HOW ROMANTASY CHANGED THE FANTASY TOY MARKET

Fourth Wing, ACOTAR, and Ice Planet Barbarians did not just top bestseller lists. They appear to have changed what a significant segment of buyers want, and how they shop for it.

If you have been paying attention to publishing over the last three years, you already know what romantasy is. Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses, Ice Planet Barbarians - the genre that made dragon love interests and fae warriors a mainstream cultural conversation. What is less documented is what happened downstream from all of that reading, in consumer behaviour terms.

A different kind of buyer appears to have arrived in the fantasy toy market. And the signals in the search data suggest the shift is still in progress.

Emily Conway, Creative Director at Dragon Dildo® UK, has been tracking Google Trends data across fantasy toy categories since 2022, cross-referencing it against the romantasy publishing timeline. Her observations point to a meaningful change in who is entering this category and what they are looking for when they get there.

"The romantasy reader tends to be a different kind of customer to the traditional fantasy toy buyer," Emily says. "She typically arrived through fiction rather than through existing adult retail communities. She has usually done significant research before she buys, and she tends to have specific expectations around quality, design, and brand transparency that were less common in this category before 2022."

What the search data suggests

Fantasy toy search interest appears to have predated the romantasy boom by several years. Dragon dildo and monster dildo were already established search categories in January 2022, before Fourth Wing was published and before BookTok romantasy had reached mainstream scale.

From mid-2023 onwards, search interest for several fantasy toy categories shows upward movement that broadly tracks with the period when Fourth Wing's BookTok engagement began to build and ACOTAR's sustained platform presence was drawing consistent new readers into the genre. Whether this correlation reflects direct causation is difficult to establish from search data alone.

What is clearer is that the movement looks structurally different from previous adult industry cultural moments. Fifty Shades of Grey peaked in search interest around 2015 and declined sharply within two years. The current romantasy wave has not shown a similar pattern of collapse across the same timeframe, though how long the current trajectory continues remains to be seen.

"The comparison with Fifty Shades is instructive," Emily says. "That was an intense but relatively brief window. What we are seeing now has been more sustained across a longer period, and each new major release in the genre appears to bring in a new cohort of curious buyers rather than simply reactivating existing ones."

Methodology: Analysis based on Google Trends relative search interest data for fantasy toy-related terms including dragon dildo, monster dildo, tentacle dildo, and adjacent category searches, January 2022 to June 2026. Google Trends data reflects relative search interest rather than absolute transaction volume. Correlation with publishing milestones is observational.

What this buyer cohort appears to want

Based on Emily's observations of the category since 2022, the romantasy-influenced buyer tends to prioritise four things that were previously less central to fantasy toy purchasing decisions.

Materials transparency is the first. Platinum-cured medical-grade silicone has become something of a baseline expectation among more informed buyers in this category - non-porous, phthalate-free, and body-safe. Buyers arriving through the romantasy pipeline tend to research materials before purchasing more often than earlier buyer cohorts appeared to.

Design seriousness is the second. This cohort arrived through fiction with specific creature archetypes already in mind. Products that reflect genuine design investment tend to perform better with this audience than novelty items with a loose fantasy aesthetic.

Discretion is the third. Many buyers entering the fantasy toy category for the first time place significant weight on discreet billing and shipping. Removing uncertainty around packaging and transaction descriptions appears to reduce purchase friction meaningfully for first-time buyers.

Information quality is the fourth. Buyers in this cohort tend to read widely before purchasing. Brands that publish substantive editorial content, written for an informed adult audience, appear to connect more effectively with this group than brands relying on conventional promotional language.

"The brands that seem to be building the strongest relationship with this audience are the ones that take both the fantasy and the buyer seriously," Emily says. "That means being transparent about materials and manufacturing, engaging honestly with what the product is and who it is for, and not treating the category as inherently novelty."

The broader picture

Romantasy as a publishing category has seen significant commercial growth since 2022. According to Circana BookScan data, Onyx Storm - the third book in Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series - sold 2.7 million copies in its first week of release in January 2025, making it the fastest-selling adult title in BookScan history at that point. The genre's audience has grown substantially and appears to span a wider age and demographic range than earlier characterisations of fantasy fiction readership suggested.

Whether that audience translates directly and proportionally into fantasy toy buyers remains an open question. What the search data suggests is that there is meaningful overlap, and that the overlap appears to be growing.

For buyers entering the category for the first time, transparency around materials, manufacturing standards, and fulfilment practices appears to matter more than novelty positioning. The full range from Dragon Dildo® is available for European and international orders, with materials and manufacturing information published openly on the brand's site.

"The question we get most often from new buyers is where to start," Emily says. "The answer tends to be the same regardless of what brought them here: start with materials, start with a design that genuinely reflects the fantasy you have in mind, and buy from a brand that is transparent about what it makes and how."