LeanneBennett.com

 

Go Moshi!

My daughter is completely in love with Moshi Monsters. Moshi Monsters is the brainchild of Mind Candy, a British entertainment company.  It's a online social media game for children, and this stuff is genius.  No wonder the people who created it are making an absolute fortune.

I've always thought of Moshi Monsters as Pokémon for girls. I have been corrected, especially by my husband, to say that it's more like Pokémon for young children, because apparently boys play this as well. In fact, according to Wikipedia as of June 2011 Moshi Monsters had 50 million users, both boys and girls, and was worth $200 million US. Fifty million users -- incredible!

But it's completely understandable. They've hit the nail squarely on the head with this game. It's got interesting looking characters, bright colours, names that are fun to say (and some are parodies of real people -- Lady GooGoo, Simon Growl, etc.) and a game that kids can play online with their friends. (and milk their parents for membership fees!)

And besides the online game, there are trading cards, books, stuffed toys, a magazine -- my daughter even got a Moshi handbag for Christmas!

I'm beginning to think my daughter is a genius, too. ;-) Despite being a year younger than the target age that the makers planned, she can name all the Moshi Monsters and identify them on sight. Okay, maybe that says more about the cleverness of the game than the genius of my daughter, but I'm still amazed.

It is an incredible game that seems to truly found a (very large) target audience. And as far as I can tell the only downside is how hard it is to get my daughter to stop talking about/thinking about/playing it.

And yes, I'm paying the membership fees. (at least this month anyway) :-)

Filed under: children entertainment game mind candy moshi monsters online
11
To Posterous, Love Metalab