This year’s top-searched holiday toys will make your Millennial heart sing

Rajesh Rajput/Unsplash
Roller skates, wooden trains and a giant floor piano all spiked on Search in 2026. Here’s what parents are shopping for this season.
Table of Contents
Each November, Google gives us a peek behind the curtain, synthesising billions of shopping-related searches into their Holiday 100 Gift Guide. The list is built from a full year of Search trends across every category from tech to style. And this year, the toys and games section looks suspiciously like the inside of an elder millennial’s childhood toy chest.
Here are the trending toys parents will want to know about, plus what the list says about how we’re shopping this year.
The biggest trending toys on Google’s Holiday 100
Classic toy train sets
Searches for “classic toy train set” climbed 240% this year, one of the biggest jumps Google shared. Wooden trains survive toddler teeth, being thrown down the stairs and never fail to get passed down more than once. (Expect the figure-eight to claim your living room floor for the next few years.)
Stuffed elephant plushies
“A ton of play,” Google wrote, and we respect the pun. Searches for stuffed elephant plushies rose 240%, with the Pets Alive Baby Elephant Surprise as the featured pick. Plush is a good pick for a 1-year-old and a 10-year-old alike, and the right one becomes a friend for life.
Fujifilm instax cameras
Searches for the Fujifilm instax holiday set jumped 190%. For tweens, a camera that spits out a real photo is a nice break from the phone, and the prints end up taped to bedroom walls instead of buried in a camera roll. They’ll fly through the film, so tuck a couple of extra packs in the box.
The FAO Schwarz Piano Mat
Searches for the FAO Schwarz Piano Mat “struck a chord,” rising 180% in 2026. Anyone who watched Tom Hanks stomp out a duet on the giant keyboard in “Big” wanted one of these, and the floor-sized version now fits in a playroom. It’s a sneaky music-and-movement toy for preschoolers. It’s also loud, so choose its permanent residence carefully.
Kids’ adjustable roller skates
Searches for “adjustable roller skates” cruised up 180%. Adjustable skates expand across several sizes, so they can outlast a growth spurt or two. Just remember to add a helmet and pads to the cart.
Why this year’s trending toys have staying power
Some of this may come down to who’s doing the shopping. Millennials make up a big share of today’s parents, and plenty of us spent our childhoods at the roller rink, building wooden train tracks across the living room rug and waiting for Polaroids to develop. (By impatiently wagging them back and forth, of course.) It’s not hard to imagine a few of these searches coming from parents trying to hand down something that felt magic to them. The best part? There’s a good chance they’ll all still be in rotation when next year’s list comes out.

























































































