Angry Birds UK activity park to launch in 2012
The first Angry Birds activity parks are going to launch next year, featuring slides and rope swings based on the hugely popular app.
Having already made a fortune out of a merchandise range featuring the games’ popular characters, such as soft toys and jumpers, there will now be a series of Angry Birds-themed parks around the world.
Rovio, Angry Birds’s Finnish parent company, has just signed a global deal with activity park manufacturer Lappset Group, which has already started creating themed swings, slides and towers.
The first two parks will open in Finland next year, while several others are expected to launch in the UK. However, the locations and timings of the British parks have yet to be decided.
“The activity parks tie in perfectly with the Angry Birds world and our way of thinking,” said Rovio’s Mighty Eagle, chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka – whose wife was recently spotted sporting an Angry Bird-themed dress to a party.
“We will be developing a service which brings together the digital world and the physical world in a way that’s never been seen before. The popularity of Angry Birds isn’t restricted to any age, sex or social group, and the activity parks will be designed to be interesting places for absolutely everyone, all around the world.”
The Angry Birds park range includes animal spring riders, swings, sandpits and a range of climbing towers with slides. Familiar characters and colours from the mobile game are incorporated into the activity park equipment. The range also includes an Angry Birds arcade game that can be played outdoors in the park.
The latest Apple App Store figures showed that Angry Birds was the most popular paid-for app during 2011 and two of its spin-offs - Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio - also featured in the top 10.
The 300 million total minutes clocked up each day represents the equivalent of a single gamer spending more than 570 years playing Angry Birds. The game involves catapulting destructive birds at pigs hidden in a series of fortresses.
Andrew Stalbow, Rovio’s American chief, confirmed to The Telegraph earlier this year that the hotly anticipated Angry Birds movie is slated for release in 2014, after a series of themed cartoons make their debut.
“We are now working on creating a cartoon series of the games for early next year. They will only be short, between two to three minutes in length – but we are looking at working with a network provider to get them to go out on television as well as online,” he said.
Rovio recently acquired an animation studio in Finland to make the cartoons. However, Stalbow revealed no decisions have been taken as to how or where the movie will be made.
He said the company “had a real shot of growing the business to be a huge entertainment company” and that it would move beyond the Angry Birds game in due course.
The company’s second largest market after the US is now China, where both the game and merchandise such as toys and jumpers are hugely popular.
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