Trends · data through September 2026

Toy Stores in the United States

Iceflower tracks 2,632 stores from 1,570 toy store chains in the United States. Collector's Connection grew fastest over the last year, ahead of Learning Express Toys and Tons of Toys.

Rankings come from real card and bank transactions across a panel of 130M+ US and EU consumers. We publish relative growth and rankings, never revenue figures. About the data

Tracked chains
1,570
Tracked stores
2,632
Consumer panel
130M+

State by state

The leading toy store chains in every state

Tracked toy store chains ranked by consumer spend in each state, Q4 2025–Q3 2026. LEGO leads in 24 states, Build-A-Bear Workshop in 10 states, and Archangel Games in 1 state. 10 chains lead at least one state. Against their share in the US as a whole, Build-A-Bear Workshop stands out in 17 states, LEGO in 9 states, and Learning Express Toys in 4 states.

By tracked consumer spend, Q4 2025–Q3 2026

Not enough tracked stores: Alaska, District of Columbia, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming

No ranked chain with 5% of the state's spend and 3 stores there: Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island

Not enough tracked stores: Alaska, District of Columbia, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming

A state shows a ranking once it has at least 2 tracked toy store chains and 10 tracked stores. Relative to the US compares a chain's share of the state's spend with its share in the US as a whole. It ranks the 7 biggest chains in the US and the chains that lead a state by spend, wherever a chain has at least 5% of the state's spend and 3 stores there. Colors match the store map; other tracked chains are gray.

Growth ranking

Fastest-growing tracked toy store chains

Ranked by year-over-year growth of share of tracked local spend. Arrows show movement in the rankings since last year. Each dot in the chart is one tracked chain: bigger market position to the right, faster growth higher up, more tracked stores in a bigger dot. Colors match the store map below. Collector's Connection and Learning Express Toys sit in the high-growth half.

# Chain YoY growth
RankChainRank movementYoY growth
1 Collector's Connection ▲1 +19.3%
2 Learning Express Toys - +16.7%
3 Tons of Toys ▲3 +11.8%
4 The Elephant's Trunk ▲1 +9.0%
5 Gnome Games ▲2 +8.5%
6 Discovery Outlet ▲2 +8.0%
7 Galactic Toys & Games ▲3 +6.0%
8 Out of the Box ▲1 +5.2%
9 Games Unlimited ▲2 +3.5%
10 Toy Town - +3.0%
11 The Toy Tree - +1.6%
12 Go Bananas - +1.0%
13 The Game Chest ▼1 +0.9%
14 Lakeshore Learning Store ▲2 +0.2%
15 The Toy Vault ▼1 -0.5%
  • LEGO
  • Build-A-Bear Workshop
  • Learning Express Toys
  • Lakeshore Learning
  • American Girl
  • Fao Schwarz
  • Bricks & Minifigs
  • Other tracked chains

Store footprint

Store map

2,632 tracked store locations in the United States. The 7 largest tracked chains are highlighted. The top 5 chains by store count run 649 of the 2,632 stores (25%); 1,393 of the 1,570 tracked chains have a single store here.

  • LEGO (92)
  • Build-A-Bear Workshop (321)
  • Learning Express Toys (84)
  • Lakeshore Learning (52)
  • American Girl (17)
  • Fao Schwarz (4)
  • Bricks & Minifigs (54)
  • Other tracked chains

Top tracked chains by store count

More trends

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