Licensing
Creating brands from toys
After years of toys and games being a key licensed product category, Bulldog Licensing has been establishing an alternative model for the licensing industry since 2008, making toy brands into successful licensors, and creating wide-ranging consumer products programmes based on them. ToyNews chats to MD, Rob Corney to find out more.
T
he first major toy brand which Bulldog Licensing brought to market, was the hugely successful Gogo’s
Crazy Bones property back in 2008. Since then, the agency has gone on to create consumer merchandise programmes based on a wide range of toy brands from Shopkins, to Kindi Kids, and more recently, has launched a licensing programme for the market’s hottest new toy, Magic Mixies. Rob Corney, MD, Bulldog Licensing, explains: “Bulldog has delivered some of the industry’s biggest toy licensing programmes. From Gogo’s Crazy Bones, which broke new ground in proving that a small collectable with no media, could drive a chart-topping licensing programme, to Shopkins, which dominated the girls’ sector across all major licensed sectors for years, Bulldog has become the home of the great brands in this area.” Working with the licensor, Magic Box,
42 | toy news | Jan/Feb 2022
back in 2008, Bulldog represented the global rights to Gogo’s Crazy Bones, which grew from a series of collectable mini figures to become one of the world’s biggest licensed brands, coming runner-up in LIMA’s Licensing Programme of the Year in 2009. Rob continues: “The difference for us was taking a property (pre-mass digital media age) from the shelves and creating a character brand from its assets. Realising that brand presence at point of sale throughout the toy and CTN/kiosk market equated to huge brand visibility, we turned the metrics on their head. Instead of pitching a brand based on numbers of viewers on screen, we pitched based on visibility at retail, and worked with the licensor to develop character personalities and designs around the figures which had the most prominence in the adverts and packaging.” It was a novel approach for the market
whose currency, at that time, was largely based upon TV stats. Despite some hesitancy from the industry at first, Bulldog made the Gogo’s Crazy Bones licensing programme a huge success and it rose to the top of the charts across categories as diverse as apparel, publishing, wheeled toys and confectionery. “The programme delivered one of the most powerful retail properties of its time,” Rob explains, “and paved the way for the future of toys and collectables licensing around the world.” 14 years later, and the licensing of toy
properties has changed significantly. The advent of YouTube and social media platforms has meant that toy properties are able to react quickly to market demands and develop characteristics and brand attributes almost instantly, enabling them to create brands which can then be licensed. Rob furthers: “Major toy companies now
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