Digital into Real: Survey Finds Half of Kids Have Toy Based on Virtual World

This is really interesting:

The company [Dubit] surveyed 500 children from around the UK, finding that 55 per cent owned at least one toy based on one of Moshi Monsters, Club Penguin, Build-A-BearVille, Poptropica or Webkinz. Seventy-three per cent had played at least one of the games in question.

Forty-seven percent had played Moshi Monsters, the hugely popular online game which now boasts 50 million users and a successful spin-off magazine. Developer Mind Candy is expanding at such a rate that it expects to double its headcount in the next 12 months and was recently valued at £125 million.

In many ways this is no surprise – Pokemon has been mashing the digital and the real for quite some time with its cards and games. As we move into a world of 3D printing, RIDF tags and the like, more interesting things will come of such links…

(Hat-tip to Makielab)