Based on data from The NPD Group, Angry Birds Star Wars is the best new toy license in the big five European toy markets so far this year. Sales of Angry Birds Star Wars during this period was £5.3 million, ahead of second place Skylanders at £4 million, and third place Monsters University at £2.9 million. Angry Birds Star Wars is even the No. 1 license in the board games category.
Over the first seven months, Angry Birds and Angry Birds Star Wars combined ranked as the 14th biggest license overall in the big five European markets and 12th biggest overall in the UK. Just one year ago, Angry Birds alone was ranked at a much lower 39th place in the big five markets in Europe.
The original Angry Birds sold £4.2 million worth of toys in the first seven months of last year across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The figure for the same seven-month period this year had almost doubled to £8.1 million. With the Angry Birds Star Wars sales performance of £5.3 million added in, in total, the Angry Birds license achieved combined sales of £13.4 million in the seven months through this July.
According to the NPD Group, new developments, such as the Angry Birds Star Wars tie-up and the licensing of digital intellectual property into the toy market, are providing a welcome boost to the toy industry. As of July of this year, the total licensed toy market in Europe year-to-date was worth £845 million, down 7 percent on the same period a year earlier. However, the total toy market for the same period was £3.5 billion, up 1 percent.
As part of the digital-to-physical trend, Hasbro has launched the Telepods action game based on Angry Birds Star Wars. Like Activision’s Skylanders and Disney Interactive’s Disney Infinity, Telepods action figures integrate physical characters into the mobile gaming experience. The difference is that the game is played on a tablet rather than a video game platform.
