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FROM the Power Rangers to Angelina Ballerina, Le Petit Prince and Sesame Street's Elmo, children's favourite television characters are getting a digital makeover around the world, writes Audrey Stuart.
Driving the trend is the arrival of smartphones and portable computer 'tablet' devices that can entertain children with downloaded games and Apps at home or on the move, particularly young pre-schoolers.
"Smartphones like the iPhone and the new computer tablets are a great interface for pre-school children because they are very intuitive (to use)," Sesame Workshop executive Terry Fitzpatrick said.
A number of companies are also updating their popular TV programmes and films, which until now have been produced in two-dimension computer graphics, into high-quality 3D.
HIT Entertainment's hugely popular Angelina Ballerina animated TV series has been given a bright new computer-generated 3D look, which allows the dancing mouse to perform like never before.
And the internationally-popular French children's book, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's 'Le Petit Prince' (The Little Prince) is to be made into a 52-episode television series in top quality stereophonic 3D.
The Little Prince, who hops from planet to planet helping people solve their problems, will also inhabit a multi-platform galaxy offering books, online and musical formats.
'Apps' - programmes for portable devices such as smartphones - are the newest addition to the array of tools to help children learn and be entertained via downloaded games and books. And, they are catching on fast with both youngsters and parents.
Sesame Workshop has launched 12 Apps to date, priced at between two and five dollars each. Seven are children's books in electronic format while the other five are original games.
HIT Entertainment's new mobile Apps, which are in a similar price bracket, are also catching on fast. "We've done very well with Apps, which are proving very popular," HIT's Alison Homewood said.
The first Thomas The Tank iPhone games that launched at the beginning of this year have notched up 180,000 sales to date, she added.
Familiar old favourites such as Thomas are less risky in today's difficult economic climate, industry experts say. "The return of a known brand is an easier sell," the managing director of Cake Entertainment's distribution arm, Ed Galton, told MIPCOM News.
Power Rangers, another classic US brand that launched in the 1990s, has also been busy promoting its return to the television screen with its cast of updated but still brightly spandex-clad and helmeted teenage superheroes.
"We're going back to the original format," Fernando Szew, chief executive of the show's distributor MarVista Entertainment, said. The new series of Power Rangers will air on the Nickelodeon channel early next year.
