Little Pim Sees Shadow

Yes, it's Groundhog's Day today and the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow which means six weeks more of winter. Little Pim also had a little debut when Wired's Geek Dad shadowed Pim in a nice app review of Little Pim's Word Bag (Okay, we stretched the Punxsutawney-Pim correlation a little).

Little Pim iPhone App Launches

One of Animax Entertainment's first iPhone apps launched: Little Pim's Word Bag. Aimed at toddlers, this pacifier app aka pass-back app will get kids tapping on your iPhone or iTouch to a different language. Kids tap through different cartoon flash card images presented by Little Pim the panda in both Spanish and French.

The app was developed by Animax for Little Pim and is based on their award winning DVD series that was recently profiled by Wired's Geek Dad blog.

Pass Back Apps

As seen in Geek Dad, The Boston Globe had a nice overview article of the market for mobile apps specifically made for toddlers. An interesting factoid is that 60% of the Top 25 apps in the iTunes store's education category are target to the toddler set.

We're going to be launching the Little Pim iPhone app pretty soon - Animax will let you know when it's ready.

Psychedelic Girls

The Rainbow Brite dolls are coming and with them a bunch of games and a new animated video that Animax produced for Hallmark and Playmates Toys. The fun stuff features Rainbow Brite and all her friends trying to retrieve all the colors of the rainbow.

One Billion Dollars

The virtual goods market is a one billion dollar market and is growing quickly. You see them in social networks, virtual worlds, online games, mobile apps, etc. We're leveraging them for clients and prepping Fun Nugget to take advantage of them as well. Animax Entertainment's Tucker Aaron was quoted in AOL's Money and Finance blog WalletPop about the growth of virtual goods. This week the Virtual Goods Summit is going on in San Francisco. We weren't able to make it to that conference because we're busy participating in Unite, the Unity 3D Developers conference also going on in San Francisco. Let us know if you'd like to meet up.

Rainbow Brite Launches

Rainbow Brite gets a fantastic new makeover from Hallmark. First introduced 25 years ago, Rainbow Brite and her friends are ready to meet and entertain a whole new generation of girls. A new site launched with games and a new animated video featuring her updated look. Animax Entertainment created the animated video, "Return to Rainbow Land," for Hallmark.

And stay tuned because a big, new game called "Rainbow Rescue" is set to launch this Fall. It will bundled with the upcoming Rainbow Brite doll! Rainbow Rescue is a fun meta-game with a bunch of colorful mini-games where you help Rainbow Brite and her friends solve puzzles to find all the colors of the rainbow.

Kids Saving Energy

The Advertising Council and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today launched a series of new public service advertisements (PSAs) designed to educate tweens ages 8-10 about the importance of energy efficiency. Animax Entertainment created the site and game driving the experience. Read the press release here.

Pick Our #SXSW Panels

Animax Entertainment submitted a couple of panels to be considered for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival. Please give our conference panels your "thumbs up" so that they get included in the actual program. The titles are:

• Help! My Toddler's Tweeting on My iPhone!
• Designing For The End Of The Innocence

Both panels are very focused on kids and online and social media. Animax plans to assemble a panel of kids media experts and potentially even some kids to tackle the subjects of technology and kids and how do you design new media specifically for kids.

Little Pim iPhone App

Animax Entertainment announced a new preschool targeted iPhone app that we have in development with the folks over at Little Pim. Created in 2006 by Julia Pimsleur Levine, Little Pim is an award-winning foreign language immersion series for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. And yes - that name probably sounds familiar -- Julia Pimseleur Levine's father, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, created one of the most popular and acclaimed audio teaching language methods for adults. The iPhone app Animax is developing will expand on the DVD series and take advantage of the mobile platform. Kids on cellphones? A "pacifier app"? The future is now.

The news was picked up by our friends at Kidscreen Cynopsis Kids and Home Media Magazine.

Kids are Super Active Online

A new study from Nielsen shows kids embracing online like gangbusters - the growth rate is faster than adults!

Animax at KidScreen Summit

Animax Entertainment is headed to the KidScreen Summit next week and there is a lot going on:

• We're meeting with broadcasters and co-production partners about original properties we have in development.
  
• Michael Bellavia is speaking on the "Keeping it Real in the Virtual World Space" panel about kids and virtual worlds.
• We're announcing the winners of the First Ever Animax Cannucks Cartoon Script Contest.
  

Virtual Worlds News & Other Press

Animax's announcement of the launch of KID KONCEPTS has been picked up by a few different news outlets.

• Virtual World News
• Worlds in Motion
  

KID KONCEPTS

Leading up to next week's Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles that we are sponsoring, Animax announced the launch of its new KID KONCEPTS initiative. Read the press release.

KID KONCEPTS leverages Animax's expertise in entertainment and virtual world development, in order to simplify the complexity most brands face with getting into virtual worlds. This includes creative scoping, positioning, core functionality, site differentiation, business model development and financial modeling. Animax helps clients determine the business case, investment and launch plans for entertainment, toy, confection, publishing and other kid-focused brands interested in developing a presence in virtual worlds.

KID KONCEPTS was founded on the success of Animax's work in building kids virtual worlds from the ground up, developing components for existing worlds, and ongoing world maintenance. Currently, Animax has multiple KID KONCEPTS clients with virtual worlds scheduled to launch Q2 & Q3 of 2009.