Asda reveals its £10m festive toy story

The supermarket price war is continuing in the run up to Christmas as Asda announced it is to invest £10 million to slash the cost of popular toys in the festive period.

The supermarket chain said that it would be investing the cash to cut the prices on nearly 200 family favourites in “The Big Toy Rollback Event” – and warned that it would only be the beginning of a number of “significant” price drops across the store in the weeks before Christmas. It will also launch a new national TV campaign with independent price monitoring site Skuuudle to highlight the price differences between its own toys and those sold at Argos.

Asda category director Steph Strike said: “Struggling for money as a parent is not a game. No-one should pay over the odds providing for their children this Christmas.”

The battle between Britain’s leading supermarkets has intensified in recent months. Earlier this week, rival Sainsbury’s pledged to match thousands of prices at Tesco and Asda. The “Brand Match” promotion starts today and comes two weeks after Tesco launched a £500m “Big Price Drop” that cut the prices on 3,000 lines including milk, bread, fruit and vegetables.

Sainsbury’s has also installed a till system to instantly calculate prices against the same brands at Asda and Tesco.