The Otago Daily Times has been able to find just two Otago elves still in the toy business - one producing wooden toys in Alexandra and the other plastic dune buggies in Dunedin.
Neil Garden of Gepetto Toy Craft was one of about 20 wooden toy-makers across the country when he started out in 1980.
Now he can name only two other New Zealand wooden toymakers and even he has "scaled it back a bit" and is more reliant on retailing imported wooden toys than making his own.
"The market has contracted a bit. More stuff is coming in from China and as staff have left we have not replaced them.
"It's just in response to the imported product. In our retail shop here in Alexandra our product takes up one wee corner and the rest of it comes in from Thailand or wherever."
Now Thailand is the centre of the wooden toy world because European manufacturers have moved there with their good designs and high standards.
"So you are getting the best of both worlds really. You are getting the quality and you are getting the lower price.
"It's a no-brainer for New Zealand producers. There's no way we can compete."
Mr Garden says the only reason the manufacturing side of his business has survived is because he has a product for babies younger than one year while the bulk of the market is for older children.
"The up-to-one-year-old [market] has been such a small part of the market that the global manufaturers haven't really taken much notice of that end and so we have been sort of under the radar."
Mr Garden says New Zealand consumers are still "wary" of Chinese-made wooden toys "after they smeared their toys with lead paint a couple of years ago".
"It hit the international media. They shot themselves in the foot."
"After that our sales took a leap and it was clearly in response to the consumer just being a wee bit wary of anything imported."
Norman Wood is the owner of Plastics EPI of Dunedin, which has as its main toy product a plastic "dune buggy" the company supplies to stores mainly around New Zealand.
He describes it as an "iconic" toy "a bit like the Buzzy Bee sort of thing".
Mr Wood says the company sells thousands of the "little critters" each year - 96-97% outside of Dunedin.
He says his company's survival in the "fiercely competitive" toy industry is due, in part, to being close to its market.
"[Overseas toymakers] are not here so they don't know anything.
"It would be very hard for me to sell dune buggies in Shanghai because I'm not too sure about tastes and colour options and stuff like that.
"You develop a relationship with the buyers. Closeness to market is very useful."
As well, Mr Wood says retailers he supplies do not have to hold big stocks of his products.
"They can order off us on a Tuesday and get the products into their stores by the end of the week so it means they can keep their stock levels low. That's a real advantage."
Mr Wood does not consider consumers are greatly influenced by whether a toy is manufacturered locally or overseas but believes New Zealand-made campaigns do have value.
"It helps. There's an element of that even if it's subconscious.
"People prefer to buy New Zealand-made product but if they can get something far cheaper they will buy the other product."
