Sales of products affiliated with animation characters – such as ‘Minions’ and the cast of Frozen – are soaring.
According to McDonald’s, Happy Meals with Minion toys are in high demand in South Korea.
The ‘Minion Happy Meal Special Set’, which consists of five Minion toys, one Happy Meal, and four coupons for Happy Meals were all sold out the minute they were released on July 23, with people queuing for hours before their 3pm release. With stock limited to 100 per store, the Minions disappeared fast.
From July 24, McDonald’s started to sell Happy Meals including one Minion toy each.
“It is hard for us to reveal how many Happy Meals are sold in a day, but ever since we gave out Minion toys, sales definitely went up.”
McDonald’s said Minion-themed products such as the ‘Minion Shrimp Beef Burger’, ‘Minion Yellow Muffin’, ‘South Pole Lemonade’, ‘Ba-nana Shake’ and ‘Ba-nana McFlurry’ are also popular among customers.
McDonald’s is planning the second release of the ‘Minion Happy Meal Special Set’ for August 9, at 3pm. The five Minion toys will be different from the previous event. The fast food chain is expecting another early sell-out.
McDonald’s is not the only company using cute Minions in marketing.
Sam Lip General Foods released four types of Minions bread in time for the movie’s release.
Not to be outdone, Binggrae’s ‘Yomamte’ yogurt ice cream is affiliated with the beloved characters from Disney’s ‘Frozen’. According to Binggrae, sales of the product tripled compared to 2013.
The places selling the ‘Frozen‘ Yomamte’s were shared on online communities, and consumers gave cute nicknames to the products. Named after the characters printed on the packages, Elsa, Anna and Olaf, the popsicles were named ‘El-mamte’, ‘An-mamte’ and ‘Ol-mamte’.
Officials from Binggrae are looking into expanding their product line.
“There were six different designs from ‘Frozen’ printed on the packages in the early stages of the renewal, but we are planning to expand the designs to 23 different types so that consumers can have a wider variety of choice.
By Lina Jang of Korea Bizwire
