When digital and physical combine
Carte Blanche and Mind Candy have joined forces to blur the lines between the digital Moshi Monsters world and the real world of plush. Toy World’s Tom Roberts spoke to Carte Blanche’s Grace Elphinstone, marketing communications manager, and Catherine Lawrence, brand manager, to find out about this new development and news on the company’s other key brands.
I
t was somewhere in Vegas when the fateful meeting between Stephen Haines, Carte Blanche, and Michael Acton-Smith, Mind Candy, took place. Described by both as a “meeting of minds”, they sensed that there were opportunities for synergy between
the two companies. Mind Candy saw in Carte Blanche its experi- ence in making quality and collectable plush, and the undeniable ability to make fans buy into the collectable nature of its products. Grace Elphin- stone, marketing communications manager, commented: “Michael and Stephen discussed at length how they could both harness this and move Moshi Monsters into collectable plush. The result is that we can now reveal the details behind Carte Blanche becoming one of Mind Candy’s key licensees for 2014, and the launch of our exciting new Moshlings Collection.” The Moshi Monsters movie hit theatres on
December 20th 2013 and will be released on DVD in April 2014. The launch of Carte Blanche’s new range will coincide with the DVD release and will comprise initially of 12 Moshlings; there will be further introductions throughout 2014 which will also include the introduction of special characters.
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Catherine Lawrence, brand manager, explained: “The first 12 pieces will consist of fan favourites, new characters, some of the heavily-featured movie characters, plus some extra special ‘Ultra Rare’ Moshlings. Unique to each character will be a digital unlock code that can be used on Moshi-
Monsters.com to unlock that character in the digital world. This opens up, not only the ability to own your favourite characters in soft toy form, but to see them come to life within the game. We are experts in plush collectables, and Mind Candy are experts in digital content, so the collaboration is perfect.”
This means that with the introduction into the
plush range of ‘Ultra-Rare’ characters (those that are extremely hard to find in the game), kids can unlock them by buying the plush character; a clever way of encouraging children to engage with the range. Some of them will even have bespoke in-game abilities only available to players who own the specific plush character. The launch will take place at Toy Fair 2014 on
Carte Blanche’s stand, and acts as the starting gun for the supporting marketing programmes, both those run by Carte Blanche and those aligned with Mind Candy’s promotional activity. Carte
Blanche will be TV advertising the Moshlings Collection across the year, in some cases in collabo- ration with other licensees at key periods such as Easter and Christ- mas. Mind Candy and Carte Blanche will also team up on a variety of retail initiatives such as character appearances and in-store promo- tional activities. Grace com- mented: “At retail we will also be able to provide our partners with dedicated point- of-sale marketing
Grace Elphinstone
Catherine Lawrence
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