Tag Archives: my little pony

Funko teams with Hasbro for My Little Pony NFTs

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Funko has announced the upcoming release of a new collection of NFTs based on Hasbro’s iconic My Little Pony characters, including Pinkie Pie, Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, and more.

The My Little Pony x Funko Digital Pop! NFTs will be released on 28 June on NFT platform Droppp.io

Funko Digital Pop! are non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, in the form of digital collectibles featuring Funko’s unique stylised figures. My Little Pony Funko Digital Pop! will be available for $9.99 USD for the Standard Packs and $29.99 USD for the Premium Packs, with both limited to 18,000 copies available each for a total of 360,000 NFTs.

Each pack of Digital Pop! gives buyers a chance to reveal one of the rare Funko Digital Pop! when opened, which can then be redeemed for a free, limited edition, physical vinyl collectible.

Funko Digital Pop! will be available to purchase through the Droppp.io platform using a Droppp account and a credit card.

New My Little Pony, Transformers, and Magic: The Gathering content among Hasbro’s mass roll-out announcements

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It was a flurry of major new announcements across each of its sectors that Hasbro issued throughout its first all virtual investor event this week, including new film and TV content for its biggest franchises including My Little Pony, Transformers, and Magic: The Gathering.

In an address opened by Hasbro’s chairman and CEO, Brian Goldner, the entertainment powerhouse kicked off proceedings by detailing new financial reporting segments: Consumer Products, Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming, and Entertainment.

“We have simplified our structure to maximise our growth and provide a clearer view to the drivers of Hasbro revenues, profit, margin, and cash generation,” said Goldner during the event.

“Our expectation is that we return to growth in revenues, earnings, and EBITDA in 2021. This includes revenue growth in all three segments to potentially achieve double-digit revenue growth across Hasbro for the year.”

The Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment will include all revenue associated with the Wizards of the Coast tabletop and digital games, including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, as well as licensed Hasbro digital gaming across the portfolio.

Entertainment spans all revenue associated with Hasbro and eOne entertainment across Family Brands, TV and Film, and music.

The announcement came with an extensive roll-out of new announcements across each of the segments, that included the detailing of new animated and live-action TV and film releases across some of Hasbro’s most iconic entertainment franchises, including My Little Pony, Transformers, Peppa Pig, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Consumer Products

Hasbro was quick to project a growth of the consumer products revenue above the industry growth rate, fuelled by an increase in its ecommerce business which it expects to make up for 50 per cent of all consumer products business by 2025.

In its direct to consumer channels, Hasbro is to launch Hasbro Pulse to the UK, with additional markets to follow, while it has also detailed a partnership with Amazon on its PlaySkool brand with a new focus on learning and sustainability for pre-school audiences.

The firm is extending its partnership with Epic Games to continue a licensed roster of products for its Nerf and Games Fotnite collaborations, while expanding the IP into action figures and role play this year and beyond.

Hasbro also detailed three new Monopoly launches in Monopoly Builder, Monopoly Crooked Cash, and the community-based Monopoly campaign launching on March 19.

The company is also eyeing new innovation in the gaming space, aligning itself with voice technology to integrate Alexa into its gaming offering with The Wanted Bounty Hunters board game, a titles that gives players an in-game connection to Alexa and the cinematic world of The Mandalorian.

The toy maker will also be supporting its robust theatrical and streaming calendar of content this year with ranges spanning GI Joe, Ghostbusters, Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Princess new releases.

Completing the bill, and in partnership with Merlin Entertainment, Hasbro will be welcoming the opening of the first Peppa Pig theme park in LEGOLAND Florida next year.

Wizards of the Coast

A segment now spanning its hobby and digital gaming audiences, Wizards of the Coast is, according to the firm, ‘approximately halfway to achieving its target of doubling revenue from 2018 to 2023.’

2020 Wizards of the Coast revenue was $816 million, with Magic: The Gathering revenue up 23 per cent and Dungeons and Dragons revenue up 33 per cent for the year.

Alongside new digital game launches for both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, the unit has detailed new crossover products within the collectables and social play space with partners Warhammer 40,000 by Games Workshop, and Middle Earth Enterprises, to include characters from The Lord of the Rings universe.

Entertainment

Finally, within its Entertainment segment, Hasbro currently has more than 200 projects underway across TV and film.

Franchise plans include those with Transformers which has a panned feature film for 2022, a new animated feature film in developments, a third instalment of Transformers: War for Cybertron on Netflix, a new 20-episdoe animated comedy series on Netflix called Transformers: BotBots, and a new original animated Transformer series with Nickelodeon.

Meanwhile, Magic: The Gathering currently has a feature film in development at Fox, as well as a premium animated series in production with Netflix, while Dungeons and Dragons has partnered with Paramount Pictures for its own feature film, and a number of television projects are in the works.

With My Little Pony, a CGI film will debut on Netflix this year, alongside a new computer animated series.

New Peppa Pig content will continue to roll out through to 2023 as well as PJ Masks.

Hasbro and eOne detail global broadcast partners for new My Little Pony: Pony Life series

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Hasbro’s global entertainment studio, eOne has secured a strong line up of broadcast partners across most of the globe for the next latest chapter of the ever-popular My Little Pony brand.

My Little Pony: Pony Life is a new series premiering in select territories this autumn, with a larger roll-out running between the end of 2020 and spring 2021. The series explores the funny side of friendship, following the adventures of the ponies as they spend most of their time at Sugarcube Corner.

The ‘Mane 6’ (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy) run into all sorts of ‘cupcake conundrums’, ‘frosting fails’ and ‘magical mishaps’ as Pinkie Pie serves up frosted cupcakes to the best customers in the world; her friends.

Several broadcasters around the world have picked up the show including Turner Australia, Turner South East Asia and Channel 9 GO! in Australia, TVNZ New Zealand, Mediacorp Singapore, Spacetoon in the Middle East, Tiny Pop, part of Sony Pictures Television in the UK, Discovery Kids in Latin America, Discovery Family in the US, Corus Entertainment’s Treehouse in Canada, Disney Channel in Germany, Gulli in France and Cartoonito in Italy.

The show will also be available on selected digital platforms at a later stage.

My Little Pony: Pony Life will now join its portfolio partner Peppa Pig in several territories including Canada (Treehouse), Latin America (Discovery) giving the partners the chance to present two iconic brands which are guaranteed to keep their audiences engaged and entertained.

“Pony Life is a fresh and exciting take on a classic brand, and we are so pleased to be able to bring it to many of our TV and digital  partners around the world,” said Monica Candiani, eOne’s EVP content sales at Family Brands. “Going forward, we are confident that we will be able to secure the strongest broadcast platforms for our bigger portfolio of hit  properties and realize incredible benefits by building on the remarkable relationships we have with global partners.”

Following Hasbro’s acquisition of eOne, the newly restructured content division will now oversee all content distribution of stellar family entertainment brands including Peppa Pig, My Little Pony, Transformers, Power Rangers, PJ Masks and Ricky Zoom.  

While continuing to focus on its popular pre-school shows like Peppa Pig and PJ Masks, eOne will now also leverage hottest kids IP’s including My Little Pony, Transformers and Power Rangers to create a one-stop-shop for quality content for global partners.

“Entertainment One is excited to develop, produce and drive the content around our portfolio of world class brands. Our rich content spans multiple ages, demographics and genres across the kids market with some of the most popular and recognisable family brands in the world today,” said Candiani.

World’s most valuable toy brands could lose up to $3bn in brand value to Covid-19, says Brand Finance report

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The world’s top 25 most valuable toy brands – a list that includes the likes of LEGO, Barbie, and Bandai – could lose up to $3 billion worth of brand value as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the latest report to emerge from the independent brand valuation consultancy, Brand Finance.

Analysis by the firm shows that the toys sector is a heavily impacted industry globally and could face as much as a 20 per cent loss in brand value. Looking beyond the toys sector, the value of the 500 most valuable brands in the world, ranked in the Brand Finance Global 500 2020 league table, could fall by an estimated $1 trillion as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Brand Finance has assessed the impact of Covid-19 based on the effect of the outbreak on enterprise value, compared to what it was on 1st January 2020. The likely impact on brand value was estimated for each sector. The industries have been classified into three categories – limited impact (minimal brand value loss or potential brand value growth), moderate impact (up to 10 per cent brand value loss), and heavy impact (up to 20 per cent brand value loss.

While according to the analysts, the toys industry is predicted to suffer a heavy impact to its brand value, it has highlighted a few clear leaders in the sector. One such is LEGO, whose strong marketing strategy and customer loyalty may allow Covid-19 to be an opportunity for the brand to reach new customers who are looking for ways to stay busy at home, states the firm.

“However, marketing and brand awareness campaigns will only take the brand so far, as it is most likely to be faced by manufacturing and distribution issues heavily impacting both the toys and retail sectors,” said Richard Haigh, managing director, Brand Finance.

In fact, the report suggests that LEGO remains the world’s most valuable toy brand by a long way, despite its brand value dropping marginally by 3 per cent to $6.6 billion.

Meanwhile, Nerf has been billed as the fastest growing toy brand this year, following an impressive 43 per cent brand value growth to $587 million. Nerf has made strong progress with its new product lines including Nerf Fortnite and Nerf Ultra. New product launches, paired with greater innovation across the brand, are supporting Nerf in rising to the challenge of increased competition in the sector.

In addition to measuring overall brand value, Brand Finance also evaluates the relative strength of brands, based on factors such as marketing investment, customer familiarity, staff satisfaction, and corporate reputation. According to these criteria, My Little Pony is the world’s strongest toy brand with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score of 89.8 out of 100 and a corresponding elite AAA+ brand strength rating.

My Little Pony has celebrated an impressive 20 per cent brand value increase to $302 million. The brand’s cartoon series hit the headlines last year as it featured the show’s first same-sex couple, with the episode airing on US television in time for Pride Week.

Following delays in the production of the 2021 My Little Pony feature film, due to Coronavirus, animation work has restarted on the movie, which is being created under Hasbro’s global entertainment studio, eOne. The 2017 My Little Pony: The Movie grossed over US$61 billion in the box office globally.

The Top 10 Most Valuable Toy Brands, according to Brand Finance:

Hasbro’s VP consumer products Marianne James on becoming a pre-school powerhouse

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When Hasbro first made clear its plans to take over the Entertainment One entity at the end of 2019, the writing was pretty much on the wall that 2020 was going to be an atypical year for the world of children’s entertainment, licensing, and toys.

No one quite knew exactly how different things would turn out, and yet the licensing and toy industries have persisted and here we stand, on the edge of the first virtual Festival of Licensing in place of our usual Brand Licensing Europe, where Hasbro is about to unveil a whole new slate of content for Peppa Pig, new toy lines for PJ Masks, and its latest plans for Ricky Zoom.

Alongside all of which, we hasten to add, the global powerhouse of children’s entertainment and now one of the world’s biggest players in the pre-school space, will also be rolling out the latest franchising, licensing, and merchandising plans for that staple portfolio of brands such as NERF, Power Rangers, Transformers, Monopoly, My Little Pony… the list goes on.

It should come as little shock that Hasbro is now not only looking to put its stake in the ground in the global pre-school market with Peppa Pig and PJ Masks leading the charge, but developing way beyond the current flagship IP to turn the pre-school space into its own veritable playground.

Here, Licensing.biz catches up with Marianne James, VP of consumer products at Hasbro to discuss the integration of the Entertainment One property over the course of the year, how 2020 has forced the global entertainment house to evolve to the next level, and just what else Hasbro has cooking now that it spans the entertainment spectrum.

Well, Marianne, it’s been one eventful year, and one that all kicked off with the acquisition of eOne. How has Hasbro’s licensing division adapted to and moved with the changes of the past year?

The biggest major change we made from an organizational perspective is that we’re now one fully integrated Licensing team following the acquisition of eOne last year. At the beginning of the year, we devised a new organisational structure to support our expanded portfolio across EMEA.

It has been a real benefit, allowing us to leverage the vast talent pool from the eOne team while combining it with the Hasbro team. Together it is a true powerhouse that has strengths in so many different areas and a portfolio that is second to none.

In terms of adapting to the vast changes that have occurred externally in the past year, we were quick to pivot and pause our licensing activations during lockdown and create a suite of digital assets for families to enjoy at home. Going forward we recognise the need to be flexible and offer a diverse category mix that can evolve with the changing needs of the world. Our retail approach will focus more closely on e-commerce and the value channel in reflection of what we’re seeing in the marketplace and we’re ready to embrace those opportunities with our product and promotional offering.

2020 has seen Hasbro take on the position of powerhouse in the pre-school space, and you’ve already given us a taste of what’s to come for Peppa Pig, PJ Masks, and Ricky Zoom. How much has the acquisition informed Hasbro’s approach to the licensing space this year and going forward? Can you talk us through plans here?

The acquisition of eOne dramatically enhances our storytelling capabilities and franchise strategies through TV, film, digital and other mediums. The new content creates greater opportunity to deliver amazing stories for all screens and audiences. Anytime you acquire a stable of IP as notable as eOne’s, your approach to the business must reflect that; such is the case here. With a strong foothold in the preschool space, we are now particularly excited to dive deeper in that area and explore themes and play patterns complementary to our existing brands.

You mentioned Ricky Zoom, PJ Masks and, of course, Peppa Pig, as the standouts and I can only say that we have more pre-school brands in development now and these will be given the opportunity to leverage the success of those brands.

What is the vision for Hasbro now it spans all entertainment markets, from pre-school to adult? That must be a very exciting dominion for you to be looking after, too…

It is quite exciting. Right now, we are working towards a smooth and compelling integration of our combined portfolio into the retail market. With a repertoire of brands that span every age, demographic and category, organization and careful planning become paramount.

We are always striving to find new ways to work with our retail partners to maximize the breadth and depth of our portfolio. Our goal is to bring a high level of expertise, of knowledge, to every demographic and play pattern. In today’s market there is no substitute for expertise, it is crucial that we stay on top of all areas in order to be the best partner for retail that we can be.

We know that our brand portfolio is our strength. It will set us up for success in 2021 as we work to activate in every imaginable retail channel from the traditional and beyond. Our goal is to lead the market in a 360 approach from CP, digital, experiential, content and brand marketing.

Away from the eOne brands, Hasbro has a portfolio of massive IP like Transformers, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, Hasbro Gaming, NERF… can you talk through some of the biggest developments for these brands? How will Hasbro continue to push the envelope of innovation in the licensing space through the development of this IP roster?

There is a great deal going on! We always like to mark milestone anniversaries, and next year we have the 35th anniversary of Transformers. We also have the 85th anniversary of Monopoly commencing later this year. Both events give cause for timely celebration and will be leveraged with exciting collaborations, consumer promotions and retail activations.

Owing to our growing understanding of the changes in consumer behaviour, Nerf is also a property that we believe will enjoy a rapid expansion across multiple categories next year. Its growth will continue to cement our position as a leader in the active lifestyle and sports category. The Nerf franchise will benefit from significant above the line investment in 2021 with soon to be revealed experiential marketing initiatives set to bring the brand to life like never before.

The way we approach our CP program is guided by what we call the ‘Brand Blueprint’. This refers to our strategic framework for bringing our brands to life in exciting new ways to create immersive, 360-degree experiences for our audiences. Right now, we’re focused on deeper consumer engagement, innovative brand and product experiences and increasingly expansive opportunities for our portfolio.

It’s really all about leveraging these great story driven properties like Power Rangers, My Little Pony and Transformers by giving fans new and exciting experiences both at retail and online.

What are some of the key emerging trends within the licensing/consumer product space, and how is Hasbro aligning itself with them and maintaining its position of strength in the field?

Following lockdown, the importance of digital content and e-commerce platforms really came to the fore and that’s a key strategic focus for us. In a very short space of time, access to entertainment and retail via digital platforms really accelerated at an unprecedented rate and given the uncertainty surrounding the next year that’s something we need to be mindful of in every aspect of the business.

We are always monitoring and evaluating all the information we can gather regarding widespread changes in consumer behaviour. There is real value in being able to not only react but anticipate consumer behaviour.

There are fundamental changes that occur that will have reverberations for the industry, so we strive to keep on top of it. Currently, growth is evident in Food, Health &Wellness, Personal Care, Puzzles &; Games, Home Goods, and Classic Play. As always, we will work to service the growing demand and find good fits within our brand portfolio.

 

Hasbro extends representation deal with WildBrain CPLG to cover CEE and Turkey

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Hasbro has extended its agreement with the sport, lifestyle, and entertainment licensing agency, WildBrain CPLG to cover both CEE and Turkey. The move is an extension of the deal it had with the firm, naming it the Hasbro sub-representative in the Nordics and Benelux regions as of January 1st this year.

Under the agreement, WildBrain CPLG will now represent Hasbro’s merchandise, publishing, promotions, and short-term location based entertainment business across Benelux, Nordic, CEE, and Turkey regions.

“We are moving our direct business to an agent model in CEE and Turkey as both regions have tremendous growth potential for our consumer products business,” said Marianne James, vice president of Hasbro Consumer Products in EMEA. “We believe that the strength of WildBrain CPLG to cover Benelux, Nordic, CEE and Turkey will allow us to scale our efforts in a meaningful way.

“WildBrain CPLG will develop our strong portfolio of brands such as Nerf, Monopoly, Play-Doh, and My Little Pony.”

Maarten Weck, executive vice president and managing director at WildBrain CPLG, added: “We are very pleased to extend our geographical footprint to represent Hasbro in CEE and Turkey, where we see tremendous opportunity for their leading family brands.

“The addition of these new markets to our remit strengthens our strategic relationship with Hasbro and gives us even more opportunity to synergise our European efforts, without losing the local touch.”