The hit animation series WINX CLUB marketed by m4e AG achieves the highest popularity ratings with the transmission of the new fourth season
on the German-language TV station NICK, and presents itself on a relaunched website.

The top-flight girls’ brand “Winx Club” is back on screen since the beginning of November 2009. With daily market shares of up to 26% among children aged between 3 and 13 years old (source: AGF/GfK TV Scope), the series – marketed by the Grünwald-based brand management and media company m4e AG, and with its fourth season to date – reinforces its regular spot in the afternoon programme of the children’s TV station NICK. Since 2nd November the 26 new episodes are being broadcast from Monday to Friday at 16:15, and are being rerun as repeats since 8th December. The TV channel, as well as m4e AG are more than happy with this new development. The series continually increases its viewing figures with each broadcast and is meanwhile significantly ahead of NICK’s broadcasting average.

On 11th December the German version of the official Winx Club website www.winxclub.com was relaunched. The online appearance of the fairies was completely revised and now offers an online forum and a MMOG, where the series’ fans can create and control their own avatar. With this they can meet other users and chat, and can play the different levels of the online game.

Produced by the Italian animation studio Rainbow S.p.A. (among others: “Huntik” and “PopPixie”), this hit series thus consolidates its claim to being one of the top licensing brands for girls throughout Europe, and in Germany in particular. This also explains the successful marketing of the theme way beyond its TV broadcasting: With an average of over 66,000 copies sold, and in a very difficult year for children’s/teenage magazines, the Winx Club magazine – from the Blue Ocean Entertainment publishing house – ranks as one of the most successful titles in a fiercely contested market. In the home entertainment sector, over 500,000 DVDs and CDs have been sold to date. The first two volumes of the fourth season were published on 6th November by Foreign Media.

The new Winx Club dolls, produced by Rainbow and distributed through the Simba Dickie Group, have been available on toy merchants’ shelves since September. Various product lines are based on the adventures of the fairies in the series and offer unlimited entertainment and amusement for children. For the collectors among them, Panini published a new sticker album in October with corresponding collector-stickers, and the Winx Club calendar for 2010 comes from the publishing house teNeues.

In January 2010, the Ravensburger game and puzzle company will introduce a new jigsaw puzzle, and PEZ is introducing a candy container in the forms of the Winx fairies onto the market. Also at the beginning of 2010 there will be a new Nintendo DS game from Rainbow Media, distributed by Bandai Namco Partners. In addition, for the second half of 2010, a tour of the Winx Club musical – already a big success in Italy – is being planned, as well as a second cinema movie.