Before its adorable little robot Cozmo[1] arrived on the scene, Anki was in the business of making smart toy cars. The hardware startup’s robotic race car line Overdrive[2] is getting a pretty high profile promotional boost in the form one of the most profitable franchises in film history. In September, the company will be launching Anki Overdrive: Fast & Furious Edition, a racing kit based on the film series.
The deal echoes the serendipitous team up between Disney and Sphero that brought the world the wildly popular BB-8 toy [3]— though the Fast & Furious franchise doesn’t have quite the same sort of all-ages appeal as a Star Wars. Nor does it have the longstanding merchandising cache. That’s more of a byproduct of later films as the series jump the proverbial shark (or submarine), moving from car racing heist film to all-out action cartoon.
The notable tonal shift of the films does, perhaps, put them in line with the higher end of Anki’s tween and younger teen demographic. More to the point for Anki, however, it presents an opportunity for the line to have its highest profile platform since it made an early stage debut at an Apple event. It’s also an undeniable bit of synergy for a company that makes racing cars.
Co-founder Hanns Tappeiner tells me that the company has been searching for a good franchising team up for Overdrive. And certainly this marks a different approach than the one it took for Cozmo when it hired a number of Dreamworks and Pixar animators to concoct an original (albeit Wall-E-esque) story for its toy robot. It also thinks that the films are a solid match for its demographic.
“For younger players, Fast...