Guru Studio

The Toronto-based animation studio has signed a licensing deal with Russia’s brand4rent, which will oversee the consumer products program for True and the Rainbow Kingdom in Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States like Armenia, Romania and Uzbekistan. Guru’s animated preschool series started airing on Russian kidcaster Carousel this year.

Jetpack Distribution 

The UK-based distributor has inked three new deals for CG-animated series Moley with Germany’s ZDF, Latin America’s Globo and New Zealand’s TVNZ .

ZDF and TVNZ picked up free-TV and VOD rights to start running the 52 x 11-minute series and a 30-minute Master Moley: By Royal Invitation special later this year. And both titles have been airing on Brazil’s GloboPlay, the region’s largest video streaming platform, since December.

Calm

This week, audio company Calm released a new Transformers sleep story for kids and adults on its same-name subscription sleep and meditation app.

The story features Peter Claver Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in the original ’80s animated series The Transformers, sharing the history of the Autobots and Decepticons in a sleep-inducing tone. It can be found in the Sleep and Kids sections of Calm’s downloadable app.

Holiday Hill Enterprises

Throughout 2022, the prodco behind Spookley the Square Pumpkin (pictured) plans to debut new holiday-themed content on Disney Junior and DisneyNOW. This rollout will start on February 14 with The Spookley Valentine Show, a 13-minute live-action puppet show that follows Spookley and his friends as they prepare for the annual lovefest.

Holiday Hill has more specials planned for Easter, summer and Halloween, as well as an animated music video called Halloween’s For Everyone! that will air on DisneyNOW.

Hello Bello

The baby care company started by Kristen Bell and her husband Dax Shepard has partnered with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to launch a new range of products inspired by popular book Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Diapers, wipes and gift sets featuring Seussical prints and patterns are already available at Walmart in the US.

Hello Bello also plans to donate US$1 to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund for every photo of Hello Bello and Dr. Seuss products that customers share on Instagram or TikTok.