Will 'South Park' play in the mass market?

Discount Store News, Dec 8, 1997

Could the latest wrinkle in the licensing biz be too hot for the mass market?

"South Park," Comedy Central's runaway hit cartoon, features the antics of four third-graders who weather a range of bizarre circumstances, including flaming flatulence, brain-eating zombies and assassination attempts on Kathie Lee Gifford.

According to research form Hamilton projects Inc. (a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment and the official marketing and licensing agency for South Park products), T-shirts, which generally have a weekly 2 percent to 7 percent sell-through rate, are selling through at a rate of 65 percent to 70 percent when they feature "South Park" characters.

The T-shirts -- available so far at more than 2,300 doors at specialty retailers such as Gadzooks, Hot Topics, TV Land and college bookstores across the United States -- are the first wave in a whole line of South Park products, which will include caps, sweatshirts and boxer shorts. The question is: Will South Park merchandise ever make it into mass market stores, the largest purveyors of licensed merchandise in the country, and if it does, will the merchandise appeal to the somewhat conservative sensibilities associated with discounters and their customers?

According to Joanne Loria, senior vice president of Hamilton Projects, her company has received inquiries about it from some of the mass merchandisers including Kmart. "We are sensitive to the fact that because the material is racy, it might not be proper for a Wal-Mart, but you never know. We don't plan on entering the mass market for at least another year," she adds.

According to Loria, Hamilton has approached the licensing program with a three-tier marketing plan. The program was launched in the trend-setting college market where the show had enjoyed immense popularity even before it debuted on TV this past August. This popularity, due to a racy five-minute short titled "The Spirit of Christmas" that had been circulating for more than a year underground, had already primed the market, and it was only a matter of time before T-shirts made a natural entry.

The second tier of the marketing effort is on the way and includes hitting mid-level department stores such as Mervyn's and JCPenney. "We're doing a limited testing with JCPenney for holiday at about 70 different stores," Loria says. "But we're not planning a total rollout into the mid-level probably until about spring 1998." Loria notes that Hamilton does not plan to enter the discount store market until after the products has been completely saturated at the specialty store level. "There is still so much demand for the product at the specialty level that we can keep it there for possibly another season and then fold it into the mid-tier."

This effort as a whole is similar to the marketing approach that was originally taken with other controversial cartoons such as "The Simpsons" and Beavis & Butt-head." "The kind of audience we have right now are kids who, once they see [South Park] at their local Wal-Mart or Kmart, for them the trend is over," Loria says.