Toy town: Hong Kong’s toy makers seek wider recognition

Your kids may believe that the toys they received this Christmas came from Santa, but toy industry veteran C K Yeung knows differently.

 

While production takes place in Chinese factories, he says it is Hong Kong that is responsible for the action figures, dolls and remote-controlled cars placed under Christmas trees the world over.

“We are the major source of the world’s toys,” says Mr Yeung, the executive vice president of the Toy Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong.

“Seventy percent of global toy products are made by Hong Kong-run companies.”

But despite employing hundreds of thousands of workers and shipping millions of products worldwide, the industry has remained firmly in the shadows of the big-name brands for which it manufactures.

Mr Yeung hopes a new exhibition he has organised at the Hong Kong Design Institute of more than 1,000 Hong Kong-made toys will showcase the former British territory’s toy making roots and may eventually lead to a permanent museum.

From Cabbage Patch Kids to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers and Barbie dolls, Hong Kong companies have been behind most of the world’s hottest toy crazes.

But with kids turning to non-traditional playthings such as video games, computers, music and cosmetics at younger ages, some say toy manufacturing may be a sunset industry.

That is something that Mr Yeung can’t bring himself to agree with.

“As long as there are kids, they will need toys to play with.”

 

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