Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Pretty, Freekin and Scary are the most visible of the new group.
BROOKLYN, Ohio (AP) -- Freekin -- yes, that's his name -- didn't mind being dead. Until he missed his toys, his parents and his friends.
So the child made himself undead and brought his posthumous pals "Pretty" and "Scary" back to the land of living with him. Together, they are "Pretty Freekin Scary," a cartoon trio of zombies with Bart Simpson's youth appeal and a dash of punk fashion -- and one of the latest creations of American Greetings Corp.
The world's largest publicly traded greeting card company is going Hollywood with the launch of AG Properties, a subsidiary focused on developing new characters and other content that can be sold to toymakers, movie studios, clothing designers, cell phone companies and others.
Besides Pretty Freekin Scary, there's Maryoku Yummy, a coral-colored character shaped like a fat exclamation point with yellow spirals on either side of an oversized head. Her mission? Take care of the wishes that children make to Santa Claus and on stars.
Then there's the Sushi Pack, bite-sized blue, red and wasabi-green fish who fight crime. They were brought to life by a weird mix-up involving a lightning strike, a cell phone text message and a takeout order.
Long-term effort
AG, which quietly has been working on characters for about a year, is introducing its efforts Tuesday at a licensing industry show in New York.
American Greetings is hoping to build on the success of vintage characters such as Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears and the beloved Holly Hobbie, born in 1967 and retired a decade later.
The card company brought Holly and the other classics back about five years ago and gave them modern makeovers -- "Cake" now has pink highlights in her red hair. The characters combined have brought in more than $3 billion in sales for American Greetings.
"I think there's a thought that, 'Hey, they can take old stuff and make them new but can they do new stuff?"' said Jeffrey Conrad, studio chief at AG Properties.
"We hope that Sushi Pack and Maryoku Yummy and Twisted Whiskers is something that will let everyone know that, 'Hey, we really can do it,'" he said from an office best described as a children's fantasyland.
Care Bears are stuffed into Plexiglass-covered holes in the walls, prototypes of new characters live on Conrad's desk, and toys in every color stuff shelves, line the floors and hang from lights. A flat-screen television is tuned to Nickelodeon, and cartoon theme songs in the making often blare from computer speakers.
The purpose of intellectual property houses such as AG is to give companies in need of new creative content a convenient, legal place to buy it.
American Greetings, with established relationships with thousands of businesses such as Wal-Mart and toymaker Mattel Inc., is taking a logical step, said Craig Nard, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who specializes in intellectual property.
"They are very creative and have a lot of innovators. It's important to protect those innovations," Nard said.
The update of Holly Hobbie, who wears a hip-hop blue beret instead of a floppy blue bonnet, led to several new products including dolls with customizable fashions and a snow-cone maker by Mattel, the world's largest maker of toys such as Barbie and Hot Wheels.
'Incredible opportunity'
The company is interested in AG's creations.
"We think that there's an incredible opportunity," said Holly Stein, the El Segundo, Calif., company's vice president of licensing acquisition, who plans to check out Sushi Pack at the New York show.
That's music to Tamra Knepfer's ears. As senior vice president of consumer products at AG Properties, she's charged with ensuring Conrad's creations end up on store shelves, in movies, online and in the company's profit margins.
It's not that big of a stretch from cards, she said. "A good character is about making emotional connections, which is at the heart of what American Greetings is all about."
American Greetings' biggest competitor, Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards Inc., first got into licensing when it partnered with Walt Disney Co. in 1932 to use Mickey and friends on greetings, spokeswoman Kristi Ernsting said.
In 1981, it formed its own property division, renamed Hallmark Licensing in 1992, and created characters such as Rainbow Brite and greeting regular Maxine, the blue-haired, self-described "Queen of Crabby."
The creations have been used on products ranging from home decor to bank checks.
Hallmark also has a separate entertainment division that produces family-oriented movies, music and the Hallmark Channel, which launched in 2001 and has 70 million subscribers.
Thomas G. Field Jr., a law professor at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., said the card makers face a constant and expensive battle to police unlicensed use of characters. But earning money by selling licenses instead of products is a plus, he said, comparing intellectual property to oil wells.
"IP offers the possibility of making enough from gushers to cover the costs of a slew of dry holes," he said.
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