Exploring the Universe

As always, properties with roots in comic books and videogames commanded a lot of floor space and interest at last week’s Licensing International Expo. These types of IP are characterized by deep and rich worlds that can often serve as a shared backdrop for a variety of mostly separate properties, offering opportunities for characters to visit each other’s storylines and environments. The Marvel Universe is a well-known model.

Based on several newly announced initiatives, it seems as if licensors from other areas of the entertainment/character business—especially owners of TV- and toy-based properties—are taking a cue from comic books and, to a lesser degree, videogames as they start to create cross-over events and establish shared worlds for their normally distinct IPs.

For example:

• Fox Digital Entertainment and GameStop’s Kongregate division are launching a mobile game called Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, which combines characters from the Fox network’s American Dad, Family Guy, Futurama, Bob’s Burgers, and King of the Hill. The digital version of a collectible card game allows players to assemble decks of cards and use them to battle each other.
• Hasbro and IDW are creating a five-part comic book cross-over event called Revolution, to debut this fall. It combines Hasbro’s Transformers, Micronauts, ROM, Action Man, and M.A.S.K.: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand into a single story arc. Future editions of the five properties’ individual comic book series may feature cameos from characters out of the other same-world franchises; additional combined events also are possible.
• Nickelodeon and Paramount are developing a Nicktoons movie that will feature characters from the channel’s 1990s-era shows including Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Aaahh! Real Monsters, and The Angry Beavers. The properties have also collectively inspired a few licensed items, such as apparel and comics.

So far, efforts such as these are one-off opportunities involving a single product or entertainment vehicle. But the potential certainly exists for further extensions of these shared worlds going forward.