d love online – so you receive what you really need, with no double-ups, and your loved ones have the pleasure of knowing their gift will be put to good use”.