TOKYO - When 25-year-old Nadia Hemady visited Japan this summer, she spent $600 on two ball-jointed dolls by Volks Inc. with anime-inspired features like large eyes, pointed noses, and small mouths.
At an event hosted by the Japanese manufacturer in Los Angeles last month, the Brandeis graduate student bought another for her collection. This one, Hemady says, is a 2-foot-tall doll that looks like a drag queen playing Tina Turner. It cost $900.
As the American appetite for anime grows and shows like "Power Rangers" celebrate their 15th year in the United States, the market for high-end toys targeted at young adults is ripe. This segment exploded in Japan in recent years as toy manufacturers searched for niches to cope with a declining birthrate that eroded sales. According to the Japanese Toy Association, the domestic toy market declined 10 percent over the past five years, to about 640 billion yen, or $5.7 billion, in 2006.
But high-end toys for adults has been one of the industry's few bright spots in Japan, and the success of this category has started to spread to America. In the United States, the toy industry has been battered in recent years, with children favoring electronics over traditional toys and a spate of massive recalls spreading fears about toys imported from China. For toy retailers, a new category of products aimed at a different audience is widely appealing, according to industry analysts.
Consumers like Hemady are lured by detailed customized dolls, large electronic robots, and collectibles from anime shows and old television series. So far, online merchants such as HobbyLink Japan have provided much of the access to these products in America, with traditional brick-and-mortar stores just starting to catch on. Over the past three years, HobbyLink has seen US sales grow 63 percent. Meanwhile, Kotobukiya, a toy manufacturer with several retail stores in Japan, opened its first US offices this summer, in Newport Beach, Calif., to work more closely with licensing and marketing partners. Kotobukiya's bestsellers include its Star Wars line of ARTFX statues, which retail for $99 in the United States.
"We feel that the international market is ready for our type of goods - we just need to let people know that it is available outside the borders of Japan," said Frank Supiot, Kotobukiya's international director. "And none of our goods are intended to go into a sandbox or backyard playtime."
In Japan, high-target toys are sold online and in specialty hobby shops, convenience stores, and even mass merchant and discount stores. At retailers such as Toys "R" Us and Ito-Yokado, shelf space for high-target toys is completely separate from children's products. Bob Friedland, a spokesman for Toys "R" Us, said this category is something the merchant is looking into for the US market, but he declined to provide specifics for competitive reasons.
Bandai Co., one of Japan's largest toy manufacturers, helped spark the high-target trend 10 years ago with the re-release of a giant robot named Chogokin Tamashii Mazinger Z. Bandai sold the toy for 5,800 yen, or about $52 - twice the price the same toy retailed for when it was first marketed decades ago. The company sold out quickly and realized it was tapping into a powerful combination of adult nostalgia and desire among adults to indulge in toys. Bandai said sales for this segment have increased tenfold over the past decade.
Now, as the growth in the high-end toys aimed at adults begins to stabilize in Japan, Bandai and other Japanese manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets.
"Bandai America is aware of the importance of the growing young adult market," but declined to comment on current plans to expand in the United States because they are proprietary, according to company spokeswoman Stephanie Holbrook.
Alen Yen of Boston launched ToyboxDX.com, one of the first online sites for robot collectors, in 1999. At the time, there were only about 50 collectors in the United States, but that figure has soared to 100,000 vintage collectors and "many, many more for the new crossover anime" merchandise, Yen said. His site targets men ages 30 to 45, and new collectors are joining all the time because of the popularity of anime. Some of the more coveted new products include the Soul of Chogokin line by Bandai retailing for up to $200.
"There is a generation of anime fans just getting through college in the United States, downloading the latest anime online," said Ian Condry, an assistant professor of Japanese cultural studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Once they get jobs, in addition to buying a car and a nice suit, they're thinking about getting a nice expensive toy. Some guys are buying life-size robots, and some women are buying $700 dolls.
"I don't pretend to get it, but it's a rapidly growing market."
Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.
