Genius Products sells Baby Genius brand back to creators
Staff -- Kids Today, 2/1/2006
San Diego— Genius Products has sold its Baby Genius brand to Pacific Entertainment Corp., a newly formed company headed by Klaus Moeller and Larry Balaban, creators of the Baby Genius brand. Moeller will act as CEO of Pacific Entertainment, and Balaban will be president of the company. Company officials said the deal enables Genius to focus its efforts on distributing its feature film titles while retaining exclusive U.S. distribution rights for the preschool brands.
The $3 million deal includes all worldwide rights and existing licensing agreements for the Baby Genius and Wee Worship preschool brands, along with a production deal for the Little Tikes music and DVD series. As part of the agreement, Genius Products will continue to distribute Baby Genius, Little Tikes and Wee Worship DVDs and music CDs and all new products under these brands.
"We are extremely pleased to be back in business with Klaus Moeller and look forward to distributing Pacific Entertainment's upcoming releases," said Genius Products CEO Trevor Drinkwater. "As creators of the Baby Genius brand, Pacific Entertainment is best suited to realize the brand's fullest potential through a concentrated creative effort that is certain to yield an even better preschool property for children, parents and retailers."
"Genius Products' transformation over the past year into a mini-major distribution company has been truly remarkable and we congratulate Trevor on taking the company to the next level," said Moeller. "As Genius focuses in on its new wealth of top independent and mainstream titles, we intend to develop these preschool brands across all product categories in order to capitalize on Genius Products' increasing distribution capabilities and market share."
"Creating the Baby Genius series was an absolute labor of love and the most rewarding experience of my production career so far," added Balaban. "I am thrilled with this new opportunity to continue the effort and look forward to creating even more titles and products for children and parents around the world."
Pacific Entertainment plans to release two new Baby Genius DVDs and two new Little Tikes DVDs this year in addition to new music CDs.
