In the toy and board game industry a trend is your friend, sounds corny but it's true.

When Jurassic Park was released for the first time, if you had been selling generic plastic dinosaurs, sales would have increased by at least 23%.

And obviously when Yo-Yo's become popular again as they do every 5-7 years, having a warehouse full of Yo-Yo's wouldn't be a bad thing.

There are many more examples but you get the point, anticipating or using a current trend can dramatically increase sales or your chances of producing something that gets accepted.

Hasbro, the largest puzzle, board game Company in the world uses this concept all the time with Trivial Pursuit by thrashing the “Star Wars” theme and now they are doing the same thing with Lord of the Rings.

Blue Opal has capitalised on the Da-Vinci Code by developing a Da-Vinci style board game and taking advantage of the huge movie and book success.

Capitalising on a current trend in the toy and board game industry, or capitalising on upcoming trends is a great way of improving your success rate and returns, but you have to be careful what you develop an idea around.

Current trends are fine but old trends which aren't trendy any more or which have been superseded by new technology aren't a good area to pursue.

Jigsaws are a trend that never seems to decrease in popularity and puzzle, board games that capitalise on technology trends are another great area to look into.

Interactive CD or DVD board games is a potentially great area to look into as long as the music, movies, etc is 30 years or older, otherwise you would have to pay a percentage to the artists every time their material was used.

Unless you are a serious tech-head l would recommend keeping away from tech oriented games as conventional board games, etc have a higher more hassle free success rate.

So always keep trends in the back of your mind when developing ideas in the toy and board game industry.

Go to Toy and Game inventor introduction or Boardgames and Trends.