New products seek license to go green

Leveraging name brands into healthy living and sustainability was a key trend at Licensing International 2007 in June, and some products unveiled at the show could begin showing up in stores by the end of the year.

Nickelodeon showcased its plans to leverage many of its popular brands into healthy living. Earlier this year, it teamed with General Mills to launch a line of “Dora the Explorer” cereals with high fiber and low sugar, and the company now is moving into prepackaged fruits and vegetables as part of its Go Healthy Challenge.

“We’re looking to create kid-sized packages of fruit to give them an alternative to candy,” said Jonathan Finn, Nickelodeon’s vice president of consumer products’ communications. “It’s an area that didn’t even exist for us a few year ago and we’re looking to sign more partners for 2008 and 2009.”

Marvel Entertainment is planning movie versions of Iron Man and the Hulk for 2008, and is busy shopping for new licensees for the films. Marvel’s Paul Gitter said the licensing efforts for those two films, and other projects, would “really focus on finding food partners” to extend its merchandise programs into supermarkets and drug stores.

Mattel unveiled a program that encourages vendors to become more eco-friendly and will include a line of apparel in 2008. The Barbie B Cause program uses Mattel’s toy icon as a spokeswoman for its effort to encourage customers to respect the environment, and will feature a limited clothing line made up of bits and pieces of fabric leftover from manufacturers.

Mattel hopes to encourage its vendors to follow suit. Richard Dickson, senior vice president of marketing, media and entertainment for Mattel, said the company held a summit for key vendors earlier this year to talk about ways they can become more eco-friendly through such things as using recyclable packaging. “We don’t have any real guidelines for vendors right now, but we explained there are some basic rules we’d like them to follow,” Dickson said.

AG Properties, a division of American Greetings, is getting ready to roll out a line of merchandise based on Sushi Pack, an animated show produced with DIC Entertainment that will debut on CBS in September. Fox Home Entertainment signed a deal with AG Properties in June giving it North American distribution rights to release the series on DVD.

Disney Consumer Products said retail sales of products created by Disney and its licensees are on track to hit $26 billion in fiscal 2007, more than double the $13 billion generated in 2002. More than $1 billion of that total for 2007 will come from “Pirates of the Caribbean” products.

The Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association reported that licensing royalties inched up 1.5 percent to $6.04 billion in 2006. As usual, entertainment-based properties led the way with 44 percent of the market, followed by trademarks and brands with 18 percent. Apparel was the leading product category with 17 percent of the market, and toys were a close second with a 15 percent share.