Rubie’s Costume Co., Inc. has obtained the license to create products for preschool property Chuggington. The CGI-animated series debuted in the U.S. in January and airs daily on Disney Channel’s Playhouse Disney programming block. Each episode has an entertaining storyline that also teaches social readiness lessons.
Out of the Box Publishing is hosting its first annual Giant Word on the Street National Championship on November 20 from 2 to 5 p.m. at the 2010 Chicago Toy & Game Fair at Navy Pier in Chicago.
The company’s party game, Word on the Street, will be transformed to fit the streets as families and team members brainstorm words and race down the 50-foot game board with giant tiles to spell out the words.
The Giant Word on the Street Championship will be held on Saturday. Anyone can play and the cost is free with admission to the fair. The winning team will receive one copy of each of the current Out of the Box games, which totals more than 25 games.
On November 9, BookPeople book store, located in Austin, Tex., hosted the official launch party for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, the fifth installment in the book series. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid “Parking Lot Party” attracted more than 1,600 people, including the books’ author and illustrator Jeff Kinney and Wimpy Kid actors Zachary Gordon and Robert Capron.
Among the free family-friendly activities was a life-size version of Pressman Toy’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Board Game, co-created by Kinney. In the board game, kids laugh and talk as they face creative, social, and intellectual challenges. The player who successfully gets inside everyone else’s heads wins, but wrong answers could get players stuck with the moldy cheese that was found on the basketball court.
Fox has announced that The Simpsons has been renewed for a 23rd season, bringing it up to and beyond 500 episodes, and ensuring that The Simpsons will remain on air through spring 2012. At the end of this season, it will be the third-longest running show of all time, behind Gunsmoke (635 episodes) and Lassie (588 episodes).
The Simpsons is considered to be one of the top brands of all time, with creator Matt Groening having earned more than $8 billion from sales of DVDs and merchandising, including toys and games. The Simpsons has been named “the most successfully licensed TV show” in history, according to a survey of 450 global licensing experts, conducted by the Brand Licensing Europe 2010 conference.
Last week, Disney Store celebrated the grand opening of its Times Square location with appearances by celebrities, New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and more. The celebration kicked off with a colorful parade of Disney characters—including Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Buzz Lightyear—as they arrived by horse-drawn carriages and classic cars and traveled down a trail of Pixie dust.
Hosted by Robin Roberts from ABC’s Good Morning America, other celebrity appearances included Melissa Joan Hart of ABC Family’s Melissa & Joey; Anika Noni Rose, voice of Princess Tiana from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog; ESPN’s Jesse Palmer; actress Brooke Shields; Bloomberg; Walt Disney Co. President and CEO Robert Iger; and more.
The two-level, 20,000-plus square foot Disney Store in Times Square boasts a 2,250-square-foot digital billboard, a two-story Disney Princess castle with a “talking” Magic Mirror, colorful Lucite trees throughout the store that showcase custom Disney content, and a 350-square-foot Disney Store Theatre that features a 12-foot screen, playing Disney film clips, videos, and more. Kids can also build a customized Disney·Pixar Cars-branded Ridemarkerz car or purchase exclusive New York City-inspired Disney merchandise.
Happy Veterans Day! Here are some photos from the New York City 2010 Veterans Day Parade, which went right by The Toy Book‘s office:
Ever wondered what food poisoning would look like in plush form? Well wonder no more, Giantmicrobes, Inc.—designers of collectible toys inspired by the microscopic world—is releasing new editions to its educational toy line.
The new products, like all Giantmicrobes products, includes the toy modeled on electron micrographs, enlarged a million times, and includes the micrograph image as well as information about the microbe it represents. The collection spans more than 100 microbes, including Common Cold, Brain Cells, Bed Bugs, and more.
On November 5, the company released Food Poisoning and Diarrhea, as well as Nibble the Bed Bug vinyl figure. Each vinyl figure comes with an animation flipbook and an action-pose sticker.
In time for the fall and holiday season, So So Happy is launching pop-up shops at galleries and toy boutiques such as Munky King and Giant Robot. The mini-boutiques will include art books, apparel, bags, wallets, buttons, stickers, postcards, collector plush, toys by Toynami, and more. So So Happy is also working on a new line of character flash drives from Mimobot.
Additionally, collectible toy store Meltdown Comics is preparing for the grand opening of a 500-square-foot So So Happy shop on December 1.
For more information on So So Happy, visit www.sosohappyonline.com. Photos after the jump.
Classic Media has announced a new partnership with the U.S. Postal Service. As a part of the U.S. Postal Service’s A Simpler Way to Holiday program, DVDs of the holiday special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer will be available at more than 5,000 post offices nationwide. Additionally, customers that opt to ship the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer DVDs with Priority Mail will save $2 off the price of the DVD. The program will be promoted with in-store signage and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer-branded boxes.
Sqwishlanders are a rebranded version of the tiny, squishy characters that were first introduced as Pet Friends more than four years ago. The ¾-inch rubbery collectible characters are sold in vending machines and come with a unique code for online play at Sqwishland, www.sqwishland.com, a free, kid-friendly virtual world where the characters can be cared for and kids can play games and activities. Parents can also sign their kids up for a premium membership for access to more mini-games and activities.
Certain Sqwishlanders are plentiful, such as the black and white Sqwow who can be found nine out of 10 times in 6-pack and 12-pack capsules, and others are rare such as the brown and white Sqwow who can only be found four out of 100 times.