Senior correspondent Katie Notopoulos breaks down why toy prices are at an all-time low, and how cheaper toys are making millennial parents so miserable.
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00:00 I'm going to show you one chart that reveals why millennial parents are drowning in toys.
00:06 My name is Katie Anatopoulos. I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
00:10 The red line shows overall inflation across the entire U.S. economy.
00:15 And you can sort of see that starting in 1993, it has gone up over 100%.
00:20 One thing that costs a lot more than average is the cost of daycare and preschool.
00:26 That is just a cost that has gone way, way up.
00:29 And then you can see the blue line at the bottom.
00:32 Over the course of 30 years, it has gone down -76%.
00:37 So that's deflation. That is for the category toys.
00:40 In the mid-90s, in like 1994, you could get a sort of basic Barbie for about $9.99.
00:50 These are two of my Barbies from the late 80s, early 90s.
00:54 You can tell their hair is kind of matted. They lost their shoes, but you know, it happens.
00:58 They were probably about $10 each.
01:01 You can get a Barbie now for as cheap as $7.99 for like a sort of very basic model Barbie doll.
01:10 It is surprising when you think of how the last 30 years has gone that that price has stayed the same.
01:17 There's not that many things that were $10 in 1994 and are still $10.
01:25 It was like a big deal to get a remote-control car in the 80s or 90s.
01:29 And now, like, they sell remote-control cars for like $10 at CVS.
01:33 So much of toys are now bought on like deep discounting at Amazon or big box stores.
01:40 And it used to be that you would go to like a toy store where there might be less discounting.
01:45 You can end up having a lot more of them without actually spending all that much money.
01:51 And it just seems like the living room is vomiting up plastic with all these toys everywhere.
01:57 And I know that I'm not alone. I know that so many other parents of young kids are also, like,
02:02 it is a constant battle to declutter the amount of toys that they're getting.
02:08 Millennial parents are like begging their grandparents, like,
02:12 "Please stop buying us toys because we are overrun in our homes with this stuff."
02:18 That's what you see on a lot of birthday party invitations these days, like no gifts,
02:23 because people just don't want more stuff in their house.
02:26 I think that a lot of millennial parents, they just don't want as much plastic in their lives,
02:30 partly because they know that, like, this is a thing that's going to stick around on planet Earth for a thousand years.
02:36 It's not good for the planet.
02:38 And there are lots of wooden toys. Not only are they actually more expensive,
02:42 but I think they're seeing this a little bit more virtuous, too.
02:45 Even though, like, secretly I think everyone knows that kids really love the noisy plastic light-up stuff
02:50 that looks ugly and horrible.
02:53 [BIRDS CHIRPING]
02:56 [WATER SPLASHING]
02:59 (bottles clinking)
03:02 (glass shattering)