Inside Gen Alpha & Gen Z Fandoms: New Research on What Drives Young Toy Buyers

Blog Post

By Lewis Hadley

Walking the floor at this year’s Toy Fair, you’ll see incredible innovation – products with cutting-edge technology, beautiful design, and smart marketing plans. But beneath it all, something fundamental is reshaping how young audiences discover, engage with, and buy the products they love.

SuperAwesome has just released new research – ‘From Discovery to Devotion: The Evolution of Gen Alpha & Z Fandoms‘, which surveyed close to 2,000 young people and parents, as well as leading content creators across the UK and US, and the findings reveal a fundamental shift in how today’s kids and teens connect with the products they love.

Fandoms & The Participation Economy

89% of Gen Alpha and Gen Z are connected to a fandom. 56% engage with these communities every single day. Most tellingly, 80% have spent significant money on their fandoms in the past three months alone.

But here’s the shift toy brands need to understand: purchase behaviour is increasingly driven by ongoing dialogue – conversations happening in YouTube comments, group chats, and immersive Roblox worlds.

The brands capturing the most attention and spend are those generating discussion, debate, and user-generated content that keep communities engaged.

Three Pillars of Modern Fandom Engagement

Our research uncovered what actually fuels these conversations:

1. Rich narrative worlds – Young fans crave depth they can explore. They’re not passive consumers – 14% actively create fan art, while many more contribute through commentary, theories, and remixes. The most successful toy brands understand this instinctively and build expansive universes that reward exploration and invite fans to add their own interpretations.
2. The creator economy as a cultural bridge – Close to half of young audiences say digital creators keep them invested in their favourite fandoms. These aren’t traditional advertisers – they’re storytellers who leave easter eggs, spark theories, and keep communities thriving between official releases.
3. Cross-platform experiences – Today’s fandoms don’t live in one place. They migrate across YouTube for discovery, Roblox for play,  social platforms for memes, and other forums for deeper discussion (especially for the 13+ audience), and each platform serves a different function in the fandom journey.

Timing Is Everything

Here’s where it gets commercially interesting: fandoms move through predictable phases, and understanding which phase you’re in can help to shape your go-to-market strategy.

We’ve mapped six distinct stages in the fandom lifecycle. The most valuable for toy brands is the “engagement peak” – when fans are simultaneously consuming content, recruiting friends, purchasing collectibles, and creating their own interpretations.

During this phase, toys and collectibles aren’t just merchandise; they take on deeper significance, becoming important symbols of identity and belonging. Collecting becomes a way to demonstrate insider status, and sharing that with others becomes a form of social currency.

What Winning Looks Like

The brands succeeding in this environment share common traits. They design products that invite personalisation and remixing. They understand that short-form video content (which represents nearly two-thirds of fan media consumption) requires specific strategies, and they recognize creators as partners, not just promotional channels.

Most importantly, though, they’ve moved beyond the “launch and pray” model to building a sustained conversation from day one.

Let’s Continue This Conversation

The complete study contains the full six-stage lifecycle model, platform-specific insights, and frameworks for building conversation into your brand’s strategy and is available to download for free on the links below:

UK Report
US Report

As an official sponsor of the Toy Fair, we’re proud to be hosting The SuperAwesome Lounge at Upper Level 180. Stop by for a coffee and let’s talk fandoms!