COLUMN
Stories from GG’s Toy Box
By Grahame Grassby
Story 12 — Wrong Video, Mr Kim — Pucca Goes All Kill Bill
The MiP Junior Licensing Challenge is a competition that looks for a new TV children’s program with great merchandising potential.
Out of more than 80 entries, a panel of judges, comprising representatives from Mattel US, Zinkia Entertainment Spain, Stella Projects Australia (Grahame Grassby), Exim Licensing Argentina and Chorion UK, chose five finalists, who presented their properties in live pitches at MIP Junior 2011 held at the Martinez Hotel in Cannes, France.
And the judges unanimously chose Mia and Me as the winner!
Yes, that’s all true but wait that is only half the story — we, the judging panel, did choose Mia and Me as the winner and yes Mia and Me was the standout choice being that Mia is a pink unicorn and “Me” is a young girl dressed up as a fairy princess and you don’t get more merchandising friendly than that, especially when your chief judge is the head of international licensing at Mattel, the home of Barbie.
So Mia and Me got the chocolates, but what was the most memorable presentation was the one given by Mr Kim from Vooz in South Korea, who was the first cab off the rank presenting to a full room of about 50 children’s TV executives.
The panel of judges were lined up on stage facing the audience like a row of ducks in a shooting gallery in front a large screen that projected the short video clip of each property being presented.
Mr Kim who was standing at the front of the room just in front of the judging panel, turned to the projectionist, who was right up the back of the room and gave him the go-ahead to start the Vooz show reel.
And then all hell broke loose…
Instead of the presentation video for a gentle pre-school property called Myo & Ga being shown on the big screen, a video of Pucca began to play out and not the traditional shy animated Korean girl Pucca rather this was “Kill Bill” Pucca who with an animated sword was killing and maiming and dismembering countless foes and splattering their bodies all over the walls, floors and ceilings of the rooms she was carrying out her deadly massacre.
As the video started to play out on the big screen, Mr Kim’s face turned to one of horror and he started running up the centre aisle to the back of the room, crying out no! no! wrong video!
And as the video continued to play out on the big screen, we watched the faces in the audience turn from confusion to various forms of shock, to open jawed stunned mullet, to horror and finally, for some, even to laughter, as Pucca extracted her deadly revenge upon her hapless adversaries.
The video stopped, the room was silent, Mr Kim took to the stage, bowed to the audience and spoke into the microphone.
“I am very sorry. That was the wrong video.”
No kidding, Mr Kim — that truly was the wrong video.
After all the presentations were finished, the jury met in the private jury room to make their decision.
The Head of Mattel International Licensing, Holly Stein, addressed the other judges: “I think it’s pretty clear that Mia and Me is the winner unless anyone thinks otherwise”.
I started to say, “I thought that the first one was …”
“Oh shut up Grahame — you’re an idiot”
And with that Mia and Me was voted the unanimous winner and the MiP Junior Licensing Challenge was over for another year.
This article originally appeared in Edition 13 of The Toy Universe Magazine
