Hoho Rights, the commercial arm and wholly-owned subsidiary of kids’ production and rights company Hoho Entertainment, has appointed Active Merchandising to represent its high-flying pre-school property Cloudbabies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The key appointment follows the announcement that ARD and ZDF’s children’s channel KiKA has acquired 52 x10’ episodes of the CG animated series, to be broadcast in the region later in 2014.
Anita van Esch, Managing Director of Active Merchandising has been in the licensing industry for nearly 20 years. She worked for Mattel in the Netherlands on Barbie and headed up the licensing department for both Super RTL and Nickelodeon respectively in Germany where she worked on brands such as Bob the Builder and SpongeBob SquarePants. Now based in Düsseldorf, Anita represents several major family brands in the region including The World of Eric Carle, The Gruffalo, Guinness Book of Records, Masha and the Bear and Subway Surfers.
Hoho Entertainment’s Joint Managing Director Helen Howells says: “We are delighted to be partnering with Anita. She shares our passion for Cloudbabies: the characters, the storytelling and of course the wealth of licensing opportunities that the brand offers in both the toddler and nursery categories. Together we hope that we can build Cloudbabies into a true classic to join Anita’s already impressive portfolio of brands.”
Says Anita van Esch: “I am thrilled to be able to work on this lovely pre-school property with its unique characters and story. There is nothing similar in the market and due to its uniqueness I see a big potential in our territory.”
Sebastian Debertin, Head of Fiction, Acquisition and Co-Production at KiKA added “Cloudbabies fits perfectly to KiKA’s preschool line-up as it combines original, endearing characters and an appealing design with playful and gentle stories, introducing our young audience to the sky and its inhabitants while also supporting their personal, social and emotional development. We salute HoHo Entertainment for their creative, high-quality work on the show!”
Cloudbabies currently broadcasts daily on CBeebies and since launch has been requested over 11.5million times on the CBeebies iPlayer. The series has also been picked up by a number of international broadcasters including: ABC TV in Australia, TVNZ in New Zealand, S4C in Wales, TG4 in Ireland, MiniMini in Poland, RTP in Portugal, JCC (Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, Baraem) in the Middle East, Hop! In Israel PTS in Taiwan and TrueCorp in Thailand.
Featuring the adventures of Baba Pink, Baba Blue, Baba Yellow and Baba Green, the enchanting series teaches children about caring for others and the world around them and introduces them to the wonder of the sky and the concepts of day and night, sun and moon and rainbows and stars.