Canada Games and Kraft Canada are hoping to scare up sales for children’s toys and cereals by capitalizing on the fertile imagination of R.L. Stine in two new, but separate, advertising campaigns.
Stine is the American author of the Goosebumps series of more than 40 horror books for children.
Canada Games has the licensing rights for a new line of toys based on Goosebumps characters.
Kenny Albert, vice-president of marketing and sales for the Concord, Ont.-based toy company, says the national tv campaign from BCP Toronto will break in mid- to late-September and run through to Christmas.
Albert says the campaign will promote the sales of Gurglin’ Goosebumps, a rubber horror head children can wear; Glob Faces, masks which ooze red, blue and green slimy subtances out of their various orifices; and Freaky Faces, rubber-faced hand puppets that can be contorted when users stretch their fingers.
The 30-sec. spot features a vulture/crow hybrid that talks, says Charles Cleghorn, Canada Games account director at bcp.
The tag line on the tv spot is, ‘If reading is a scream, playing is a howl.’
Gurglin’ Goosebumps retail for $7 to $8, Glob Faces for $5 to $6 and Freaky Faces, which come in two sizes, cost from $12 to $18.
The readership of Stine’s books comprises boys and girls 8 to 12, with a 60/40 boy/girl split, says Albert. Goosebumps programs are also shown on tv.
The Goosebumps items will ‘definitely be the biggest thing we have this year,’ says Albert.
Other Canada Games products include the board game Balderdash and Creepy Crawlers toys.
Malle Allen, Kraft account director at J. Walter Thompson in Toronto, says two Goosebumps-related spots will break during the back-to-school period.
The first 30-sec. spot, for Kraft Peanut Butter, breaks nationally Aug. 26, with the second, for Kraft Dinner, breaking Sept. 2.
The spots are in English only and will run for a full week, says Allen.
(Quebec law prohibiting advertising directly to children prevents the spots from airing in that province in English or French.)
The first 15 seconds of the spots are brand sell, says Allen, and the second 15 are a promotion for Goosebumps merchandise.
Consumers can collect points from Kraft Dinner boxes and Kraft Peanut Butter jars that can be redeemed for Goosebumps products, including Gurglin’ Goosebumps and Freaky Faces.
The campaign is to stimulate children’s response to Kraft Dinner and Kraft Peanut Butter, says Allen.
The Goosebumps promotion is appearing on 15 million boxes of Kraft Dinner and millions more jars of Peanut Butter.
Hillary Firestone, senior product manager for Kraft’s Post Cereals, says Kraft chose Goosebumps because of the books’ and tv programs’ popularity with children. Goosebumps is the No. 1 rated children’s program on networks where it is aired, Firestone points out.
Other Kraft products – breakfast cereals Honeycombs, Sugar Crisp, Alpha Bits and Golden Honey Shreddies, plus Jello, Cheez Whiz and Kraft Singles cheese slices – also have promotions with Goosebumps underway, adds Firestone.
The cereals’ promotions, for example, feature in-pack items such as glow-in-the-dark toys.
Albert says there will be more Goosebumps merchandise from Canada Games next spring including ‘outdoor stuff’ such as water mats and home decor items like mirrors and picture frames.
Goosebumps books are published by Parachute Press in the u.s., Stine’s own company.
The distributor and licensing agent in this country is Scholastic Canada in Richmond Hill, Ont.
