Top Toys for Girls and Boys This Holiday Season

Marine Cole
As the Christmas season, approaches, beware the mesmeric glare of innocent-seeming ponies. You'll end up buying them.

There’s drama and chaos in the valley of the dolls: Anna and Elsa from Disney’s blockbuster hit, Frozen, have ousted Barbie as the top toy for little girls this holiday season.

For the first time since the National Retail Federation started its Holiday Top Toys Survey 11 years ago, only 16.8 percent of parents said they plan to buy a Barbie doll – while 20 percent said they plan to buy Frozen merchandise, according to NRF’s latest survey, which was released Monday.

Related: The Top 10 Disney Princesses at the Box Office

“Barbie had a good run as number one, but there’s a new queen in town,” the NRF said in its press release.

Not surprisingly, much of the rest of the list for girls’ toys focused on dolls, including American Girl as well as Monster High.

Here are the top 10 hot toys for girls this holiday season:

  1. Disney’s Frozen

  2. Barbie

  3. Dolls

  4. Monster High

  5. American Girl

  6. Lego

  7. Tablet/Apple iPad

  8. My Little Pony

  9. Disney Doc McStuffins

  10. Apparel

For boys, parents overwhelmingly (14.2 percent) picked Lego as the hot toy this season. This isn’t much of a surprise, since earlier this year, Lego A/S edged out Mattel, the maker of Barbie, as the largest toy company in the world.

Here are the top 10 hot toys for boys this holiday season:

  1. Lego

  2. Cars and Trucks

  3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

  4. Video Games

  5. Hot Wheels

  6. Xbox One

  7. PlayStation 4

  8. Transformers

  9. Remote Controlled Vehicle

  10. Marvel Action Figures and Tablet/Apple iPad (tie)

When Google Commerce, however, released its own list of hot toys for the holidays, Frozen merchandise was nowhere to be seen. American Girl occupied the top spot, followed by My Little Pony, Paw Patrol and Lego Friends.

Related: Bigger Than Barbie: Lego Is Now King of the Toymakers

Some retro toys are also making a comeback. Thanks to the movie Ouija, searches for the boards on Google are up 300 percent since October. Barbie Dream House came in ninth position.

“Parents will not have to go far to find good deals on the toys their children have put at the top of their lists,” said NRF's CEO Matthew Shay in a statement. The season’s hottest toys are easily found both in brick-and-mortar stores and online, he said.

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