By 2030, and that estimate is at the conservative end of the scale. But falling birth rates and some of the highest inflation rates we ve seen in decades have created challenging conditions for manufacturers and retailers, and signal more tough times to come. While the covid pandemic boosted sales of toys and games temporarily, bigname companies report that sales have started to slip back once again. Let s have a look at some of those numbers. Global toy sales reached $108] billion in 2023, a 2% drop compared to 2022, with toy companies calling it a normalisation process after that exceptional growth linked to the pandemic. But across the 612 countries, including the uk, france, germany, and spain, sales declined by 7% in 2023 compared with the previous year, but they were still 17% higher when compared to 2019, before the pandemic. I caught up with the boss of buildabear, a muchloved company which allows shoppers to customise their own teddies. She s also the head of the global organi
eve of the election, what i m seeing here is bad enough, and i am going to stop in. i am going to step in and stop it here. it is rare for a judge to do that. it is rare for a judge to say you know what? i understand the precedent here, but this time i got to get in here, i got to fix that. and that just happened today in the great state of georgia. in georgia, as you know, they re having a rock em, sock em robots very exciting election. top of the ticket in the georgia s governor s race, brian kemp, currently the secretary of state. the democrat candidate stacey abrams, until recently was the democratic leader in the state legislature. the last few georgia governors races have been close. they ve all been decided by roughly 200,000 votes. heading into this election, though, as georgia s secretary of state, brian kemp has taken a meat ax to the voter rolls in georgia, trying to disqualify as many voters as possible. the last races in the state were decided around 200,000 votes. last
look at this. this is ridiculous. legitimate tough guy. rock em, sock em robots. boom, bang. game hasn t even begun. shawn thornton hammering away. down goes frazier. ridiculous. then brian sotheby and mccrane decided to mix it up. three fights broke out in the first four seconds. it s right at the beginning of morning joe when we all get together. still ahead, a preview of meet the press with david gregory and chuck todd. that s live from the white house. we ll be back with this morning s must-raid opinion pages. (jennifer garner) there s a lot of beautiful makeup out there