The Top 5 Toys of Christmas 2018
The first American Christmas after Toys R Us liquidated: five toys from the 2018 lists, including a Hogwarts hall in bricks and a doll from 1983 in its anniversary dress.
November 3, 2026 · ZABI LLC
Christmas 2018 was the first in the US without Toys R Us. The chain had filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and liquidated in March 2018, and the NPD Group's year-end report, covered by Retail Dive, said US toy sales fell 2 percent, ending four years of growth. NPD's analyst called that a solid performance given the loss, and other retailers had widened their toy ranges to fill the gap. Whatever you remember buying that December, you may well have bought it somewhere new.
What was on the lists is a mixed picture, and an agreeable one. There were dolls that arrive in layers of wrapping, a dinosaur you could hang from a belt loop, and a few things that your own parents might have recognised. For the year before, see Christmas 2017; for the next one, Christmas 2019.
The five
Documented on: the 2018 DreamToys list and The Toy Insider trend list; the brand took eight of NPD's top ten items by dollar growth in 2018
L.O.L. Surprise! Under Wraps
Start with the obvious. NPD's 2018 report, as summarised by Retail Dive, said L.O.L. Surprise! took eight of the ten top toy items when ranked by absolute growth in sales. MGA's doll shared the Toy of the Year award in February 2018 with Fingerlings, and in the autumn two L.O.L. Surprise! items were on the DreamToys list, the Under Wraps range and a Pop-Up Store.
The format is a little parade of wrapping. A Toy Insider spokesperson, speaking on Denver television, linked the appeal of surprise toys to the YouTube unboxing videos that children watch and then act out. As the buyer, you are mostly paying for the unwrapping, and the small doll is the souvenir. The same segment noted that L.O.L. Surprise! and Hatchimals had been popular for the previous couple of holiday seasons, so it was no secret by 2018.
Documented on: the 2018 DreamToys list and named on several hot-toy lists, per Denver7
LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Great Hall
LEGO's Hogwarts Great Hall, set 75954, came out in August 2018 with 878 pieces and ten minifigures, according to the Brickfact database. Brickfact lists it for ages 9 to 14, so this is a present for your 9-year-old that you may be asked to help finish. It is one of the 12 toys on the DreamToys list, and Denver7 included it among toys that showed up on multiple hot-toy lists that season.
It is the kind of gift that seems to be for a child and quietly belongs to the house. A long dining hall in bricks takes an afternoon or two, and when it is done it is a shelf ornament as well. The usual check applies: count the pieces against the age on the box, and see whether the person building it will want company.
Documented on: the 2018 DreamToys list (the T-Rex Jailbreak playset) and The Toy Insider trend list
Fingerlings Untamed
WowWee's Fingerlings shared the Toy of the Year award in February 2018. The follow-up was Untamed, which took the format toward dinosaurs. The Toy Insider, in October 2018, described a T. rex, a velociraptor and a skeletal one, each with more than 40 sound effects and hooked tails that let them hang from hands, desks and belt loops. It gives the age as 5 and up.
The Jailbreak playset was the one on DreamToys: a cage that holds two figures, with a switch that sends one crashing out of the side panel, plus an Infrared T. rex with glow-in-the-dark eyes and teeth. There is also a free augmented reality app, which means a phone or tablet comes into it. If that is not what you want from a Christmas present, note that the same article says the figures also react to touch by themselves.
Documented on: The Toy Insider 2018 trend list (Classic Comeback)
Cabbage Patch Kids 35th Anniversary Edition Vintage Kids
The Cabbage Patch Kids began in the 1970s as fabric dolls made by Xavier Roberts, which he offered as adoptions rather than sales. A Coleco design team made the first plastic-headed dolls in 1982, and they were ready for the 1983 holiday season, according to the Strong National Museum of Play, which inducted them into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2023. The full story of that Christmas is in our piece on the 1983 frenzy.
In 2018 Wicked Cool Toys marked the 35th anniversary with a 16-inch Vintage Kids edition, dressed in the retro fashions and yarn hairstyles of the originals. The Toy Insider put it under Classic Comeback and lists it for ages 3 and up. For anyone who remembers 1983, it is the nearest thing to a second go.
Documented on: The Toy Insider 2018 trend list (Retro Revival)
The Oregon Trail Handheld Game
Basic Fun released a stand-alone handheld version of The Oregon Trail in early March 2018, as Game Informer reported. It has full-colour graphics and the original sound effects, and its casing is modelled on an Apple II, down to a power switch that you turn on by pushing in a miniature floppy disk.
The Toy Insider placed it under Retro Revival. Its audience is obvious: anyone who ever lost a party to dysentery on a school computer. It is a gift for the adult as much as for a child, and the right kind of present for an uncle who claims to have no interest in toys. A fair question to ask first is whether the person you are buying for ever sat through the original.
What the year tells us
Two of the five are brands that had already shared a Toy of the Year award in February, two are returns of older favourites, and one is a hall made of bricks. After a year in which a famous toy chain disappeared from the US, the toys that stood out were mostly ones with a clear story attached. Retail changed. The reasons people bought a gift stayed pretty much the same.
Sources
Where the facts in this post come from. Rankings and lists belong to the people who published them; the selection and the stories are ours.
- Toy sales fell 2% in 2018, Retail Dive (NPD Group) — Sales down 2%, Toys R Us liquidation, L.O.L. Surprise! eight of top ten
- The top twelve toys this Christmas unveiled at DreamToys 2018, Toy Retailers Association (via Bastion UK) — 2018 DreamToys list, date, panel
- The Toy Insider names top toy trends for holiday 2018, PR Newswire — Trend lists: Radical Reveals, Pet-a-Palooza, Classic Comeback, Retro Revival
- Collectible toys take home top honors at 2018 Toy of the Year Awards gala, PR Newswire — Fingerlings and L.O.L. Surprise! shared Toy of the Year, February 2018
- Hot toys for 2018 include LOL Surprise dolls, gross-out toys, Denver7 — Surprise toys, YouTube unboxing, Hogwarts Great Hall on multiple hot lists
- Fingerlings Untamed, The Toy Insider — What Untamed does, Jailbreak playset, app, age
- LEGO Harry Potter 75954 Hogwarts Great Hall, Brickfact — 878 pieces, 10 minifigures, ages 9-14, August 2018
- Cabbage Patch Kids 35th Anniversary Edition Vintage Kids, The Toy Insider — 16-inch doll, retro styling, ages 3 and up, Wicked Cool Toys
- Cabbage Patch Kids, National Toy Hall of Fame, Strong National Museum of Play — Xavier Roberts, Coleco 1982 design team, 1983 holiday season, Hall of Fame 2023
- The Oregon Trail is now playable in the palms of your hands, Game Informer — Basic Fun handheld, Apple II design, March 2018