Edited on Jun 17, 2026.
The hot-toy of the holidays still matters — but the bigger story is the retailer fight to own the toy aisle. Toys "R" Us is gone. Mass-merchant chains, online players, and a small group of specialty retailers carved up what was left. Today, a few names control where America buys the doll, the LEGO set, the Switch console, and the viral plush of the season.
Who actually sells the toys now
Amazon is the dominant U.S. toy retailer. Holiday toy guides, "frequently bought together" feeds, the printed Amazon Toy Catalog distributed at Whole Foods stores, and Prime two-day delivery on the panic-buy. Amazon owns the back-half of December.
Walmart is the discount toy floor and the year-round anchor. The annual Walmart Top Toys list is a programmed PR event. Walmart's exclusive SKUs with Mattel, Hasbro, Spin Master, and MGA Entertainment lock the chain into the must-have launches.
Target owns the design-and-experience play. Bullseye's Top Toys list, dedicated holiday aisles, and exclusive lines with LEGO, Disney, Bluey, and Squishmallows put Target in front of the millennial-parent shopper Walmart has historically lost.
Costco moves the bulk-and-bundle. The $99 LEGO bundle, the multi-pack Hot Wheels case, the boxed Switch console with extra controller — Costco wins the parent who came for paper towels and left with the holiday gift.
Sam's Club takes the same Costco play with Walmart-tier pricing.
Five Below owns the stocking-stuffer and the tween category. Squishmallow seconds, mini LEGO, gel pens, fidget toys, $5 plushies. The most-trafficked tween aisle in the country during November and December.
Barnes & Noble has quietly become a serious toy retailer — puzzles, board games, Pokémon, sensory toys, educational kits. Holiday foot traffic spikes hard.
GameStop still anchors the console buy — the Switch, the Switch 2, PS5, Xbox — plus trading cards (Pokémon, Magic, sports) that have become as important to the chain as the console business.
Build-A-Bear, The LEGO Store, American Girl, and Disney Store hold the experiential and licensed-exclusive corners.
Specialty chains — Camp NYC, Mastermind Toys, Learning Express, and regional independents — own the gift-wrap-included, "I want help picking it" parent.
The DTC brands — KiwiCo (subscription STEM), Lovevery (early childhood subscription), Magna-Tiles, Slumberkins — now ship directly and skip retail entirely on a meaningful share of revenue.
What's actually selling in 2026
The toy mix has shifted toward fewer, bigger franchises and a long tail of viral plush and collectible:
- LEGO across Star Wars, Harry Potter, Disney, and adult-targeted Icons sets — still the single most-purchased toy brand in America.
- Pokémon trading cards — a permanent fixture of the toy aisle and a cross-generation collectible business.
- Squishmallows from Jazwares — the plush category that survived the post-2023 cooldown and held its shelf space.
- Bluey licensed toys — the dominant preschool franchise across Mattel, Moose Toys, and Build-A-Bear collabs.
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 — the gift console of the era.
- Hot Wheels and Barbie from Mattel, riding the Greta Gerwig and Mattel-cinematic-universe halo.
- Magic Mixies, Bitzee, Furby — the interactive-creature category that replaces Fingerlings and Hatchimals from the prior cycle.
- Pop Mart Labubu, Sonny Angel, and the broader collectible-figure wave — the segment that ate adult discretionary spend in the last 24 months and migrated into mainstream toy aisles.
The retailer playbook for holiday toy season
The retailers winning the toy holiday share three moves:
1. The branded Top Toys list. Walmart, Target, Amazon, and Costco publish curated lists in late August / early September. The list becomes the PR launch, the shopper's checklist, and the buy-online-pickup-in-store sales engine.
2. Exclusive SKUs. The retailer-exclusive LEGO set, the Walmart-only Barbie, the Target Squishmallow color — these lock the buyer into a specific chain and produce the headline "only at" placement.
3. AI visibility on the gift-research query. Parents now type "best gift for a 6-year-old boy 2026" into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews before they shop. The toys cited in those answers — and the retailers cited as where to buy them — win the back-half of holiday. The retailer whose Top Toys list is structured to be retrieved by the AI engines wins citation share. The retailer whose list is locked inside a PDF doesn't.
The Communications stake
Holiday toy season has always been a PR season — the Top Toys list, the in-store stunt, the celebrity gift guide. The 2026 version layers AI visibility on top of every one of those moves. The retailer that builds the holiday around AI Communications wins not just December but the gift-research category permanently.
About Everything-PR
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Thirty-plus publications. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
