In an all-out assault on Europe for the 2012 holiday shopping season, American toy-maker Hasbro is re-launching a number of its classic toy lines and making a big licensing push at Brand Licensing Europe in London from October 16-18.

In the US, Hasbro recently re-launched its classic Furby brand, the quirky mechanical creature "with a mind of its own" that caused a sensation some fifteen years ago. The updated version uses a blend of robotic engineering and digital programming "that brings a whole new way to play to kids," said Samantha Lomow, Hasbro's SVP, New Brand Franchises and Global Brand Leader. "The personality of each Furby appears to evolve by the way children play with it, and every unpredictable action and reaction helps make each Furby seem unique." 

Now Hasbro bringing Furby to Europe with a wide-ranging licensing program. Get ready for all things Furby, including apparel and accessories, back-to-school supplies, food and beverages, home decor, paper and party goods, and sporting goods. Furby-licensed merchandise will begin arriving this fall in retail outlets in France, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the UK. Hasbro has aggressive re-launch and licensing plans for other toy lines, too.Continue reading...

The Doritos Crash the Super Bowl user-created ad contest is back for the seventh consecutive year, this time around with a big Hollywood ending — the chance to work with director Michael Bay on the next installment of the Transformers movie franchise.

The pitch: "The great Super Bowl ad-venture is back. This year, if you make a DORITOS ad you might see it air on the Super Bowl and win not just $1 Million but a prize that's twice as explosive: a gig with high-octane Hollywood hit-maker Michael Bay on Transformers 4," which opens June 27, 2014. Submissions open on Oct. 8; more details in PepsiCo's press release and on Facebook.

For a series of Batman movies that takes itself so seriously, it's a surprise to see it right there so prominent as one of only five menu items on the official The Dark Knight Rises website: "Imported From Gotham City."

The Dark Knight Rises has a number of other official partners. There is Nokia (remember them?) and No Fear (remember them?) and Mountain Dew, which features at the core of its tie-in "Sad Batman." But none of these brands even get a mention on the film's official website, let alone being featured on the site navigation.

It seems that the heavyweight "Imported from Detroit" campaign, which debuted with Eminem at the 2011 Super Bowl and was reborn with Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Super Bowl, is now so ingrained in the American psyche that it's worth lampooning. But the first rule of auto product placement is "be serious." Be so, so serious.Continue reading...

Are you a tennis fan? Then we don't have to tell you to watch the French Open. Are you a hardcore tennis fan? Then you might consider not only watching the French Open but getting behind the wheel of a French Open special edition Peugeot.

The tie-up between the venerable French brands to create the time-limited Peugeot 207 CC and 308 CC Roland Garros editions makes sense, and celebrates one of the most important tennis tournaments in the sport of tennis. Luxury (and less luxurious) lifestyle brands have a longstanding relationship with automakers, with varying degrees of success (and excess).Continue reading...

Johnson & Johnson’s Band-Aids have been around since 1920 and it feels like its logo has been around even longer. But now the iconic brand owned by Johnson & Johnson is changing its look a wee bit, something that hasn’t happened since the ‘80s.

There’s a new logo coming soon to a scraped knee near you. It's designed by Kevin Dresser of the New York design firm Dresser Johnson. The challenge: Since the iconic Band-Aid logo has been around for so long, the hope with the redesign is to show that the adhesive bandage has “a new direction that represented the future of the brand.” So Dresser created “a bolder, more distinctive look that better stands out on drugstore shelves,” J&J's press release notes.

"My goal for the logo restoration was to create a timeless design," stated Dresser. "Band-Aid is an iconic American brand. I wanted to honor that heritage and at the same time create something that feels contemporary and modern."Continue reading...

"This agreement with China will make it easier than ever before for U.S. studios and independent filmmakers to reach the fast-growing Chinese audience, supporting thousands of American jobs in and around the film industry."

That's U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's summary of a groundbreaking new deal between the two nations that will relax the controls on China's movie market. The agreement came at the end of leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping's visit to the US, an image-polishing visit for China at a time when worker conditions and Apple dominated U.S. headlines.

The agreement included a deal with the Dreamworks Animation studio for a filmmaking joint-venture based in Shanghai. But it's also good news for one of the few industries America still excels at, while easing access to China's billion-strong audience for the product placement industry.Continue reading...

When you Google "Hasbro," the company is identified as “Hasbro Toys, Games, Action Figures and More.” While the first three have dominated the company’s business for most of its 89 years, it’s that last part that is getting a lot of the company’s attention these days.

The “and more” has taken the form of TV and film productions related to Hasbro products. Thanks to the success of the Transformers films, which have grossed $2.6 billion worldwide and are based on the toys that were strewn across the playrooms of little boys in the mid-’80s, Hasbro has begun delving deeper into the worlds of television and film production, according to the New York Times.

Helping to build Hasbro’s confidence in this area is the success of its G.I. Joe movie, which grossed $302 million worldwide. Now a sequel to that film is coming out this summer as well as an action-adventure film based on the Hasbro game Battleship, which was promoted with a Super Bowl commercial (at top).Continue reading...

Since 1984, Hasbro’s Transformers toys have transitioned from robots into cars or weapons or those sorts of things. Then they became comic books and movies and now they have become a lawsuit.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Hasbro and a computer manufacturer that has created a “high-end tablet/laptop hybrid computer dubbed the ‘Transformer Prime,’” Asus Computer International, are ready to do legal battle.

Hasbro filed suit claiming that its trademark had been infringed upon, THR adds, pointing out that one of its characters is named Optimus Prime as well as the existence of its licensed Transformers Prime TV series.Continue reading...