Hoho Rights has announced the appointment of IVS Group as the new master toy partner for its colourful, pre-school series Cloudbabies.
Over the past 16 years IVS Group, led by CEO Namita Kapoor, has worked on some of the biggest global family entertainment brands including How to Train Your Dragon Live, Walking with Dinosaurs Live, Ice Age Live, Aardman Animations, Tweenies and Thomas & Friends. Under this new partnership with Hoho, IVS will develop and produce a beautiful new range of Cloudbabies plush toys. The initial line-up will feature favourites such as Beanie Plush and new and improved Feature Plush while also introducing soft and huggable Bedtime Baba Blankies and My First Cloudbabies aimed at the programme’s younger audience. After that, the company plans to broaden the offering into other product categories such as games, playsets and more.
In the UK IVS Group will sell directly to retailers and via their own established online retail service, while internationally Hoho Rights will work with its sub-agents to appoint distribution partners in the territories where Cloudbabies has been sold.
“This partnership has been borne out of a mutual passion for brand building. Namita Kapoor and her team at IVS have a fantastic track record in product development and international distribution thanks to their work over the years with big name licensors” says Helen Howells, joint MD Hoho Entertainment. “Their passion, commitment and enthusiasm for Cloudbabies mirrors ours and we have absolute faith that they will develop a product range which will see Cloudbabies around for a very long time to come.”
“I’ve worked with many family entertainment brands over the years but when I saw Cloudbabies I instantly recognised its potential and to be honest I absolutely love the characters” says Namita Kapoor, CEO IVS Group. “It’s a very appealing and licensable brand and we hope that our new range will provide retailers with renewed enthusiasm for this ever popular CBeebies series while also giving the consumers what they are asking for.”
Created by award-winning art director Bridget Appleby and produced by Hoho Entertainment, Cloudbabies consistently performs well on CBeebies and enjoys ever growing figures on the BBC’s iPlayer service. Internationally the series has sold to a number of broadcasters including: ABC TV (Australia), TVNZ (New Zealand), KiKA (Germany), S4C (Wales), TG4 (Ireland), MiniMini (Poland), RTP (Portugal), JCC (Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, Baraem, Middle East), Hop! (Israel), TVB Pearl (Hong Hong), Mediacorp (Singapore), PTS (Taiwan) and TrueCorp (Thailand).