Amazon integrates Roblox into its kids holiday gift book
Amazon is taking its holiday toy guide to the next level by adding metaverse and social media features.
The e-tail giant’s fifth annual “Holiday Kids Gift Book” features more than 600 toys and gifts, with the 2022 theme "Share the Adventure." The guide includes more than 100 pages of gift ideas, games, books and other holiday items.
New for 2022, the book features an adventure on the Roblox immersive gaming platform called "Amazon’s Trip Around the Blox." Customers can play games on Roblox and earn points for free virtual items to dress up their avatars.
Amazon is also offering a free virtual item. Customers can redeem their free "Too Cool Fire Fox" virtual head accessory with a virtual item code on Roblox or by scanning a QR code located inside Holiday Kids Gift Book.
The company said it has shipped millions of copies of its toy gift guide by mail. There is also a digital version, which for the first time includes a Spanish-language option. Customers can flip page by page, use navigational features like shopping by brand, and click through to toys featured on Amazon's annual “Toys We Love” list, as well as products from small businesses and Climate Pledge Friendly selections.
“We chose 'Share the Adventure' as the theme for this year as a way to explore the various ways we take to the road during the holidays, whether it's to return to where we're from or to venture to new places to be with those we love most," says Anne Carrihill, Amazon's director of toys and games. "The Holiday Kids Gift Book makes shopping Amazon's vast selection convenient and fun. It's also a special treat that families can share over the course of the holiday season and, once the festivities are over, tuck away as a memento of their own 2022 holiday adventures, wherever those take us this year."
Amazon gets early start to holidays
Amazon is kicking off the holidays in earnest. The e-tailer is also currently offering a Holiday Gift Guides feature that highlights top items from the toys and home categories. The toys gift guide features the most popular toys and games of the holiday season. It also includes the “Toys We Love” list of more than 60 items only available at Amazon from national brands including Hasbro, Disney, Fisher-Price, Bluey, and National Geographic.
In addition, Amazon held the Prime Early Access Sale Oct. 11-12. Initially announced in September 2022, the Prime Early Access Sale offered Prime members hundreds of thousands of discounts, with the tagline, “Two days of holiday deals.” Interestingly, according to analysis of the entire 48-hour sales event from Numerator, slightly less than three in 10 (29%) surveyed Prime Early Access shoppers said they bought holiday gifts. Numerator data also indicates the top two product categories consumers purchased were household essentials and health & beauty, neither of which is a traditional holiday gift segment.
Other Numerator data points suggesting that the sale was not strictly a holiday-focused event include one in five (19%) surveyed participants saying they bought non-holiday gift items. The retailer has not yet said if it will also provide any type of early holiday (pre-Thanksgiving) promotion open to all consumers. Chief Amazon rivals Walmart and Target also both ran October holiday sales events for all shoppers.