Sailor Moon European Licensing Tidbits

Sailor Moon has been popping up in quite a few industry magazines lately, and we're going to catch you up to some of them building up to Kazachok Licensing Forum!

In the show preview for Kazachok, there is a short profile piece written about Toei Animation Europe. It makes mention of the global relaunch of Sailor Moon, and reveals that Bandai has the master toy license. As of this moment there are no new toys listed on Bandai's Japanese or European site, but (fingers crossed) maybe in the Fall or around Christmas that will all change. We still can't quite figure out why ANIMAX in Japan continues to play the first season over and over and over again. We thought that by now they'd at least have been on SuperS or Stars!

Total Licensing Magazine has a few Sailor Moon mentions in its Spring 2010 issue. There is a great quote from an interview with Pietro Peia (CEO of Backstage Licensing):

2010 will be the year of Sailor Moon: after long negotiations with Toei Animation
we convinced the creator of the animated series to relaunch it into the Italian market in terms of TV, home video, publishing, merchandising, music and theatrical. Mediaset has already purchased TV rights and will start airing the series in Autumn.

The image we have here is from an ad for Backstage - it's a small square but we haven't seen a promotional image with her in that pose yet (and we have a feeling that the full version might be very appealing to older fans).

There is also a bit about the revival in a piece about Toei. It reads:

TOEI BRING BACK SAILOR MOON

Toei Animation in France report the global relaunch of Sailor Moon.
The first agent to be appointed is Backstage in Italy and Mediaset have signed
to air the series later this year. After the series is re-introduced into Japan and
Italy, Toei will take it further afield to a worldwide audience.
In Japan, Sailor Moon, which was created by Naoko Takeuchi has been a cultural
phenomenon and one of the biggest success stories, around the world,
in the 1990s.
The show enjoyed five seasons with a total of 200 x 26 minute episodes and,
in addition, was the subect of six feature films. It was also the subject of a
major licensing program in different countries.
Aimed at girls aged four to eight, the relaunch has Bandai as the property’s
toy partner.

And it uses the first image we saw of the revival's logo from Italy. We're getting a little frustrated with them referring to the 3 specials as "movies". Just to clarify - there are only 3 full length feature films. Not 6.

Toei Animation is also going to be appearing at MIPCOM's MIPTV Market and Conference in Cannes, just a few days after Kazachok ends. Only a matter of time now before Moonies en France ont célèbrent!