| ||
|
Atlantyca Entertainment, a multi-faceted media company based in Italy, has been named the designated licensing and merchandising agent in Italy for Fitz Roy Media’s popular Funny Face property, it was announced by Atlantyca Entertainment’s Licensing Director Maria Giovanna Gurrieri. Signed in January 2010, the agreement grants Atlantyca rights to license Funny Face-branded merchandise across all product categories throughout Italy including publishing, music, toys and games, food and beverage, promotions, advertising, and home video, among others. “Funny Face is a terrific property that is poised to capture a whole new generation of loyal fans among kids, tweens and teens,” said Gurrieri. “We are pleased to welcome these delightful characters into our stable of proven concepts for kids and look forward to delivering the Funny Face brand of humor to fans throughout Italy.” “Atlantyca Entertainment is the premiere purveyor of entertainment for children and young adults in Italy. We are proud to have the Funny Face characters represented by a company whose incredible success in the marketplace is marked by such well-known properties as Geronimo Stilton,” said Fitz Roy Media CEO Hamp Hampton. The Funny Face characters were originally introduced via packets of a drink mix launched by Pillsbury in 1964 as a challenger to Kool-Aid. The character’s silly, smiling faces made them instantly popular with school age kids. Spurred by their appearance in television commercials, the brand developed into a full-fledged craze. Plastic mugs, backpacks, finger puppets and other products featuring the characters remain popular collectibles to this day. < Funny Face returned to the small screen in 2008 in a new series of animated interstitials produced by Renegade Animation/Brady Enterprises and distributed by Fitz Roy Media. Described as one-minute episodes that offer no substance whatsoever, the series harkens back to the day when cartoons just had to be funny and a watermelon could get hit by a speeding car and live to joke about it. /p> |
