TOTAL LICENSING
mentally friendly site aimed and chil- foundation, John Keegan is now ac-
dren and contains an astonishing 300 tively licensing Edison and, bringing
pages of content for children, educa- the story up to date, the Foundation
tors and parents. has secured a broadcast commitment
There are 29,000 Links to Planetpals through NJN-TV PBS for The Adven-
Earthzone: from educational portals, tures of Young Thomas Edison which
environmental organizations, school will comprise 20 minutes of animation
websites, search engines, top sites plus a further ten minutes featuring
referrals and news sources and the young inventors and new products.
site is rated three times more popu- The series will begin airing in Septem-
lar than the SpongeBob website and ber this year.
in 160 countries.
almost equal to Teletubbies website in Of course, some major players in Ja-
To date, a number of licenses have
link popularity. pan did not exhibit at the show – most
been signed include travel guides for
Today, Planetpals activities, plays and notably Copyrights Japan whose Peter
the Nintendo DS, fashion bags, T-shirts
lesson plans are used in thousands of Rabbit and Paddington Bear programs
and calendars.
schools as a teaching tool and the li- continue to grow year on year.
Additional brands represented by Ito-
censed characters have been used as Peter Rabbit was given a boost by the
chu include Jun Iida, Chokyo Okada
mascots for Earthday and Recycle Day launch of the Miss Potter movie late
and fashion retailer Hanabishi.
celebrations worldwide. In fact, some last year. The movie stayed in the Top
Ten films in Japan for three weeks and,
interestingly, after London, the Lake
District (the setting for Beatrix Potter
books) is the most visited by Japanese
tourists.
Today, over thirty years since the Bea-
trix Potter licensing program began in
Japan, there are more than 120 licen-
sees in the Peter Rabbit program with
around 6000 skus.
Whilst Copyrights are now part of
Chorion, the company actually began
back in the 1960s as Douglas Kenrick
where licensing agreements were
The company also represents Kaepa schools have a designated “Planetpals
signed for the 1964 Olympic Games
Girls, a sports show brand with day” to encourage recycling. Judith
and the 007 movies. In addition, the
twelve licensees and Pantone where now has a number of agents overseas,
company handled licensing for Char-
they have the master license for Japan. including Brandzoo in the UK and are
lie Chaplin (in fact, in the 60s, Chaplin
Pantone Universe is a collection of looking to expand the number of li-
himself signed the licensing contracts).
lifestyle products that now includes censees in Japan and beyond.
tabletop, stationery, travel products, The Thomas Edison Foundation was
accessories and rainwear. In addition, established in 1948 and the licensing
a deal was signed with SoftBank for arm today is run by John Keegan from
Pantone mobile phone covers. the foundation’s headquarters in New
On the non-Japanese side, two new Jersey.
exhibitors to the show were Planet- Edison’s legacy is enormous. His col-
pals and The Edison Foundation. lection alone is worth over $2.6 bil-
Planetpals is the creation of Judith lion and there are more than 5 million
Gorgone and are billed as being original documents including patents
earth-friendly and fun educational for the incandescent lightbulb togeth-
characters. er with over 400,000 artefacts includ-
The program is based on nine of the ing the first electric car.
characters from the award winning Edison was named Man of the Millen-
educational website and have broad nium by Life Magazine and, astonish-
appeal to children aged between four ingly perhaps, between 15 and 20%
and eleven. of the world’s GNP is attributable to
Early last year, Raymond Mok bought
The Planetpals website has been ex- Thomas Edison’s inventions.
the majority stake in the company.
traordinarily successful. Devised by In order to spread the message, and
Of course, Paddington celebrates
Judith in 1991, it was the first environ- of course create an income for the
his 50
th
anniversary this year and a
93
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128