Beauty companies are taking cues from an unlikely outside industry — toys.
As both industries barrel through the all-important holiday season, a growing number of beauty brands are taking marketing, branding and behavioral cues from toys.
“Beauty is becoming toyified, designed to be collected, displayed, customized and loved, not just used. In this space, products aren’t just functional any longer, they’re characters and companions,” said Nick Mowbray, founder of Zuru, the toy company that also incubates beauty brands Monday Haircare, Daise Beauty and more
“Toys are aging up — ‘kidults’ are more obsessed than ever; just look at the rise of Labubu and collectible culture,” he further explained. “Beauty is aging down, borrowing from play, fantasy and childhood nostalgia. The two worlds are meeting in the middle, where joy, emotional connection, and identity matter more than utility.”
In Zuru’s case, “we have multiple brands that speak to this girl at the beginning of her beauty journey,” said Jaimee Lupton, founder of Zuru’s beauty brands. “Daise Beauty, our Gen Zalpha body care and fragrance brand, has seen insane growth and is on track to be a $200 million brand Year One.”
Lupton credits this to the emotional resonance of the products in addition to performance. “Toyification in beauty isn’t about being cute, it’s emotional engineering,” she said. “Gen Alpha wants vibrant, interactive brand worlds that feel playful, rewarding, and theirs. They’re not playing with their mother’s Barbies anymore.”
It’s a marked shift from the aesthetic trends that dominated five years ago, from minimalist packaging (also known as “blanding”) or overly clinical communications to consumers.
“As the world’s gotten more grim and chaotic, beauty has always been in that category that’s not just about holding up in these times, but a moment of self expression,” said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer and founder of WSL Strategic Retail. “Look at the amount of color that’s now in the packaging if you walk into Sephora or Ulta.”
2025 was undoubtedly the year of the Gen Alpha beauty brand — take Evereden, Yes Day and Sincerely Yours — but Liebmann thinks the toy trend is age-agnostic. “This is not just a trend for younger people. It’s that sort of collectibles trend for people when it comes to beauty products. I do think that’s where we’re looking for little treats and happy moments, and I think we’ll see more of it.”
Daise products.
Courtesy of Daise
Pointing to star-shaped acne patches or limited-edition lip glosses, “we see this as some of the continuation of this getting beyond not just the ‘blandness’ of it all but our willingness to take things less seriously, even something serious like acne treatments,” Liebmann continued. “If you look at Lego, and all the things Lego has done from a toy perspective, now adults, teenagers, Gen Zs, Millennials are all collecting Lego as decorative items. I think that happiness, the use of color, the use of fun packaging and containers, and collectibility are all coming out of this.”
Some categories are better poised to benefit from it than others. “In terms of collectibility in packaging, the fragrance drove that for a long time,” Liebmann said. “We’re seeing companies and brands that are saying, ‘how do we use this seasonally for special packaging, how do we make it more collectible, and how do we bring in a younger generation who are used to collecting Legos and other things?’”
Notewrks, the sister brand of Snif that launched Dec. 4, took pages out of the toy playbook for its launch, to much fanfare. “There’s this natural overlap between both categories,” said Bryan Edwards, cofounder and co-chief executive officer of Snif. “They are inherently playful and unserious. I think there’s also this year for nostalgia in both beauty and toys, and tapping into that is inherently human and childlike.”
In the case of Notewrks, “we designed the fragrances themselves to feel fun and collectible,” Edwards said, “and to tell an effective story. That lends itself to music and to color, and even the more playful notes.”
In terms of the three fragrances’ packaging, “there’s a lot of visual cues in the bottle, and in the packaging that lends themselves to a toy-like experience — bright colors on the bottles, caps that look like radio dials. There’s a magnet in the cap, which is rewarding [to use], and the bottle almost looks like a figurine. All of those things lend to a more playful experience.”
Likening it to the Labubu effect for beauty, “I think we’re just at the beginning of it,” Edwards said. “Internally, we’re calling 2026 the year of the toy. From charms, accessorization and people rhinestoning their bottles, the product itself has become a form of self expression and that’s only going to increase over time.”
