Welcome to the inagural Angry Birds News Roundup brought do you by @Dr-Omega. These news bulletin’s are designed to offer you a recap of new and interesting Angry Birds and / or Rovio news that may have flown under the radar.
Disclaimer: Artist interpretation. This is NOT an official image from Rovio or Hasbro.
We previously reported that the Idle Hands blog obtained a list of upcoming Hasbro products from the UK Toy Fair that included a brief listing for Angry Birds Transformers toys coming in September.
After some digging, it was found that in November 2013, a coding error on the Hasbro page allowed a G.I.Joe fan to see a large list of upcoming Hasbro products. Allspark.com user Monzo obtained the list in the same manner and extracted the list of Transformers toys and posted the list online. The list includes the following:
Mobile
Angry Birds Boys Gaming
This information seems to confirm what was suspected from the previous listings, that these toys will be an update or offshoot of Angry Birds GO!. It is presumed that Hasbro will not release information about this line during Toy Fair and will instead wait for Rovio to make a public announcement first. The September timeframe announced on the Idle Hands blog would put their release not long after the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth live action film from the Transformers franchise, on June 27, 2014.
However, Rovio has already announced they would release Angry Birds Stella in the fall of 2014, so it would seem unlikely they would release two new games so close to each other. It should be noted that although appearing in different forms on two separate sites, this information should still be considered unconfirmed until we hear further word from Rovio or Hasbro. When asked for comment on Twitter, Rovio did not respond.
In other Hasbro / Angry Birds news, after Rovio’s stunning announcement, teasing the upcoming Angry Birds Stella franchise, Hasbro followed up with their announcement regarding Stella Telepods. This comes just days before the 2014 New York Toy Fair, where toy companies unveil their upcoming products to a select audience. While cameras are generally not allowed to record items exhibited during the show, Hasbro invited the press to their 2014 Entertainment Brand Preview the day before Toy Fair starts. It does not appear that any Angry Birds toys were displayed, but an image from Hasbro’s presentation showing the Stella Telepods was posted to the Internet on the transformers fan site, www.tfw2005.com, that allows us our first real view of the Telepods:
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Unfortunately, despite exhaustive research attempts, the names of the new Stella characters have not been found. Toy Fair runs from February 16 – 19. It is hoped that additional information or images will be released during this time. As always, we will bring you any updates, as they come.
In other toy news, Giromax announced a line of Angry Birds GO! Clay Buddies kits that let you assemble various GO! racing karts. Check out the story and picture here.
In entertainment news, it was reported that Rovio has chosen Sony Pictures Imageworks in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as the primary animation studio for Angry Birds the Movie. The film has a July 1, 2016 release date and will be directed by Fergal Reilly and Clay Kaytis.
Read the full story on Variety here.
Moving to sports, HockeyBird youth t-shirts are now available on the NHL’s online store, offering a variety of NHL teams to choose from. Vistit their store here: http://shop.nhl.com/search/bird
As a reminder, there are two weeks left to play Angry Birds Star Wars on Facebook. So enjoy the tournaments while they are available.
Lastly, flingers in many countries celebrated St. Valentine’s Day this week by playing the Angry Birds Friends special Valentine’s tournament. In South Korea, they also celebrated Jeongwol Daeboreum (“The January Big Full Moon”), the first full moon of the Lunar New Year. One of the traditions of this holiday is to crack open peanuts, walnuts or chestnuts ( referred to as”bureom”) using your teeth and then eat them.
Rovio celebrated with Korean fans by posting this image to their Korean Twitter account:
To learn more about the Jeongwol Daeboreum holiday, please see the following links:
Special thanks to Pigineering’s D.H. Kim (@DH-Kim) for translation help and information.
