Beloved YouTube series Little Baby Bum is planning to expand in the world of toys. Stuffed toys that is. Things are moving fast and prototypes are ready.
Initially there will be between five and eight characters says Derek Holder, who is a co-founder of Little Baby Bum, to The Guardian. The toys will be made by Commonweath Toys which are already making prototypes of the future stuffed animals and plush toys. The company has already made the Angry Birds toys, Care Bears and SpongeBob SquarePants among others.
Little Baby Bum is a very popular YouTube channel for children. It makes animated videos with nursery-rhymes. It was launched in 2011 by a UK-based couple. It has amassed more than 3.6 billion views during that time and is among the top five channel on YouTube. It is more popular than Ed Sheeran and the X Factor. It has more than 3939 million views in the last month alone.
“We will probably do a soft launch first online including our own website to see how they fare and understand which characters are most popular, which will give us a bigger story to take to retailers”, says Holder. Incy Wincy Spider and Baa Baa Black Sheep will be amongst the first to get plush toy versions. “We’re toying with the idea that Baa Baa Black Sheep might be an explorer of some kind, as we’ve always got him flying around in spaceships,” he said. “Maybe Incy Wincy Spider is a scientist. These are public-domain characters that have been around for hundreds of years, but we want to give them a bit more personality that children can latch on to.”
“It’s big news for us, and for YouTube as well: this hasn’t really been done before,” said Holder. “This is hopefully the first of many licensing deals, and a really important one as it’s the first domino to fall. We’ll hopefully be getting book publishing deals as well.”
Holder adds that he felt Little Baby Bum “was destined for greatness beyond the digital landscape. I had the same feeling 29 years ago when I discovered a fledgling independently-published comic-book series entitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
There is currently no time table on when the toys will be ready. But since we are talking about big companies and the work is already underway, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Little Baby Bum plush toys in the stores by the end of the year in time for the holiday shopping.
