Massive numbers, 2,5M unique users/month for Webkinz, 4,5M for Club Penguin. Check the original article for more information.
Online creatures, great and small - The Boston Globe
Online creatures, great and small - The Boston Globe
Online creatures, great and small
By Irene Sege, Globe Staff | January 20, 2007
NEWTON -- Eight-year-old Madison Block sleeps with a small stuffed animal, a cat she calls Coco whose back is torn from wear. She has 11 more little creatures, including Fluffy the poodle and Doodles the panda, that she keeps on a closet shelf set up as a dollhouse or on her bed or in a doghouse on the floor. Down the hall, her 11-year-old sister, Dylan, has 14 animals seated on an overstuffed chair in her bedroom, including the polar bear Frosty that she sleeps with every night.
As cute as the animals are, being soft and cuddly is not their main asset. These are Webkinz, stuffed animals sold with a secret code that gives children access to an online world where the toys' virtual versions can socialize, play games, decorate their dwellings, and change outfits. Webkinz.com, along with similar sites such as Club Penguin, combines the shared-space, real-time interaction of "massive multiplayer online games" usually aimed at teens and adults with the pets-on-the- Web kid appeal of Neopets .
Webkinz and Club Penguin , which features animated tuxedoed birds without a stuffed animal tie-in, are two of the newest and hottest entrants on the juniors scene. The buzz has spread so quickly through the grade-school grapevine that, barely 18 months since they were launched, webkinz.com attracted 2.5 million unique users in December and Club Penguin drew more than 4 million.
"There is just a fascinating network of word of mouth," says Ellen Seiter , author of "The Internet Playground. " "To get to this point of enlisting kids into these [massive multiplayer online games], they've already been gaming online extensively. They've already been participating in the chat function and downloading."
Ganz , the Canadian gift wholesaler behind Webkinz, has been selling lots of the stuffed animals since introducing them in April 2005. Webkinz.com passed 1 million registered users last summer. "That number," says Ganz's Susan McVeigh, "is way in the dust now." So far Ganz has rolled out 41 Webkinz animals, including two it has already retired, and 25 smaller Lil'Kinz. Each user typically owns more than one of the animals, which are selling faster than many stores can keep them stocked. "It was a Webkinz Christmas," says McVeigh.
In Brookline the other day, Henry Bear's Park had only the $10 pegasus Webkinz and $7.50 unicorn Lil'Kinz on hand, and the nearby Magic Beans had none. "They're the next Beanie Babies," says Henry Bear's manager Jean Oliveira.
When the Block sisters log onto Webkinz or Club Penguin, they often put a friend on speaker phone for a virtual playdate that's part online arcade and part online paper dolls. Madison likes to sit a real-life Webkinz beside the computer.
"Me and my friend, we first discovered Club Penguin, and we got a lot of people on it," says Dylan. "Mostly all of my friends do Club Penguin and Webkinz. For Webkinz it's mostly girls. For Club Penguin it's both."
