Toy Import Data 2026: Find Suppliers as Sourcing Shifts

For two decades the global toy aisle had one origin story: China made it, everyone else shipped it. Plastic toys, soft toys, board games, dolls, building blocks, remote-control cars — the overwhelming majority of every toy imported into the United States came from a single country. That concentration was a feature when freight was cheap and tariffs were flat. In 2026 it is a liability, and the supply chain is visibly re-wiring around it.

Two forces are colliding. US tariffs are draining the China toy lane in real time, and India has quietly flipped from net importer to net exporter of toys while Vietnam scales up to catch the overflow. For SME exporters and importers, that re-wiring is the whole opportunity — but only if you can see who is actually buying and selling, not just read the headlines about it.

The China toy lane is leaking — and the numbers are public

Start with the scale of what is moving. The US is China's largest toy export market, a trade worth more than $10.5 billion in 2024, and China still accounts for roughly 76% of US "toys and puzzles" imports as of 2025. US imports from China of toys, games and sports requisites totaled $32.04 billion in 2024. That is not a niche — it is the spine of the world's largest toy consumer market.

Now the spine is bending fast. Per PIIE's read of 2025 US import data, total US toy imports fell 31% in June 2025 versus the same month a year earlier, after a 28% year-on-year drop in May 2025 — see the PIIE breakdown of 2025 import shifts. Toys, furniture and sporting equipment were named among the top categories of decline as Chinese exports to the US slumped to levels not seen since 2009. The tariff that did it was brutal: duties on Chinese imports peaked at 125% in April 2025, and the cost flowed straight through. US importers paid $615 million in toy duties in the first half of 2025 alone, up from just $740,000 in all of 2024.

The majors saw it coming. Hasbro and Mattel both baked a China tariff hit into 2025 guidance and accelerated production shifts toward Vietnam, Indonesia and India — even though those countries took their own tariffs. When the buyers at the top of the toy chain start spreading their bets, the importers below them follow, and the order books shift to whoever can prove capacity.

The re-sourcing question for 2026 isn't "should I diversify off China?" — the tariff math already answered that. It's "which specific importers are actively moving volume to Vietnam and India right now, and can I get into their supplier list before my competitor does?"

India's toy story: from import-dependent to net exporter

India is the clearest China-plus-one play in the entire toy category, and the turnaround is documented. India shifted from being a toy import-dependent market to a net exporter; against the old baseline, exports rose 239% while imports fell 52% over the policy years, and Chinese toy imports collapsed roughly 82% — from $235 million in 2020 to about $41 million in 2024. The mechanism was deliberate: the Toys (Quality Control) Order, 2020, effective January 2021, made BIS certification compulsory and forced quality up to a level where Indian-made wooden toys, educational toys, soft toys and plastic toys could compete on export shelves.

The result is current and quantified. India's toy exports reached $186 million in FY2025-26, with the United States as the single largest destination by a wide margin and Europe a substantial second. India's domestic-plus-export "toyconomy" is now valued around $2.09 billion, it ships to 153 countries, and more than 900 mostly-MSME manufacturers now hold BIS certification — a paper trail of exactly who is now certified to make ride-on toys, jigsaw puzzles, board games and building blocks at export standard.

Vietnam and the rest of the China-plus-one map

India isn't the only beneficiary. Vietnam's toy exports ran near $3.76 billion in 2024, and its toy market is forecast to grow at a 10.3% CAGR through 2030. The signal that matters: LEGO opened its first Vietnam factory in H1 2025, and Hasbro, Mattel, Spin Master and Crayola already run volume through Southeast Asian contract manufacturers there. Stuffed toys, dolls, remote-control toys and building blocks are all moving onto Vietnamese and Indian lines — the question for an importer is which factory has the real export track record, not which one has the slickest catalog.

Where the demand actually sits

The global market gives the demand context. Global toy sales reached $123 billion in 2025, up 8% over 2024 per Circana's 2026 Global Toy Report — with adults and teens buying building sets, plush toys, games and collectibles at record pace. (For reference, 2024 physical toy sales were $111.8 billion.) The US is the single largest buyer; the EU, UK and Mexico round out the top destinations. Demand isn't the constraint — sourcing visibility is. Educational toys, dolls, outdoor play equipment and remote-control toys all sell; the hard part is matching a specific buyer's re-sourcing need to a vetted supplier before the relationship is locked.

How ShipScout turns this shift into a buyer list

The macro story is free; the actionable part is shipment-level. ShipScout sits on 11B+ bill-of-lading and shipment records across 240+ countries, and for the toy re-sourcing wave that translates into four concrete moves.

1. Find every toy importer by HS code. Toys and games sit largely under HS Chapter 95 (9503 for most toys, 9504 for games/puzzles, 9505 for festive). Pull the importer universe by code and you get the actual companies bringing in plastic toys, soft toys, dolls and building blocks — not a directory guess, but firms with shipments on record.

2. Rank importers by volume. A flat list is noise. Rank US toy importers by shipment volume and you instantly see which buyers move enough units to matter — and, critically, which ones are diversifying away from China right now by adding Vietnam and India lanes. Those are your warm leads, because their re-sourcing intent is already in the data.

3. Vet suppliers before you commit. If you're an importer building a China-plus-one panel, screen prospective Indian toy suppliers or Vietnamese factories by their real export track record — destinations served, shipment consistency, counterpart buyers — instead of trusting a sales deck. BIS-certified Indian wooden-toy and educational-toy makers are findable by their actual export flows.

4. Track competitors and re-sourcing buyers. Watch which US importers are quietly shifting orders off Chinese suppliers, and to whom. When a competitor's volume migrates from a Shenzhen vendor to a Noida or Ho Chi Minh City one, that movement is visible — and it tells you exactly which buyers are in play and which suppliers are winning the China-plus-one mandate.

For exporters, the same data works in reverse: identify which foreign buyers are actively importing the toy categories you make, see who they currently source from, and approach them with a data-backed pitch instead of a cold guess. That's the difference between chasing the 2026 toy re-sourcing wave and getting run over by it.