The Washington Post is reporting that international orders for the popular Cozy Coupe toy car have “stalled” in recent months after the U.S. began a trade war with its trading partners across the globe. The Cozy Coupe has long been lauded with a wink and a smile as the world’s best-selling car, beating out famously popular motor cars such as the Ford Model T, Volkswagen Beetle, and Ford F-150.
Isaac Larian is the chief executive of MGA Entertainment, which owns Little Tikes, the company that makes the Cozy Coupe. He’s quoted as saying, “All of Asia is shut down for now — if I ship a Cozy Coupe from Ohio to China, and it gets slapped with a 125-percent duty, nobody is going to buy it anymore.”
Since Larian said that, President Trump has raised tariffs on China up to 245 percent, while China has retaliated with a 125-percent tariff on goods from the U.S. The rest of the country’s trading partners, meanwhile, face a blanket 10-percent tariff on goods imported to the U.S.
The situation harms Little Takes and sales of the Cozy Coupe in two ways. While the toy car is assembled in Hudson, Ohio, some of its components, such as screws, axles, and rope, are imported from China. That alone increases production costs, reducing or eliminating profit margins and putting upward pressure on the car’s current price of $64.99. And that’s before it’s hit with another 125-percent tariff when the assembled toy arrives in China for sale.
Just How Popular Is The Cozy Coupe?
It’s impossible to put an exact number on how many Cozy Coupes have been sold since the toy was introduced in 1979, but here are some numbers. On the car’s 30th anniversary in 2009, Little Tikes announced that 10,000,000 had been sold overall, and the car was flying off the shelves at a rate of 457,000 per year. Just two years later in 2012, however, a trade publication claimed the company had sold 22 million Cozy Coupes since its inception.
Whatever the truth is, the Cozy Coupe is assuredly one of, if not the best-selling vehicles of all time. It was invented in the late 1970s by a man named Jim Mariol, who was inspired to create the foot-powered toy car after scooting around in his office chair one day. A genius aspect of the Cozy Coupe’s design is its working doors, horn, and roof, which makes kids feel like they’re driving the real thing. The lack of pedals to power the car, which had been the paradigm for rideable toy cars up until that point, also gives it an edge, allowing a wider range of ages to fit inside and making its operation much simpler and more reliable.
The Cozy Coupe has also evolved over time, though it’s never abandoned its iconic yellow roof and red body. According to Drive, it received its first refresh in 2000 when the roof was slimlined and the A-pillars widened (perhaps for rollover safety). Little Tikes also hopped on the bandwagon begun by Pixar’s CARS movie in 2006 when it added eyes to the front of the Cozy Coupe in 2009.
TopSpeed’s Take
While the sale of cars and trucks in the U.S. is one metric by which the health of the country’s economy can be judged, the sale of other items, such as children’s toys, can give us another angle on the topic. If the manufacturer of one of the best-selling toys of all time is saying it’s already seen sales fall from the tariff situation created by the U.S. government, then surely falling sales of other more complicated and expensive products aren’t far behind.
Reading various reports about the tariff situation has taught us one thing: it’s not the tariffs themselves that are causing the most damage. Companies report the worst part is that the tariffs are constantly changing, which erodes trust in the U.S. government and the stability of our market. If there’s one thing economies hate, it’s instability, which seems to be the only thing the U.S. is good at manufacturing anymore.
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