Coolabi Group plans to “spook kids silly” this Halloween with comedy brand Scream Street

International rights owner Coolabi Group and its “spooktacular” stop-motion animation Scream Street are celebrating the launch of Series 2 on CBBC and BBC iPlayer, with a hybrid campaign of fun brand activations, promotional partnerships and brand extensions for the popular comedy this autumn.

Following a preview of the first five episodes in Halloween 2020, all 26 x 11’ episodes of Scream Street Series 2 will launch on BBC iPlayer from 23 October, with 10 brand-new episodes playing out across Halloween week on CBBC from 25 October, bringing the total number of episodes created to 78.

After successfully launching ‘Escape Scream Street’ on Roblox last year, a new Roblox experience called ‘Scream Street Playground’ will launch on the platform on 22 October. The game will allow players to visit various locations in the town with friends starting with Resus Negative’s house. At launch players can play two different themed games – ‘Candy Smash’ and ‘Masks’ – with more mini games added over time as the town is expanded.

A promotional partnership with family restaurant Frankie & Benny’s has also been announced. The initiative, which launched earlier this month, will see Scream Street activity sheets distributed to families in all their restaurants in the UK. It features a competition prize for a free family theme-park visit, with prizes of Scream Street books for runners-up. The partnership will also form part of Frankie & Benny’s Halloween meal with Deliveroo, a Scream Street-themed food offering for the Halloween school holidays that will run until 16 November.

Coolabi Group, Comedy Club 4 Kids and MEGA Magazine have also co-produced a video series about stand-up comedy for kids on MEGA’s official YouTube channel. The four part series, called ‘Screaming with Laughter’, launched this week and features a crash course on how kids can kick-start their comedy careers.

Coolabi and Comedy Club 4 Kids will bring their partnership to life with an in-person family series launch and kids stand-up comedy event that will take place at Everyman Kings Cross on Saturday 23 October for media, influencers and families. The event also marks the release of the Scream Street’s brand new Spooktacular Joke Book, from Walker Books, which came out earlier this month.

Continuing a successful partnership with Girl Talk, established in 2020, Coolabi Group has teamed up with the media title once again to co-produce content for the magazine’s YouTube channel, Girl Talk World. This Halloween, talented 13-year-old chef Sienna Cecco, a specialist in Italian cuisine, will create a Scream Street themed cook-a-long dish.

“We are completely delighted to be launching the much-anticipated new series of Scream Street on CBBC and iPlayer this Halloween,” says Michael Dee, Director of Content for Coolabi Group. “It’s a fun and engaging brand, which is evidenced in the range of partnerships and promotions we have delivered to amplify the launch and bring Halloween fun to families across the UK.”

In addition, the Scream Street costume characters will be appearing at Alton Towers from now until 12 November for daily in-park meet and greets and an interactive dance challenge experience, where visitors can learn the moves to the Scream Street theme tune.

The celebrations continue with the return of the free downloadable ‘Scream Street Halloween at Home’ party pack, which launched last year. The newly updated pack will be available to download on the Scream Street and CBBC website and is filled with activities to get the party started, from Scream Street character masks and puzzles, to cupcake toppers, decorative tent cards and monster making crafts.

Scream Street returns to CBBC on 25 October with all episodes available to stream on BBC iPlayer from 23 October. 

The Clangers announce magical musical plans

International rights owner Coolabi Group and its BAFTA award winning kids show, Clangers, are celebrating a host of musical activations for the much-loved brand including partnerships with Nordoff Robbins, Amazon (for the brand-new Clangers Talk Kids+ Edition), a licensing deal with tonies and an official Clangers album release with Grammy Award winning composer, John du Prez.

Coolabi Group has announced that Clangers will be partnering once again with music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins for a brand new interactive three part series of ‘On Stage at Home Live’.

Launching on Monday 11 October at 10am with its first session followed by two more morning sessions on 18 October and 25 October, the fun and free musical Zoom sessions for preschool children will be hosted by CBeebies presenter and performer Cat Sandion and Nordoff Robbins music therapist Emily Grimes. They will feature dancing from the Clangers and a specially created kindness song for viewers to sing, dance and learn important life skills on how to be kind.

In addition, a new version of Clangers Talk Kids+ Edition, a voice-activated Alexa Skill for Amazon, is now available. Clangers Talk originally launched in 2019 and quickly became one of Alexa’s most popular kids’ skills on the device. It allows children to communicate with Clangers, who respond with whistles and songs, and now includes popular nursery rhymes and Clangers audio stories.

The brand new Clangers figurine from audio box company tonies is now available, with six magical stories voiced by Clangers narrator, Sir Michael Palin. The Clangers tonie is available from selected toy retailers, bookshops and the tonies website.

‘The Clangers Album’ by award winning composer John Du Prez, featuring the magical sounds of the Little Blue Planet, has been released on the Ocean Music label, and is available to buy in all high street and online music shops. John Du Prez has produced 18 magical tracks on the 12” LP version, available in a choice of pink and blue vinyl, and an extra four bonus tracks for the CD and digital download.

Jeremy Banks, CEO of Coolabi Group said: “We are absolutely over the moon to be announcing these brand new Clangers partnerships and product releases which celebrate all the fantastic music and sounds that make Clangers so magical and unique.“

Coolabi’s Warrior Cats leaps onto Roblox with the new Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition game

The independent international media group, Coolabi  has partnered with Roblox specialists, Aldrich-Callen Studios to develop a new 3D role-play game for global online platform Roblox. The game will be based on its best-selling fantasy brand, Warrior Cats.

The new ‘Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition’ game will be set within the Forest Territory from the hit book series and will invite players to create and customise their own cat character, explore the vast world of Warriors, join a Clan, and interact with other players to make their own Warrior Cats story.

Warriors is a feline fantasy book series about five clans of wild cats – ShadowClan, RiverClan, ThunderClan, WindClan and StarClan. The series was created by Working Partners, a Coolabi Group company, and has become a publishing hit following the release of over 80 titles, spanning 38 languages and sold over 41 million copies to date. The most recent book, Warriors: The Broken Code: The Place of No Stars, is also a New York Times bestseller, debuting at number eight.

The news of the interactive game comes two years after the launch of the award-winning WarriorCats.com, an official digital destination for Warriors’ ever-growing global fan community, which attracted over 1.3 million visitors in 2020. Since the book series launched, legions of passionate fans across the globe have created fan art, animation and fiction, with user-generated content receiving over 42 million monthly views collectively on YouTube.

There are also over 1000 dedicated Warriors YouTube channels with a new fan video uploaded every 30 mins on average.

Last year Coolabi Group conducted a survey with over 10,000 members of its Warrior Cats fanbase established that not only do they love gaming, but Roblox was one of the most popular online platforms.

Naomi Dare, director of digital at Coolabi Group, said: “We’re excited to be launching a Warriors game on Roblox as we know that so many nine to 12 year olds are on the platform, with over half of this age group in the USA playing on Roblox at least once a week. This tends to be the age that people start reading Warriors, so not only does it serve our existing fan base who are desperate to role play in a Warriors world, but it should also attract new fans to the brand too.”

The ‘Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition’ Roblox game is free to play on Roblox and out now.

Coolabi Group’s Scream Street rises up on CBBC for second season

The spook-tastic stop animation TV series Scream Street is wending its way back onto CBBC this autumn, as season two of the popular children’s show prepares to land in time for Halloween. The deal was brokered by the series’ independent international rights holder, Coolabi Group.

Based on the hit book series of the same name written by Tommy Donbavand, the all new, 26 x 11’ series features a whole host of new characters and rib-tickling adventures.

The Scream Street gang includes Luke the teenage werewolf, Resus the Vampire, savvy 4,000 year-old Mummy, Cleo, Luella the trainee witch, surf-dude zombie Doug and Frankenstein-style creation Six. This season they go on their most outrageous adventures yet, featuring thrills, chills and a lot of laughs.

Six is a new character for series two, who is the same age as most of the gang, but born yesterday, and along with Luella and Cleo, forms part of Scream Street’s brand-new girl squad. She moves to Scream Street with her creator, Dr F, and eccentric scientist and the latest antagonist to the Scream Street crew.

The new episodes see the gang come up against a whole host of silly spooks as they battle to save Scream Street, usually from one of evil Otto’s dastardly tricks, or one of their own sticky situations.

Luke is voiced once more by Tyger Drew-Honey, with John Thomson, Debra Stephenson, Claire Skinner, Rasmus Hardiker, Tala Gouveia, and Jim Howick returning to voice the remaining residents of Scream Street.

Jeremy Banks, chief executive of Coolabi, said: “In a world where audiences of all ages are falling in love with strange and spooky stories, Scream Street is a fun-filled, weird and extremely wonderful show for younger audiences, brimming with tricks, treats and laugh-out-loud humour for all the family.”

The hit show, produced by Coolabi Group, is being brought back to life by showrunner Giles Pilbrow (Spitting Image and Horrible Histories) and is co-produced and animated by award-winning animation studio Factory (Clangers, Strange Hill High) in Altrincham.

Coolabi will be working with ZDF Enterprises to bring the hit animated comedy series to kids across the world.

Coolabi secures new content and licensing partnerships for Clangers

The independent media group, Coolabi Group has secured a raft of new partnerships for the award-winning pre-school property, Clangers spanning a deal with Gulliver;s Theme park Resorts, new episodes on CBeebies UK, and a YouTube Kids series.

A new Clangers licensing partnership with Gulliver’s Theme Park Resorts will see the launch of a live experience aimed at families with pre-school children launching this February half term. It features a 15 minute live Clangers stage show with Tiny and Small Clanger, as well as special hotel and birthday packages,

The partnership will run across four locations throughout the year.

On top of this, new episodes of the BAFTA winning show Clangers will air on CBeebies in March and will conclude series three. Narrated by Sir Michael Palin, the new eight x 11’ episodes will follow the Clangers on a host of new experiences and adventures.

The stop-motion animation series of Clangers is also continuing its global expansion on YouTube, by bringing more episodes to YouTube Kids in the US. The first 10 episodes of series three launched this week on the streaming service.

The recently launched YouTube seriesThe Tiny and Small Clanger Show, which has accumulated over 500k views so far, uses hand puppetry and is produced by Wildbrain Spark and Coolabi Productions.

Available to watch now on the Clangers official YouTube channel, the short-form series follows Tiny and Small as they embark on lots of educational adventures together from learning about recycling and nursery rhymes, to finding out more about music, shapes and counting.

Available for licensees, Tiny & Small Dreams will feature a unisex palette on a clean white base, with pops of colour, flat character art, stitching detail and applique details. The range will be launching on the Clangers official store this quarter.

Director of content at Coolabi Group, Michael Dee, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be starting the new year with some brand new Clangers episodes on CBeebies and also celebrating our core pre-school family audience by focusing on the youngest members of the Clangers family, Tiny and Small, with a series of creative new brand extensions including live experiences and licensed apparel.

“YouTube is an essential platform for content creators to reach preschoolers. The Tiny and Small Show is full of educational messages, songs and adventure, and we are confident that it will resonate and be embraced by little Clangers fans across the globe.”

Coolabi Group celebrates “significant growth” for Warrior Cats

Coolabi Group is celebrating the significant growth of its global Warrior Cats brand that since launching its own online hub and merchandise store in January last year, has seen more than 1.25 million unique users engage with it.

WarriorCats.com is the official digital destination for Warriors’ colossal and ever-growing global fan community which has also accumulated over 125,000 registered fans and counting.

The merchandise store sells a wide range of apparel, backpacks, keychains and a brand-new plush range. Over 80,000 fans voted in a series of polls which determined that large plushes of Jayfeather, Firestar and Graystripe were created, all of which sold out within four days of launching on the store.

Building on this success, this week Coolabi launched a new mobile app, developed with agency, Kids Industries. The new app increases accessibility, allowing users to see and react to a feed of Warriors content including fan art, exclusives from author Erin Hunter, quizzes, polls and more, plus access the official merchandise store while on the move.

It allows the Warriors team to communicate directly with the brand’s fan-base, and users can opt in to receive notifications to be updated with key book releases, events, offers and promotions.

Naomi Dare, director of digital at Coolabi Group, said: “The growth of Warrior Cats over the years and especially since the launch of the online hub, has been absolutely amazing. To see the Warriors fanbase become a thriving phenomenon just demonstrates how millions of people across the world have become captivated by Warriors and this new app will give fans a more streamlined way to explore new content from hub on their mobiles.  We can’t wait to announce more initiatives in 2020.”

The announcement follows the recent news that WarriorCats.com has just been nominated for ‘Best Website’ in the Digital – Kids category at the Kidscreen Awards 2020. The new “Warrior Cats Hub” app is available to download now from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

WarriorCats is an epic fantasy adventure book series about five clans of wild cats – ShadowClan, RiverClan, ThunderClan, WindClan and StarClan. The series was created by Working Partners, a Coolabi Group company.

The Warriors books have become a publishing sensation with over 40 million books sold to date and published in over 30 languages.

The latest book, The Broken Code: The Silent Thaw, which is distributed by Harper Collins in the US, recently debuted at number one on The New York Times’ Children’s bestseller list.