Thanks for the link, Tom. Visited Palladium's site and, unless I'm sorely mistaken (it's happened before ;-), acquiring the rights to the Wishbone character is the big jewel of the buyout. On a side note, who is this Lisa Frank character? How popular is she?
Popular characters are a (the?) huge driver in the kids (especially young kids) edutainment category. Wishbone may not be as hot as The Rugrats, but he's quite popular (my bona fides: 3 young kids).
Outside of Blue (from Blue's Clues fame), The Magic School Bus and the Disney characters, I think that TLC has the most popular characters. I discount the characters that are popular (even wildly popular) with the very young kids (e.g. Barney, Teletubbies) because I don't see many parents buying a bunch of edutainment software for their kids when they're three and under. The sweet spot seems to be ages 4 through 12. It's interesting (and augers well for TLC) that Blue, MSB and the Disney characters are all owned/licensed by different outfits (don't know what the deal is w/Barney software; do know that Lyrick (formerly Lyons?) is the owner). And that none of these outfits is the #2 firm (what used to be Cendant Software).
Thomas the Tank Engine might be fairly popular (although not on the scale of the aforementioned characters). Anyone know if there's any Thomas software being published? If so, by whom? What about The Muppets? A couple of Gulla Gulla (sp?) Island titles would probably do pretty well and bring in some first time African-American customers. Bill Nye (the Science Guy) is being published, right? By whom? Maybe it's my technical bent and my admiration for the show, but I think a BNtSG series could be a big hit.
Well, enough of my ranting... |
