Licensed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures from Playmates were the top toy of 2014, according to The NPD Group, when the last franchise feature film was in theaters. In an effort to build on that success, the toy lines for this year’s TMNT: Out of the Shadows are expected to be twice as big, sources recently told TLL.
Nickelodeon last week announced lines from Playmates Toys (action figures, deluxe talking figures, vehicles, role play, playsets and more) and Mega Bloks (buildable action figures, buildable vehicles, construction playsets) that are inspired by the release from Paramount Pictures.
2016 is poised to be the Turtles’ biggest year, said Nickelodeon Chief Marketing Officer and President of Consumer Products Pam Kaufman. “We saw tremendous traction with the consumer products we introduced for the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie so we wanted to team up our best-in-class partners to deliver fresh new toys that bring memorable movie moments to life,” she said in a statement.
Turtles became a $1 billion-plus global property in 2014, when its sales grew 20% domestically and 26% outside the U.S. and Canada, according to TLL’s annual ranking of entertainment/character properties with more than $100 million in domestic sales. Turtles ranked fifth on the list.
The Turtles toy announce came as Warner Bros.’ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice burst into theaters over the weekend, creating a feeling that the summer movie season had already begun at spring break.
Of course, the real summer season is at least six weeks away, when Disney’s Avengers franchise installment Captain America: Civil War, which is already blanketing primetime TV with ads, will kick it off. It’s followed in the summer parade by X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27 and the Turtles sequel on June 3.
Elsewhere in Hollywood
Here’s a story of a series of books that inspired a series of movies, and another book, which inspired a movie, which is inspiring even more books.
Warner Bros. Consumer Products has signed Scholastic, HarperCollins and Insight Editions as its global publishing partners in support of the Nov. 18 movie release Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts (both book and screenplay by J.K. Rowling), is a Hogwarts textbook written by the character Newt Scamander.
Scholastic, which has a multi-year global publishing deal for the Harry Potter franchise, including Fantastic Beasts. It will publish children’s movie tie-in books. HarperCollins will publish adult tie-ins, including coloring books and postcards Insight Editions will bring to market novelty and deluxe paper engineered books.
The announcement comes as the studio is gearing up for the April 7 opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood.