Henning Kröpke: A Gamer´s View On Nürnberg International Toy Fair

As Rick wrote several days before, he always wanted to travel to Nürnberg to see the other game show in Germany besides the famous Spiel in Essen, the Nürnberg International Toy Fair. He also wrote that all players he asked who already went to this show, told him to stay at home. There must be a reason! To give you a better idea, I will try to give you a short gamer´s view on Nürnberg International Toy Fair.

First of all: Numbers… A lot of you already know about and maybe visited Spiel in Essen. I never went to the American game conventions but when giving American gamers a first tour through the halls in Essen you surely always get astonished looks about the size of the show. In 2005 there were more than 690 game companies on a space of nearly 43,000 square meters divided into 9 halls. Over 150,000 people visit the show in four days. Spiel is an open show for everybody, so there is gaming, gaming, and more gaming. It is big, impressive, and most of the time a little bit overwhelming.

And the Nürnberg International Toy Fair? Multiply the size by nearly four, there are more than 155,000 square meters divided into 17 halls (if you count the different floors of some halls separately). Multiply the number of companies again by nearly four, this year there are 2,700 of them showing 60,000 new products or 1,000,000 in total. Is there a bigger show somewhere else? I don’t believe so.

The major drawback for gamers? The whole show is a trade show, only journalists and re-sellers are allowed to enter. Don’t worry, there are still more than 70,000 people attending during the 6 days. Additionally most of the presented products are in a pre-release state - the companies show the products to sell them to the distributors/shops. After getting a rough idea about the necessary sales numbers they will produce them directly after the show. Regarding the games, only a very few producers have tables to play their games/prototypes at the booths. Mostly, they just show them, and you can get explanations while watching the presentation of board/cards. A lot of resellers don’t want to know all the rules, if they get an idea about the possible customers for the product, it is completely enough.

Another reason to stay away if you are a gamer: the show is about toys, there is a reason for the name International Toy Fair, and you get a lot of them. In every shape, size, color and number you dreamed of (or had nightmares?). There are halls only devoted to model construction, dolls, wooden toys, etc. A favorite for you: festive and joke articles - yes, one complete hall of them.

Games, or better the board and card games we love, are presented by less than 5% of all the companies at the show. All the big German game publishers have booths there, several European game publishers and even less from the rest of the world, too. All the small publishers, who are one of the major reasons to go to Spiel in Essen, are not there. If they already have a distribution with one of the leading German distributors you can find the games at these booths, but because of the small print run of these publishers, most likely not. Most of these are in three of the halls directly connected. For some companies, you have to walk long distances. But this gives you a chance to see things you never dreamed of…

The Nürnberg International Toy Fair will open the doors from 2/2/2006 – 2/7/2006.

© 2006 Henning Kröpke

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Thanks for the report, Henning.  Essen gets covered fairly well these days but the Nuremberg fair usually gets scant coverage.  I’ve always wanted to cover it but, as Henning mentioned, I was convinced to give it a pass.  With this report everyone can get a better idea of what the fair is all about.  One of these days I’ll probably make the pilgrimage, but until then we’ll make do with the Nuremberg Preview. Posted by Rick Thornquist on Jan 28, 2006 at 05:31 PM | #

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