Children’s toys are changing in form, size, and shape. In recent times, digital-physical hybrid toys are becoming more popular, with efforts being made to breach the barriers between the physical and digital worlds. While the toys themselves are the focus of most discussions, packaging also plays an important role in the overall experience.
Toy manufacturers are using elite packaging tools to optimize the experience users get from purchasing their digital-physical hybrid products. The right packaging can make the experience more wholesome, starting when customers begin unwrapping the product. There’s a lot to consider, so let’s get into it quickly.
Benefits of Great Packaging Design of Digital-Physical Hybrid Toys
Making a great product is cool. In fact, it is one way to ensure that people keep coming back and giving great reviews of your businesses. However, a good product is not always enough to sell itself. Sometimes, you need something else to push it farther. That thing is a great packaging. Let’s look at some of the benefits of using good packaging for digital-physical hybrid toys.
Enhances Unboxing Excitement
Unboxing is an exciting part of acquiring a product, especially in this era of social media. People love to document their experiences unboxing their purchases, often to attract others who might be interested in buying the same product. Remember, digital-physical hybrid toys are still a novelty to most people, so someone else unboxing them is a major source of recommendation to them.
More importantly, it creates a memorable experience for your customers. Seeing nice packaging with features like layered designs and hidden compartments that mirror the attributes of the game creates anticipation for what is to come. As a manufacturer, you must lean into this to create the perfect marketing for your innovative toys.
Improves Usability
Apart from ensuring that your packaging serves the main purpose of keeping the product safe, it can also serve other purposes. For instance, most toy packaging stores the compartments for a long time after the initial unboxing. As a manufacturer, you must consider usability when creating packaging for your digital-physical hybrid toys.
Brands in the hybrid toy market are also using packaging as a part of the product. So, you can see a toy with the packaging serving as one of the components or accessories. The packaging might also be critical to using the product, either as a part or a guide, without which you cannot play the game successfully.
Aligns with Sustainability Trends
One major reason sustainability has become a big deal in the packaging industry is the amount of waste it generates annually. Most of this waste comes from people discarding packaging items immediately after removing their products. As a hybrid toy manufacturer, you can help address this issue by creating packaging solutions that align with sustainability goals.
A starting point would be to use sustainable toy packaging, prioritizing biodegradable, recyclable, and reusable materials. Another option is to incentivize users to keep their packaging after the initial toy unboxing experience. Finally, you could adopt the trend of making the packaging.
How Packaging Design Shapes the Digital-Physical Hybrid Toy Experience
When people buy hybrid toys, they are often unsure of what to expect. Sure, they are toys with physical and digital elements. However, much of the experience is still new to most people. This novelty presents an opportunity for any hybrid toy maker to determine the experience fully.
Use of Innovative Materials
The packaging is the first contact customers have with a toy. Forward-thinking brands understand the essence of the first impression and use innovative materials to create packaging that quickly catches consumers’ attention. Common strategies include transparent windows to give a peek at what’s inside and textured finishes to highlight the toy’s tangible features.
Interactive Elements
At first, it may seem that the packaging only shows the physical parts of the toy. However, it can also serve as a gateway to the digital part. The key here is to leverage trends where users can access information about products digitally through QR codes and Augmented Reality (AR) elements. Most brands are using these interactive packaging tools to enhance user entertainment.
Visually-Appealing Designs
Unlike most regular toys targeted at children, the target market of digital-physical hybrid toys is diverse and inclusive of all age groups. This diversity dictates packaging design trends that appeal to both, often with bold graphics to captivate younger users and sophisticated finishing to attract older ones.
Wrapping Up on Digital-Physical Hybrid Toy Packaging Design
Packaging design is an integral part of marketing a product, especially dynamic ones like digital-physical hybrid toys. These toys appeal to all age groups, expanding the brand’s target market. While this can be a big benefit, it also creates the challenge of crafting the most engaging toy packaging for a diverse group. More importantly, businesses have to embrace trendy packaging innovations to remain competitive as consumer demands evolve.
