The Power of Korean Characters help create a New Korean Wave: Pororo, Pucca, Roboca Poli

The Power of Korean Characters help create a New Korean Wave: Pororo, Pucca, Roboca Poli

[천(CHEON)] Have you ever heard of ‘Poli,’ ‘Roy,’ ‘Ember,’ and ‘Heli’? If you are able to round up these four, it would be a miracle. These four are a miraculous cure that can even make a crying baby stop! These are the main characters of ‘Roboca Poli,’ created by Korean Education Broadcasting System (EBS). It’s the story of the chief police car, Poli, fierce fire truck, Roy, smart ambulance, Ember, and speedy helicopter, Heli and their rescue missions. Roboca Poli began to broadcast at the end of this February and currently ranks number 1, surpassing other favorite cartoons like Pororo. After only fifteen days, the introduced cartoon character products started to fly off shelves. They are the rising stars that would succeed Pororo, or ‘Po-President,’ a representative Korean character.

The Representative Characters of Korea, Pucca and Pororo

Born in 2003, Pororo is now eight years old and has been made into about 1500 character products. The related sales hover around 708 million dollars until the last 2009, and the loyalties are around 10 million dollars. Pororo has changed the structure of the Korean toy market entirely as well. It surpassed ‘Hello Kitty,’ and ‘Pooh,’ and holds the leading place since 2008.

[It's Pororo!]

Pororo had competitiveness even in the overseas markets. The animation was exported to about 150 countries in the world and was broadcasted as a TV program. The largest broadcast in the Arab regions, Aljazeera TV aired Pororo, and in France, the program rating went over 50%.

The Korean animation character market grew largely as ‘Mashimaro,’ and ‘Pucca‘ gained popularity overseas in the early 2000. The size of industry that was about 2.4 billion dollars in 2005 rapidly grew up to 5 billion dollars in 2010…

The amount of export also experienced 150 million dollars of sales in the first half of this year 2011 as it grew every year. So it increased up to 30.6% when compared to the first half of last year (115 million dollars). Last year, it sold about 248.17 million dollars, so breaking into the 350 million dollar range is not that far away.

[It's Pucca!]

Among the Korean animation characters, the success of Pucca in particular is to be solely credited to the Korean Wave. This character with slit eyes, wearing strong red and black, went to 170 countries in the world and earned 13 million dollars in loyalties last year only. It made a design contract with Benetton, so 39 Pucca items are getting sold in its 1,796 stores worldwide. In Europe, it was even used as a promotion product for McDonald’s ‘Happy Meal’ for kids. Also, in Brazil, it was chosen as one of the 10 characters, and about 170 stores that sold only Pucca were created in 2007 in China.

What is the next global character that will succeed Pucca and Pororo?

The reason that ‘Poli‘ is a strong candidate for the next character president is because, as we have seen, Korean animation characters have competitiveness overseas. This animation cartoon was introduced in ‘MIPTV (International Television Program Market) 2011’ that was opened in Cannes, France, this April, and received love calls from the world’s buyers. It is planned to be aired in about 100 countries next year.

The production of character toys was taken by a global company from the start. Hong Kong’s Silverlit that also manufactured Disney toys saw a huge potential for success and proactively sough cooperation for these new characters firsthand. Their prediction was right on the nose.

[It's Roboca Poli]

Most of these characters that are loved by 4~7 year old Korean children usually began as a TV animation cartoon program. Those children who were engaged in the cartoons want to keep Pororo that is a penguin that cannot fly and a friend who waddles and falls a lot by their sides. They also want to have Poli that is a car and becomes a robot in a critical situation because they want to transform it themselves.

Because this, animation cartoons for children usually get developed while bearing character products in mind. In the first half of this year, TV animation characters like ‘Pororo,’ ‘Roboca Poli,’ and ‘Kiddy Bus Tayo‘ have placed 1~3 rankings in the toy products in E-Mart (large Korean distribution chain). Until this year’s August, the sales of character toys increased up to 60% when compared to last year. If we compare the all the sales of toys, including characters and general toys, it went up 10%; thus reflecting the influence of TV animation cartoons being indeed stupendous.

What is necessary for the global character market? High quality and stable production

The problem is that supply cannot catch up with the demand. Academy Plastic Model Co., LTD. that manufactures Poli characters produced twenty thousand character products after the first broadcasting. But after the launching, they sold out just like that. Afterwards, the factory produced them in three shifts day and night but still they couldn’t make enough. Even in large marts, people couldn’t get them unless they placed orders in advance, and they were sold at double the original price in some online shopping malls. Academy Plastic Model Co., LTD. posted a written apology and thank-you note for customers that said although they were doing their best five days before Children’s Day, the supply was still short.

This is why some criticize that stable production and product’s quality should be supported in order for character products to make big hit in foreign exports, not only for the internal demand in Korea. Experts advised that they should not only focus on manufacturing characters but also supplement low product quality overseas in order to have a real chance of winning over markets.

[C# is a character shop, there are currently 3 stores]

Also, a market that can steadily distribute character products is necessary. For this, Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism opened the first ‘C#,’ which is a specialty store for Korean characters in front of Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, early this month (September). This is due to the criticism that although places that sell character toys are over 1500 such as marts and department stores, most of them are displayed centered on foreign character products. 1800 personal and household care products made of 50 characters such as Pororo, Pucca, Mashimaro, Roboca Poli, and Canimals will be sold, and it is expected to increase the awareness of Korean characters.

cheonjiin