Maggie and the Ferocious Beast started life as a Simon & Schuster children’s book by Betty and Mickey Paraskevas aimed at the preschool-to-11 demo. Now a lighthearted animated preschool series from Toronto-based Nelvana, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast premiered this year on Nick Jr., debuted in Canada in August on Teletoon, and has been sold to various international broadcasters, including Germany’s rtv, Family Entertainment, Nickelodeon in the u.k. and La Cinquieme and tps in France.

Six weeks following the show’s premiere on Nick Jr., it finished number one in the u.s. national Nielsen ratings among kids aged two to five, delivering an 8.1 rating and 37 share for the week ending July 16.

‘The ratings through the summer were phenomenal,’ says Andrew Witkin, vp of North American licensing for Nelvana. ‘Maggie was on average in the top three shows for Nick Jr., and that’s with a limited number of episodes and without the history the other shows had.’

Currently enjoying 13 half-hour eps on Nick Jr., Nelvana is in the process of developing an additional 13 for 2001.

‘It’s pretty similar to what we’ve done with Little Bear,’ says Witkin. ‘You know, try to get 13 half-hours every year to keep it fresh.’

The show is fresh in the minds of parents, who are inundating Nelvana’s website with feedback on Maggie. Witkin says the amount of parental feedback regarding the show’s characters and stories has little in the way of precedent for Nelvana.

Initial product based on the show’s characters was expected to hit u.s. retail this month in the specialty toy category. Board games, apparel, bedding and accessories will roll out in 2001. Nelvana is currently in talks with toy companies to launch a few key items in the mass market for fall 2001, but Witkin says in the first year of the licensing program, Zany Brainy and FAO Schwartz will have Maggie pretty much to themselves.

‘The world of Maggie is an incredible, almost surreal kind of landscape [world] and it’s something that in our product we’re really trying to flesh out,’ says Witkin. ‘I think that what we’ll hopefully do very well is pick up on the whole imaginative quality of the show and really embellish that in product.’

While Maggie’s world is surreal, her licensing program is firmly rooted in reality. ‘We are much more pragmatic rather than hyping and overheating a property,’ says Sid Kaufman, Nelvana’s executive vp of worldwide merchandising. ‘We want to continue to make more episodes and kind of nurture Maggie and the Ferocious Beast into its potential rather than getting ahead of ourselves or promising unrealistic expectations.’

Witkin agrees. ‘It’s a special property for us, so instead of just blanketing and putting a lot of stuff out there, we’re trying to do less stuff with greater quality,’ he says. ‘It’s a big part of our plans over the next two years.’

Plans for Maggie include expansion into Europe and Asia. Nelvana’s manager of international licensing, Tonya Lindo, says over the long-term the company is looking at a broadcast deal in Korea and merchandising programs in France, Germany and the u.k.

Katerina Dietrich, director of entertainment at Copyright Promotions Licensing Group’s German office, thinks Maggie has all the essentials in place to become a German merchandising hit. According to Dietrich, RTV Family Entertainment is the right partner to get the right time slot and marketing strategy behind the program and to get the message out. ‘It’s like a quality approval for the series to be with RTV Family Entertainment,’ she says.

‘I think it’s a very clean, very cute concept, and it can be supported by the parents, which you need for this target group,’ says Dietrich. ‘It could be ferocious.’ *

-www.nelvana.com