Grown-ups are buying more toys than preschoolers to the tune of $1 billion

Bob Friedland’s home in Little Falls, NJ, is filled with Lego.Lego flowers adorn his dining room table.

A Lego reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” hangs in his office.He has 10 Lego city skylines scattered throughout his abode (one for every town he’s visited).

On Halloween, he strings lights on his Lego “Nightmare Before Christmas” set and displays it at the bay window at the front of his house. “I had to move out of my condo and into a house to find a place to put them all,” Friedland, 50, told The Post.Friedland has worked in the toy industry as a marketer for decades, but he only began seriously playing with Lego in 2020. Like many adults stuck at home during the Coronavirus pandemic that spring, Friedland found himself alone and anxious.He remembered how playing with the snappable plastic building blocks had brought him joy as a child.

So he bought a 1,000-piece Lego “Voltron” set — based on the 1980s cartoon.And then bought another, and another.

He’s completed at least 50 sets since, re-creating everything from a bonsai plant to the set of Jerry’s apartment on “Seinfeld.”“They’re a stress reliever,” Friedland said.“They don’t fall apart, you can put them on a shelf and look at them and they give you fun, good memories.”Friedland isn’t the only grown-up embracing their inner child.

What started as a pandemic pastime has exploded into a phenomenon, with companies such as MGA Entertainment, Hasbro and Lego pumping out products targeted to these so-called “kidults”: miniature fake food, limited-edition Formula 1 figurines and intricate building sets.Even schools training the next generation of toy-makers like Otis College of Art and Design, in Los Angeles, have incorporated “kidult” products into their coursework. “It’s revolutionized the toy world,” said Jessica Kavanaugh, vice-president of marketing at JAKKS Pacific, which produces licensed toy products for kid-focused brand giants such as...