Toys is the smallest category in the Shopify Theme Store — 24 themes — and the most gift-driven business in retail. Gift wrapping is missing from more than half its top themes, pre-order from most, and back-in-stock from nearly all. Here is the checklist, and the table of who passes it.
Toys is the smallest category in the Shopify Theme Store. Twenty-four themes, against 261 in Clothing.
That is good news and bad news. Good, because the shortlist is short before you filter it at all. Bad, because the themes that end up here were mostly designed for something else and photographed with toys.
It shows in the checklist below. Of the twelve highest-placed themes in the category, only three pass all five items, and four pass exactly one.
Five things, in the order they cost you money when they are missing. Each percentage is how many of 326 themes Shopify publishes that capability for.
☐ 1. Gift wrapping — 38% of themes
Toys are bought for other people. Not occasionally, not seasonally — structurally. The wrapping question is one your customer expects at checkout, and when it is absent the order still completes but the experience quietly says “we are not set up for gifts”. Seven of the twelve top Toys themes do not have it.
☐ 2. Pre-order — 43%
Licensed launches, film tie-ins, new editions. In toys these are announced before they ship, and the demand curve peaks before the stock exists. A theme without pre-order means a manual workaround on exactly the products with the most attention on them.
☐ 3. Back-in-stock alert — 27%, the scarcest
The fourth quarter sells out. A parent who has already decided on a specific item and found it unavailable is the highest-intent visitor of the year, and without a signup field that visit is spent. Nine of the twelve do not have this.
☐ 4. Product filtering and sorting — 78%
Parents do not shop by price. They shop by age range, by character, by whether it makes noise. Filtering that only understands price and colour is filtering that does not understand your customer.
☐ 5. Product options — 72%
Size, colour, bundle, battery included. Mechanically simple, easy to assume, worth confirming.
Position is Shopify’s own browse order in the Toys category on 23 September 2026 — 24 themes in it.
| # | Theme | Price | Checklist | Mobile CWV | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toyo | $140 | 3/5 — no back-in-stock, no pre-order | 83.3% | 20 |
| 2 | Sunrise | $240 | 1/5 | 92.9% | 122 |
| 3 | Ignite — Playtime | $380 | 5/5 | 80.4% | 99 |
| 4 | Pebble — Bunie | $400 | 1/5 | 72.6% | 48 |
| 5 | Ultra by UTD — Sprout | $100 | 5/5 | 85.5% | 30 |
| 6 | Cello — Crescendo | $160 | 3/5 — no back-in-stock, no gift wrapping | 56.4% | 79 |
| 7 | Boost | $380 | 2/5 | 88.1% | 82 |
| 8 | Divide | $350 | 1/5 | — | 13 |
| 9 | Kingdom — Prince | $280 | 2/5 | 92.8% | 209 |
| 10 | Mono — Tiny | $300 | 3/5 — no back-in-stock, no pre-order | 84.4% | 119 |
| 11 | Ascent — Joyfy | $320 | 5/5 | 91.1% | 76 |
| 12 | Paper — Parade | $320 | 4/5 — no back-in-stock | 89.5% | 53 |
Disclosure, before the table rather than after it: Ecom Almanac is published by UTD BV, which develops the Ultra theme in row five. Fifth is Shopify’s own browse position, not ours. The capability counts are Shopify’s own published lists and the speed figures are Google’s field data.
Three themes pass. They cost $100, $320 and $380. That is the whole realistic shortlist in this category, and it took one filter to find it.
The two most expensive themes in the table pass one item between them. $400 buys 1/5 here. Price is not a proxy for anything in a category this small.
Speed swings 36 points, from 56.4% to 92.9% of mobile visits passing Core Web Vitals, against a market median of 84.8%. The theme at 56.4% costs $160 and has 79 reviews — neither number warns you.
The most-reviewed theme in the table is 2/5. Kingdom has 209 merchant reviews and passes two items. Popularity tells you that stores survived the theme, not that the theme fits toys.
Build one collection page with forty products and an age filter. Every paid theme in the Shopify Theme Store installs free and charges only when you publish, so you can do this in two or three candidates before spending anything. That page is what a parent actually uses, and it is the page no demo shows.
Then check out once with a gift. If wrapping is not offered, note whether you mind. In November you will.
Then set your best seller to out of stock and look for somewhere to leave an email.
Ultra by UTD (Sprout preset) is 5th of 24 in Toys. It passes all five checklist items, costs $100, and passes Core Web Vitals on 85.5% of real mobile visits — above the market median of 84.8%. The other two complete themes cost $320 and $380.
Its weak number is the review count: 30, against 209 for Kingdom and 122 for Sunrise. That is a newer theme, and if a long record is your first requirement this is the honest reason to buy elsewhere.
If you want the fastest theme here it is Sunrise at 92.9% — and it passes one of five.
Ultra ships 86 sections and 2,175 settings, the most of any theme we publish, and 58 of the 59 capabilities any theme in the Shopify Theme Store reaches, against a market median of 48. Sprout is one of its five included presets, built for toys specifically. There is a written manual at its own address, and support is answered by the people who wrote the code.
At $100 in a table where the other complete themes cost three times that, we think it is underpriced rather than cheap. The way to check that costs nothing: install it, build the forty-product age-filtered collection, and publish only if it holds up.
Ultra in the Shopify Theme Store →
Ecom Almanac is published by UTD BV, which develops the Ultra theme listed above. Capabilities from the feature list Shopify publishes on each theme’s Theme Store page, 326 themes read on 23 September 2026. Category positions from our own daily crawl of all twenty Shopify Theme Store categories, 23 September 2026. Prices from our crawl of 305 themes with a listed price. Core Web Vitals from Chrome UX Report field data, August 2026, 249 themes with enough mobile data. A blank cell means not measured, not zero.
Five things, in this order. Gift wrapping, because toys are bought as presents more than almost anything else and Shopify publishes it for only 38% of themes. Pre-order, because releases and licensed launches are sold before they ship. Back-in-stock alerts, because the fourth quarter sells out and the people waiting are the ones who already chose. Product filtering and sorting, because parents shop by age and by character, not by price. And product options, for size, colour and bundle variants. Of the twelve highest-placed Toys themes, only three carry all five.
On measured data as of 23 September 2026, three themes in the Toys top twelve carry all five capabilities: Ignite's Playtime preset at 3rd of 24 for $380, Ultra by UTD's Sprout preset at 5th for $100, and Ascent's Joyfy preset at 11th for $320. Beyond that the field thins quickly — four of the top twelve carry only one of the five. With 24 themes in the whole category, the shortlist is genuinely short.
More than almost any other category. A large share of toy orders are gifts year-round and an overwhelming share in the fourth quarter, and the wrapping question is one the customer expects to be asked at checkout. Shopify publishes gift wrapping for 125 of 326 themes — 38% — and it is missing from seven of the twelve highest-placed Toys themes. An app can add it for a recurring monthly fee; a theme that has it costs nothing extra.
The Toys top twelve runs from $100 to $400 against a store-wide median of $300 across 305 themes with a listed price. Price does not predict the checklist: the $400 theme in that group passes one of five, and the $100 theme passes all five. What price reliably buys in this category is review history, which ranges from 13 to 209 across the same twelve themes.
Yes. Every paid theme in the Shopify Theme Store has a Try theme button: you install it, load your real products, and pay only when you publish. For a toy shop the test worth running is a collection page filtered by age range with forty products in it, on a phone, because that is the page a parent actually uses and the one demos never show.