 |
|
Ink and Biplano are excited to announce that E-max has signed a new deal on Smurfs for stickers, sticker albums, trading card games and trading card game albums for all of Eastern Europe, Nordic, Spain and Portugal. E-max has also signed Clay Buddies for these territories and for GAS, Benelux and France.
The Smurfs need little introduction – the history of the iconic blue characters stretches back to 1958 when Belgian cartoonist Peyo first introduced them to the world in comic book form. Popularity hit a peak in the 1980s when The Smurfs cartoon from Hanna-Barbera began to be broadcast across the world, telling the tale of Papa Smurf and the rest of the gang as they pitted their wits against the evil Gargamel. A total of 256 episodes were produced, which are still showing across the globe. Smurf collectable figures are also incredibly popular, with over 300 million having been sold to date and new examples being added each year. |
Interest in the brand exploded again in 2011 when the Smurfs movie from Sony was released and quickly became a box office smash; the eagerly anticipated sequel will be hitting cinemas across the world later this year.
"Emax will develop ranges both on the upcoming movie and on the Classic Smurfs line, so with these important product categories secured on the Smurfs we now have a number of the very best partners in Europe onboard and most of Europe well covered on these categories. This deal and more to be announced soon will continue to build the Smurfs brand to its full potential", says Tina Zacho Alexandersen, Senior Brand Manager at Ink. "We see Smurfs as one of the fastest growing brands with a fantastic appeal to a very diverse audience, across gender, nationality and age. We expect to be able to announce more exciting deals soon, which will underline the brand’s new strong position on a bigger geographical scale!" |
