We are proud to share Toy Souk Khaleej Times feature on 19 August 2026, in an article by senior reporter Waad Barakat titled “UAE’s first AI-enabled toy marketplace wants to solve parents’ birthday gifting dilemma.”
The article captures the founding story behind Toy Souk — from the conversations with 300+ UAE parents to the launch of Buddy the Bear, our AI toy advisor.
The Problem Every UAE Parent Knows as per Toy Souk Khaleej Times Feature
The Khaleej Times story opens with a question familiar to any parent in the UAE: what do you buy for a child you barely know?
It is a problem our founder Salman Yousuf noticed repeatedly while living in the UAE. Children’s birthday parties are a regular fixture on family calendars here. The average child attends around two birthday parties a month — that is 24 gifting occasions per year, often for children whose interests you know very little about.
After speaking with more than 300 UAE parents about how they shop for toys and gifts, the picture was consistent. The word that came up again and again was “nightmare.”
As Salman told Khaleej Times: “Buying a toy for your own child is one thing. You know what they like, you know what they have, and honestly, if they love it, you’ll spend whatever it takes. But buying for someone else’s child for a birthday party is a completely different experience.”
And then there is the scenario that every parent with young children will recognise — taking your own child to the toy shop to buy a birthday present for their friend. As Salman explained in the article: “You walk in for one toy and you walk out having bought two, one for the friend, one to avoid the meltdown.”
How Buddy the Bear Solves It
Toy Souk’s answer to the birthday gifting problem is Buddy the Bear — an AI-powered toy advisor built directly into the platform.
Rather than asking parents to scroll through hundreds of products and filter by age or price alone, Buddy starts a short conversation. A parent tells Buddy the child’s age, their interests, the occasion, and their budget. Buddy then matches those details against Toy Souk’s curated catalogue and returns a specific recommendation — along with a clear explanation of why that toy suits the child.
The Khaleej Times article explains the difference: filtering by “age 5, under Dh100” on a traditional platform might still return 80 results, leaving the parent no more confident than when they started. Buddy is different — it makes a recommendation and tells you why.
Age is a mandatory filter within Buddy, meaning it will never recommend a product outside the appropriate age range. Beyond that, every product in the Toy Souk catalogue is tagged by developmental stage — fine motor skills, imaginative play, early STEM engagement, social play — so even with limited information, Buddy defaults to what is developmentally appropriate for the child.
What We Have Learned from UAE Parents
The Khaleej Times feature also covers what we have learned since launching in December 2025.
Birthday gifting inspired the platform, but UAE parents are using Buddy for far more than birthdays. Parents are turning to Buddy for Eid gifts, for school achievement rewards, and for finding educational toys for their children on ordinary days.
Educational and STEM toys have consistently been our strongest category — reflecting the deep investment UAE parents make in their children’s development. And parents are not just accepting Buddy’s suggestions — they want to understand the reasoning behind each recommendation, which has shaped how Buddy explains its answers.
Since launching, Toy Souk has grown to more than 1,000 products from over 30 trusted vendor partners, attracted more than 17,000 users, and recorded close to 48,000 page views in its first eight months.
Read the Full Article
The full Khaleej Times feature by Waad Barakat is available here — https://www.khaleejtimes.com/lifestyle/uae-ai-toy-marketplace-birthday-gifts-parents
We are grateful to Waad and the Khaleej Times team for telling the Toy Souk story so thoroughly. The next time you are wondering what to buy for a child’s birthday — you know where to find us.
Visit Toy Souk at toysouk.com and meet Buddy the Bear today — https://toysouk.com
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