By Cole Watson & Ryan Tuchow
Calm
The Disney Princesses are lending their soothing voices to mindfulness app Calm to help kids through the stressful back-to-school season. As part of a new deal, Calm launched 11 pieces of Disney-branded content on its kids app this week, including three new sleep stories, five meditations and six ASMR soundscapes. The content features Rapunzel hosting breathing exercises, Moana telling relaxing bedtime stories and Jasmine taking peaceful walks through her royal garden.
Dandelooo
A pair of buyers in Portugal are saying bonjour to big packages of content from the French distributor. Public broadcaster RTP has picked up more than 290 episodes of kids shows including Pikkukala’s Royals Next Door (52 x 11 minutes), preschool series Petit from Pajaro (65 x seven minutes), Supamonks’ Little Bear season one (39 x seven minutes) and the first season of Jasmine & Jambo from Teidees (26 x seven minutes). RTP will air these acquisitions in Q4 on RTP2 and its ZigZag kids programming block. Meanwhile, Royals Next Door and Folivari’s Stinky Dog (52 x 13 minutes) have been picked up by Dreamia, a joint-venture formed by NOS and AMC Networks International Southern Europe that produces thematic channels for the Portuguese and African markets.
pocket.watch
Youtuber Ryan Kaji has signed some exclusive toy deals with Walmart for the new pocket.watch/Sunlight Entertainment live-action series Ryan’s World Ninja Adventures (pictured). Launching at the mass retailer this week is a product range including mystery eggs from San Diego-based toyco Bonkers that kids can crack open to find a mix of figures, vehicles, mystery sand and ninja accessories. The giant eggs also include a code for accessing an an AI-generated message from Ryan’s ninja persona on messaging platform Cameo. Ryan’s World Ninja Adventures launched earlier this week on The Roku Channel, and follows Ryan’s training with real ninjas while on a trip to Japan. New episodes will drop throughout the year on the Ryan’s World YouTube channel, Roku and through pocket.watch’s SVOD, Ryan and Friends Plus.
PGS Entertainment
Preschool-skewing YouTube channel LooLoo Kids is taking its first steps into the Latin American market. Distribution partner PGS has signed Brazil-based Vertical Licensing to represent the IP regionally with a new suite of consumer products deals already in the books. Initial licensees include Novabrink (toys), Clio Style (backpacks) and Festcolor (party goods), which will begin rolling out SKUs to retailers during the back-to-school season. Since launching in 2014, the LooLoo Kids channel has amassed more than 60 billion views and 54.5 million subscribers for its CG-animated nursery rhymes and children’s songs.