Benefits of Bamboo

In a deal announced just this week, Hasbro licensed British company Bamboo Bamboo to create limited-edition children’s bamboo dinnerware featuring Peppa Pig, sold online.

Bamboo dinnerware has been available for a long time, and is billed as eco-friendly as well as safe, durable, lightweight, and easy to clean. With the increased attention on sustainability over the past few years, products made from eco-friendly materials, such as bamboo, are attracting more attention from consumers, manufacturers, and property owners alike. Despite all of these positive attributes, however, it is interesting to note that while licensing deals between children’s properties and bamboo dinnerware makers occasionally pop up, they remain relatively few and far between.

In addition to the Peppa deal, a few recent examples of licensed children’s dinnerware made from bamboo have included:

• Zak’s dinnerware sets made of bamboo and melamine—billed as both durable and sustainable—featuring properties such as Bluey, Baby Shark, Frozen, and Paw Patrol.

• Zrike’s limited-edition bamboo dinnerware sets and standalone pieces with a range of Disney designs, from Pooh to holiday-themed Minnie Mouse to Disney Sketchbook, all of which are sold out on the Zrike website. (These are not exclusively children’s products.)

• FPI Ventures’ children’s bamboo dinnerware set tied to Star Wars: The Mandalorian and its Baby Yoda (Grogu) character. The five-piece set, one of several Star Wars products across categories from this licensee, is sold out.

• Precious Moments’ range of children’s dinnerware sets and separate pieces, sporting Noah’s Ark and animal designs. Some of the items, such as sippy cups, feature bamboo along with other materials including silicone and BPA-free plastic.

These and other examples show the potential for marrying children’s characters with eco-friendly bamboo dinnerware. The fact that such combinations remain relatively rare—although slowly growing in frequency—could be due to often-higher prices for bamboo pieces compared to traditional melamine or plastic or to the fact that much of the activity in the bamboo space is coming from smaller specialty companies that tend to stay away from licensing, among other reasons.

However, as sustainability remains a growing focus for consumer products, including for children, it is likely that more pairings will start to appear, especially in the form of limited editions.