Taking advantage of the lure of learning is one way broadcasters and producers are promoting merchandising and licensing initiatives attached to natural history docs. Discovery's plush toy line, for example, uses packaging that shows the habitat of the represented animal and provides interesting points about the animal itself. The aforementioned View-Master pairs a larger image with small insets that reveal scientific facts or highlights physical details of the featured creature. Children's retail giant Toys R Us signed a deal with Discovery earlier this year to become the exclusive retailer and licensee for the broadcaster's Animal Planet toy line. It's not appropriate to do bubble bath.
Merchandise also has to reflect brand values.
Products such as books, calendars and diaries tend to focus on the photographic nature of the genre. Natural history is something the BBC is renowned for and we can build on that. When you think of the wealth of natural history programs the BBC has, however, it would be impossible to do merchandising for all of them. What the qualities of a program with these values or image are is a little less concrete. Discovery made its first foray into character-based licensing with a product line based on Animal Planet's Crocodile Hunter series.