The Katakune team has launched a parenting site!

After almost a year’s worth of planning and structuring, The Parenting Magazine has been launched. It  will share a ton of free comprehensive information on the following topics.

- Child Care

- Children Health Issues

- Behavior Problems in Children

- Child Development

- Child Education

- Good Hobbies and Activities for Children

- Food Recipes for Children

- Health and Nutritional Tips for the Mother

- Baby Care Tips for the Father

- Home Planning and Budgeting

And useful information on many other topics …

We hope that through the sharing of these knowledge, we would be able to help parents all over the world truly enjoy and understand their lovely children.

More importantly, we would like parents to know that Katakune is a brand that truly cares and shares.

Katakune DVDs will be released in USA in October 2008!

Through the efforts of our distribution partners, Katakune has secured a DVD release deal with PorchLight Home Entertainment. Already broadcasted on the Voom Kid’s Channel Animania HD in 2007, this is Katakune’s second entrance into the North American market and a testimony of Katakune’s cute appeal.

“PorchLight Home Entertainment’s goal is to assemble an unparalleled library of premiere entertainment, like Katakune, for kids and families, offering a collection of programming that is entertaining and engaging at any age,” said Brenda Bisner, VP of children’s programming acquisitions for PorchLight.

We are very happy with this collaboration and we are confident that PorchLight Home Entertainment - with its excellent history of premium content distribution - Katakune is in great hands and will soon meet many more adorable American kids in the near future.

July 2008 - Katakune begins its broadcast in Taiwan on Yoyo TV Channel for kids at 9.30am from Monday to Friday.

March 2008 - We have entered into a collaboration with HI CORPORATION of Japan - a Japanese company specializing in real-time 3D rendering engine (MascotCapsule® ) for mobile phones
and a wide variety of other devices - to release a set of cartoon characters from the animated series Katakune and Sedo Dog (another of our creations) to be offered as digital interactive characters in Japanese mobile handsets.

The first mobile phone to sport one of the cartoon characters called Mono Dog from the Sedo Dog series is the high-end Sharp SH905iTV.

The cartoon characters will be used for a service where users can set characters to display on their mobile phone standby screens, menu screens, and other screens. The character moves around the mobile phone screen and reacts according to events such as incoming calls, mails and text messages.

HI CORPORATION’s MascotCapsule® - an embedded 3D rendering engine that supports this service - has been widely adopted worldwide by being embedded into the handsets of four of the top five overseas manufacturers. The engine was shipped in a record number of embedded devices other than cellular phones, such as home appliances like video camcorders, reaching 3 million devices as of September 2007.
We are grateful and excited about the collaboration with HI CORPORATION as this marks a unique entry into Japan for our original cartoon characters. The prospect of our characters ‘living’ in so many mobile phones is exciting and we look forward to seeing how the Japanese market will embrace Singapore’s brand of ‘kawaii (cute!)’ characters.

Eisaku Takahashi, Director of HI CORPORATION Singapore Pte Ltd says, “We are certainly pleased to be working closely together with Mediafreaks as we find great potential in their creative contents. HI CORPORATION would definitely be looking forward for more opportunities together in the future.”

November 2007 - The first season of Katakune starts its broadcast in the VOOM HD Animania Channel for kids. VOOM HD is currently the world’s premium leader in HD channels are we are excited that Katakune’s first entry into the US market would be on it. This is testimony of Katakune’s appeal and charm.

Katakune with his licensing agents from Brand Elite, Wennie and Winnie

July 2007 - Katakune and Benny made their debut appearances in the Hongkong Licensing Show 2007!

This is the first time Katakune made his appearance in public. Human sized Katakune and Benny mascots paraded around the show amidst much interest. The show was a success with many more people getting to know Katakune and Benny.

Giant-sized glass fiber mascots of Katakune and Benny were displayed at our licensing agent’s booth

June 2007 - Midway through our production, Katakune has already garnered presales in several territories - including USA, China, Taiwan, the Middle East and Thailand.

The most notable and exciting of the lot is probably the China and USA deals.

To those in the animation broadcast business, it is common knowledge that China is an incredibly difficult market to penetrate as they are highly selective of animation programs. Due to confidentiality reasons, we can’t divulge too much information about the China deal at the moment. What we can however say is that we are respectful of China’s broadcast regulations and are at the moment awaiting patiently for Katakune’s approval to broadcast in China. We are confident that the Chinese authorities would recognize Katakune as a high quality co-production between the 2 countries and approve the broadcast in time to come.

The USA deal is with US cable group Voom HD Networks for its kids channel Animania HD.

Animania, which is dedicated to animation, has picked up the first season of the new Asian 3D animated preschool series Katakune from our North American distributor Princ Films. The channel took exclusive US high-definition TV rights for the first 52 episodes of the series. The show’s US broadcast premiere will be on Animania HD’s preschool block in November 2007.

We are grateful and happy that Katakune has so far performed well in broadcast sales and will endeavor to continue working closely with our distribution partners and agents to bring Katakune to preschoolers around the world.

One of the collaborations with Orange Gum involves a mobile game called Katakune’s Ice Cream Factory

April 2007 - We entered into a joint-development project with Orange Gum to develop Mobile Content for our animation cartoon series, Katakune.

The mobile contents developed include Java games and phone themes. “We are delighted to be working with an exciting media and animation company like Character Farm. Leveraging on Katakune’s strong character design, I believe we can jointly create high quality mobile content that will appeal to Katakune fans and young gamers alike.” Said Mr Tan Hua Koon, Chief Operating Officer, Orange Gum.

“This partnership is an important step for Character Farm, that will take Katakune to the next level in the licensing business. We look forward to working with Orange Gum in this mobile game project. Together we will bring Katakune into the mobile content market to further entertain our fans.” said, Mr Aric Lim, Multimedia Manager, Character Farm.

With so many colorful and adorable images from Katakune, we believe that we will have a lot to offer the handset community who loves to switch on their mobiles to pretty backgrounds and screen savers. We are determined to create a brand recognition for Katakune through offering a variety of products in as many arenas as possible, starting from mobile downloads.