Paddington, the affable clumsy bear from British youngsters’s books, has remodeled into a world sensation over the previous decade, due to a intelligent movie technique and with the assistance of the royal household.
Visitors to London’s practice stations and airports are by no means removed from a flood of Paddington gentle toys, replete together with his signature pink hat and blue duffle coat, displayed alongside memento staples like mini double-decker buses and toy royal guards.
Paddington bear toys have develop into a “must” with 27 million models offered since 2021, in keeping with StudioCanal, the French movie distributor that owns the rights to the character.
One household on vacation to London from Sardinia made a detour to Paddington Station –- the place the character will get its identify -– simply to take a photograph with a bronze statue of the bear.
“It’s one of the attractions we wanted to see, just like Big Ben or Tower Bridge,” stated Carlo Piga, whose younger daughter is a fan of the movies.
Toys, garments, tableware, stationery, perfumes and a thousand extra licensed Paddington merchandise exist in the present day along with the 35 million books, in 40 languages, which have been offered worldwide.
“It’s a brand that was perhaps a little… I don’t want to say ‘dormant’,” stated Anna Marsh, chief govt of Studiocanal.
“But in any case, we’ve managed to bring it up to date,” she added.
Paddington has lengthy been common within the United Kingdom due to the books created by Michael Bond in 1958.
But the character failed to achieve recognition additional afield till the blockbuster success of the function movie in 2014, which made $268 million on the field workplace.
StudioCanal then purchased the rights to develop a franchise across the bear.
It produced two new movies: “Paddington 2” in 2017 ($227 million in income) and “Paddington in Peru”, launched this 12 months.
An animated collection, exhibitions and, quickly, a musical have additionally been developed.
Retailers jumped on the bear’s recognition: it appeared in prints from Next-owned trend model Cath Kidston, in Christmas adverts for Marks & Spencer and featured in a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
The model has partnered with Airbnb, Primark, Zara and appeared on postcards for U.N. youngsters’s company Unicef which raised $15 million in gross sales.
Paddington has additionally attracted the eye of the British royal household: Prince William attended the premiere of the movie in China in 2015 whereas his spouse Catherine danced with the bear at a charity occasion at Paddington Station in 2017.
Most famously, he appeared at Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 in a humorous brief movie that catapulted the character into additional stardom.
The media craze following this look generated the equal of £10 million ($12.5 million) in promoting gross sales within the United Kingdom alone, in keeping with an estimate by French promoting company Havas.
The bear grew to become related to the queen ever since and after her loss of life, tons of of Paddington stuffed animals had been positioned in entrance of Buckingham Palace.
Today, Paddington is “within the highest value British-created characters, up there with Harry Potter and James Bond”, stated Luke McDonagh, an mental property specialist on the London School of Economics.
“It is a reasonable estimate to say the overall value of the Paddington brand is more than £1 billion,” he added.
According to a Marketcast survey, the quantity of respondents who knew of Paddington grew by practically 20 p.c within the United States, Germany and France, between the discharge of the second movie in 2017 and 2023.
Visitors have been flocking to the colourful streets of Primrose Hill in north London, the place dozens of vacationers, generally with a information, {photograph} the blue home featured within the movies.
The throng of vacationers have left some native residents sad.
“It’s like living in a zoo,” stated one, lamenting visits from “the TikTokers”, who, she stated, spend hours crafting the proper video and have even tried to movie by way of the home windows of her dwelling.
© 2024 AFP