Toy World’s Rachael Simpson-Jones was invited for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Natural History Museum to find out about its new licensing deals.
Under the experienced eye of senior licensing manager Emma Russell, the Natural History Museum – one of Britain’s most beloved institutions – is digging deep into the past (and its vast archives) to sign new licensing deals across multiple categories, including Toys & Games, that will provide today’s kids with fun, educational and sustainable new products with tangible heritage and brand awareness. Rachael, editor at Toy World and natural history geek, shared her experience of the tour.
The museum welcomes some five million visitors every year from across the globe, hosts a raft of events (from sleepovers and film premieres to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards and Dawnosaurs, an accessible morning for neurodiverse children), is home to some of the world’s foremost scientists and of more than 80m objects spanning billions of years of our planet’s history. There’s a lot to see and do – and a lot of licensing possibilities to boot.
For Emma, who prior to joining NHM’s team in the summer of 2022 was Hardlines manager at Entertainment One and Hasbro, it’s this breadth and depth of heritage and history that offers unparalleled opportunities for licensees to tap into. While we peer into tanks and jars of all manner of preserved creatures in the museum’s subterranean wet specimen vaults (a giant squid, a python, Darwin’s octopus, oh my!), she tells me her remit is very much focused on the Toys & Games category, a hitherto untapped area for NHM. The museum has previously seen great success amongst the adult and heritage licensing markets, but feels the time is right to prioritise the Toys & Games category. Emma has therefore devised a licensing strategy that a) will introduce a raft of new deals aimed at younger audiences and b) introduce science and STEM to kids in the form of NHM-backed product.
To read the rest of this feature, written for the March issue of Toy World, click here.
