Thursday, June 23rd, 12:01 am
Update
- Jay Navok
Trip Report: Licensing
Show 2005
I attended
Licensing
Show 2005 in New York today, having been sent there by work to report on
what the Japanese companies were exhibiting. It was kind of like a relaxed
version of E3.
Anime has taken over this trade show; when I walked into the Javits Center the
first thing I saw was a flat screen TV showing Kodomo no Omocha. 4Kids had a
very strong presence at the expo; not just because their toons were running on
every screen, or because I and many others were walking around with tote bags
featuring the 4Kids logo on them, or because they had a large "stairs mural" of
all their characters, but because one could frequently find the characters they
licensed being used by other exhibiting licensors.
One license I thought had a particularly strong presence as well
was that of the upcoming Transformers movie. Several exhibitors were featuring
the Autobots logo somewhere in their booth. Winning the awesome award was a
life-size statue of Optimus Prime, rising out from rubble, in the Hasbro booth.
I wish I had a camera.
The Totally Spies license is an interesting story; I saw it
featured at three or four booths. The French animation exhibit had towering
columns with the Spies on them. This for a series which, two years ago, seemed
to be dead-in-the-water in the States. It used to air on ABC Family but its run
ended and for a period of nearly a year was not available to watch here. The
shows' resurrection and current success (video games and lots of other stuff
coming out) is due entirely to the power of Cartoon Network. Would they be able
to do the same for Sailor Moon if they wanted to give it another chance?
Geneon was there, as was Viz, who had a large pavilion showing off Zatch Bell
and Naruto. In a little corner near the back was Cloverway. They seemed to only
have two people manning their booth, the President and Vice-President of the
company respectively. On the one hand, whenever I passed by they were always in
a meeting with someone, on the other hand, their presence was almost nil, which
was surprising given that they have some fairly good series in their arsenal.
Sailor Moon was not among the series they were trying to sell to licensees.
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