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John Adams secures licence for Linkee
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Tatty Puppy hits Hamleys for exclusive launch party
The partnership will see John Adams Leisure rolling out the distribution of Linkee whilst facilitating its marketing and promotion, and will start immediately by selling Linkee into the British independents following its debut on Dragons Den. Dean Tempest, founder of Linkee, said: “We have built Linkee out of cafes whilst juggling jobs. But the overwhelming interest in Linkee has reached the point where we need to take everything up to the next level. To make this happen, we need to build our distribution and the John Adams partnership brings to us all the tools to make that a certainty. Our approach from the beginning has been to surround Linkee with talented, enthusiastic people, who know more about the industry than we do and who are as excited about Linkee as we are. In John Adams we feel like we have definitely got that partner.” With over 45 years of experience in toys and games, John Adams’ brand
portfolio includes Rubik’s and Ideal, Othello and the famous Doggie Doo (Game of the Year 2011) with solid distribution across the entire British market. Linkee launched its crowd sourced trivia game in September last year.
Amazon changes trader pricing policy
The new Join In and Play Tatty Puppy was launched to the UK’s consumer press on the 8th September with an exclusive party at Hamleys on Regent Street. The exclusive event was attended by UK media including The Sun, Bauer Media, Daily Express, The Telegraph, The Guardian, ITV’s This Morning and Heat Magazine, plus bloggers and a number of celebrity fans and their children, including Natalie Cassidy, Imogen Thomas and Charlie Condou. The press were greeted by 101 Tatty
Puppies, and treated to a complete brand experience with Blue Nose face painting, character appearances, treasure hunts and toy testing stations, where children could play with products from the range including the latest Tatty Teddy & My Blue Nose Friends collectable figures and playsets from Wolds Apart, felt craft kits from DoCrafts, puzzles from Ravensburger, sticker kits from Blueprint and the brand new Christmas Annual from Pedigree. Join In and Play Tatty Puppy also showed off his puppy movements and reactions as he interacted with the Blue Nose Friends App. The latest character webisodes were unveiled for the first time before airing on the Bin Weevils website later this week.
Toys R Us agrees to ‘Let Toys Be Toys’
Amazon has altered its pricing policy for third-party traders amid investigations in the UK and Germany. The retailer dropped a clause banning traders signed up to its Marketplace platform from offering products elsewhere for cheaper. The change came into force across the EU from Friday 30th August 2013. As a result, the inquiries in the UK into whether the policy was anti-competitive are expected to be closed. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK and the Federal Cartel Office in Germany have been investigating Amazon over the policy, following numerous complaints. The OFT was looking into whether Amazon’s policy could affect the prices
that traders charged, including on their own websites. It was also concerned that it could restrict the entry of other traders into the market. Now, as a result of Amazon’s change of policy, it said it was minded to close the investigation, while the German authorities said they wanted to check the policy was definitely withdrawn. However, the OFT said that it understood that Amazon’s price parity policy remained in place elsewhere, such as in the US.
Toys R Us has
committed to being more inclusive in its marketing of toys to girls and boys. This announcement follows a meeting on Friday between Toys R Us UK board members and Let Toys Be Toys. Roger McLaughlan, managing director said: “We very much enjoyed meeting
Let Toys Be Toys. We will work with the Let Toys Be Toys team to ensure we develop the best plan for our customers.” The retailer confirmed that they would draw up a set of principles for in-store signage meaning that, in the long-term, explicit references to gender will be removed and images will show boys and girls enjoying the same toys. They promised to start by looking at the way toys are presented in their upcoming Christmas catalogue. The changes promised by Toys R Us follow in the footsteps of similar commitments from several other major retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Boots, The Entertainer and TK Maxx. All have agreed to banish ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ signs from their aisles following intervention by Let Toys Be Toys.
New Chuggington website launches
Ludorum’s global pre-school property, Chuggington, has a refreshed website at
www.chuggington.com, featuring a new online game, Chug Patrol Challenge, which went live in early September. Ludorum enlisted Bionic to help take a new approach to the look and feel of the website, including a new separate site for parents detailing brand news, broadcast updates and tips on educational lessons that can be extracted from each episode. The new interactive Chuggington website allows children to explore locations and interact with key characters. There are a number of interaction points allowing children to immerse themselves in the brand and play games, watch clips from the new series and take part in activities.
Chuggington.com is one of the first children’s websites to be fully built in HTML5 and CSS3, allowing users full functionality to enjoy the same experience whether they are using a mobile, tablet or desktop.
14 Toyworld
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