How are Sweet Treats Inspiring Kids Retail Trends in 2025?
© Mega Felt This season Kids retail trends have been shaped by snack-inspired play. Explore how the retailers in the UK and US have brought this trend, which we originally forecast in 2023, to life.
This season Kids retail trends have been shaped by snack-inspired play. Snack-inspired play is reimagined through a surrealist lens. We’re seeing children dreaming up new treats from sweet, candy or fruity origins.
Breaking the stigma of ‘good vs bad food’, whilst taking influence from ‘little treat culture’, children are encouraged to explore their personal tastes.
Driven by artificial intelligence (AI) creativity, this trend sees real, and fantasy flavours combined to create a fresh take on the familiar. Allowing children to create dream snacks and recipes of whatever their little minds can imagine.
Friendly foodie AI-generated characters add a dreamlike angle to everyday family routines. Blurring the lines between digital and physical, fruity plush toys and stacking snack games are cartoon-like and friendly, adding a childish, imaginative feel.
2025 Kids Retail Trends: Tracking ‘Dream Machine’
Originally published in 2023, our Baby & Kids trend ‘Dream Machine’ forecasted this movement towards snack-inspired play coming to the fore in 2025.
Here, we delve into the adoption of ‘Dream Machine’ in retail and e-commerce this season, as we track and validate how the trend has been applied.
What we said:
Sweet treats transcend snack time, inspiring direction across play, print, and accessory categories. Fruit bowl favourites, including bananas, berries and oranges, and sweet goods, including ice cream and candy, are personified, taking on a cartoon-like appearance.
What we saw:
Foodie inspired accessories, such as the ice cream storage basket from Anthropologie were spotted across the UK and US, bringing a sense of fun to functional and decorative items. Noticeably cherry characters were also highly evidenced, adorning stationery, apparel, cushions and bag charms at Next, Marks & Spencer and Primark.
Are you ready for the next shifts in the of baby, kids and family life?
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