WHY COMPANIES ARE SUDDENLY BUYING THE RIGHTS TO CHARACTERS..
A character used to sell a toy. Now it can sell a hotel room, a beauty product, a video game, an AI conversation — or an entire brand.
THE CHARACTER IS BECOMING THE PRODUCT
For decades, character licensing followed a familiar formula.
A movie or cartoon became popular.
Then someone put the character on a lunchbox, T-shirt, toy or cereal box.
The character was essentially an advertising asset attached to merchandise.
That model is changing.
In 2026, companies are increasingly treating characters as intellectual property that can be deployed across almost any commercial environment — fashion, food, beauty, hospitality, gaming, virtual worlds and AI.
The global licensed consumer-products market is now estimated at roughly $338 billion in retail sales, according to License Global's 2026 ranking.
And the most interesting part is that companies aren't necessarily buying the character to sell more toys.
They are buying attention that already exists.
SONY WANTS MORE OF SNOOPY
One of the clearest examples is PEANUTS.
Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Entertainment agreed in 2025 to acquire WildBrain's approximately 41% stake in Peanuts Holdings.
After the transaction, Sony's businesses would indirectly control about 80% of Peanuts Holdings, while the Schulz family would retain 20%.
Why would Sony want Snoopy?
Because Snoopy isn't simply a cartoon dog.
He is a globally recognised piece of intellectual property that can appear on:
Music → fashion → toys → games → animation → merchandise → experiences → digital products
Sony already has music, film, television, games and consumer entertainment businesses.
Owning more of the character means Sony can potentially connect those businesses around the same piece of IP.
The character becomes a bridge.
THE OLD MODEL WAS MERCHANDISING
Imagine a company owning a famous character.
The traditional licensing model looks like this:
Character owner → licenses character → manufacturer → product → retailer → consumer
The character owner collects royalties or other licensing income.
But the new model can look very different:
Character → game → social content → merchandise → experience → subscription → AI interaction
The character is no longer attached to one product.
It becomes an ecosystem.
ROBLOX UNDERSTOOD THIS EARLY
Roblox created its own IP licensing platform to make it easier for developers to use famous entertainment characters inside games.
Its partners have included Netflix, Lionsgate, Sega and Kodansha, allowing creators to work with properties including Stranger Things and Squid Game.
The important innovation wasn't simply putting characters inside Roblox.
It was reducing the friction involved in licensing them.
Roblox said its License Manager could reduce the process of connecting creators and rights holders from months to days or even hours.
That changes the economics.
If it becomes easier to license IP, companies can experiment with more characters in more places.
A CHARACTER CAN NOW LIVE INSIDE A GAME
Consider what happens when a recognisable character enters a game.
The company doesn't necessarily need to create an entirely new entertainment franchise.
The audience already knows the character.
That means the character brings something extremely expensive:
instant recognition.
A developer can spend years trying to create a character players care about.
Or it can license one that millions of people already recognise.
That can reduce the marketing burden around a new experience.
THEN AI CHANGED THE VALUE OF THE CHARACTER
This is where the trend becomes much more significant.
In June 2026, Hasbro launched Sixth Wall, an AI studio designed to bring Hasbro characters into interactive AI experiences.
The company introduced what it calls “Behavioral Licensing” — licensing not only how a character looks, but how it speaks, behaves and interacts.
Characters including Optimus Prime, Megatron, Cobra Commander and Mr. Potato Head were among those announced for the platform.
This is a completely different type of licensing.
Previously:
“You can put Optimus Prime on your product.”
Now:
“You can let consumers interact with Optimus Prime.”
That is potentially much more valuable.
WILDBRAIN IS MAKING THE SAME BET
WildBrain acquired Personality AI in August 2026.
The company develops conversational AI experiences around entertainment characters.
One example is Hey Peppa Pig, an interactive experience that lets children interact with Peppa Pig through games and activities on Amazon Fire Kids tablets.
WildBrain described these experiences as a new category beyond traditional licensing and content.
That phrase is important.
The business isn't just licensing a picture.
It is licensing an experience.
DISNEY MADE THE BET EVEN BIGGER
Disney's 2025 agreement with OpenAI showed how valuable character rights could become in generative AI.
Disney agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license selected characters from Disney, Pixar and Marvel for use in OpenAI's Sora video-generation system.
Characters including Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Mufasa were included in the agreement.
The deal also included protections around how the characters could be depicted.
That illustrates something important.
The value of IP is expanding at exactly the moment technology is making it easier to reproduce and manipulate characters.
THAT CREATES A NEW PROBLEM: WHO OWNS THE CHARACTER?
Generative AI can create an image resembling a famous character in seconds.
But resemblance isn't necessarily ownership.
A rights holder can control:
Name
Visual appearance
Stories
Voice
Personality
Trademark
Merchandising rights
Specific uses
AI therefore makes character ownership more valuable — and more complicated.
The companies that legally control recognisable characters have something AI companies and creators increasingly need:
authorised cultural identity.
THE CHARACTER BECOMES A TRUST SHORTCUT
There is also a psychological reason companies want characters.
A new product has to earn recognition.
A famous character arrives with it.
Imagine two unknown mobile games.
One has an unfamiliar mascot.
The other contains characters consumers have known since childhood.
The second game starts with an emotional advantage.
The same principle works in retail.
A normal pair of sneakers can be a product.
A pair featuring a beloved character can become a collectible.
The character changes the product from functional object into identity object.
THIS IS WHY BEAUTY IS GETTING INVOLVED
Character licensing is spreading far beyond toys and games.
Industry observers now point to licensing partnerships across food and drink, beauty, fashion, homeware, hospitality, luxury and live experiences.
That means a character can become part of a beauty launch.
A hotel can build an entire themed room around one.
A restaurant can turn a character into an experience.
A fashion brand can create a limited collection.
The commercial logic is:
Existing fandom → instant attention → limited availability → social sharing → purchase
SCARCITY MAKES THE CHARACTER EVEN MORE VALUABLE
This is where characters meet modern marketing.
Suppose a brand launches a normal handbag.
It competes on:
Price.
Design.
Quality.
Brand reputation.
Now put a highly recognisable character on a limited-edition version.
The product can become collectible.
Consumers may buy it not because they urgently need another handbag, but because the product represents membership in a fandom.
The character creates an additional reason to purchase.
CHARACTERS ARE ALSO MEDIA
A company buying character rights is effectively buying a tiny media company.
Think about what the character already possesses:
Name recognition
Visual identity
Story
Personality
Fan base
Memories
Search demand
Social content
Merchandising potential
A new brand normally has to build these assets.
An established character already has them.
That is why IP can be more valuable than a conventional advertising campaign.
Advertising rents attention.
A character can own attention.
THE BUSINESS MODEL IS CHANGING
The traditional licensing business looked like:
Character owner → royalty → product manufacturer
The emerging model is broader:
Character owner
↓
Licensing
↓
Content
↓
Games
↓
Retail
↓
Experiences
↓
AI
↓
Community
↓
More licensing
This creates what companies increasingly call a franchise flywheel.
Every new interaction can make the character more valuable.
THE MOST VALUABLE CHARACTERS DON'T NEED A NEW MOVIE EVERY YEAR
This may be the biggest change.
A character can remain commercially useful without constantly receiving new content.
Snoopy is decades old.
Peppa Pig has existed since 2004.
Transformers date back to the 1980s.
Yet their commercial value can continue through new formats.
The IP doesn't have to be reinvented.
It simply has to find new surfaces.
THAT MAKES CHARACTERS ATTRACTIVE TO TECH COMPANIES
Technology companies have an unusual problem.
Their products can be difficult to explain emotionally.
An AI agent is software.
A chatbot is software.
A model is software.
But give that software a character and consumers suddenly have something they can recognise.
That is already happening.
OpenAI's Dots use colourful character identities for its new AI agents, while Meta's Muse has the mascot Jolly and Anthropic's Claude Code has its unofficially famous crab, Clawd. Recent industry reporting described the broader move as an attempt to make powerful AI products feel more approachable.
The character is becoming the interface.
THE STRANGE PART IS THAT THE CHARACTER MAY START DOING THE WORK
That is the real frontier.
A mascot traditionally says:
“Buy this.”
An AI character can say:
“What do you need?”
It can answer questions.
Tell stories.
Play games.
Teach.
Sell.
Recommend products.
Guide users through an application.
That transforms the economics of character IP.
The company isn't monetising only the image of the character.
It can monetise the interaction.
RIGHTS ARE THEREFORE BECOMING INFRASTRUCTURE
This explains why companies are suddenly interested in acquiring or licensing character rights.
The rights provide permission to place the same intellectual property across multiple commercial systems.
A character can move from:
Screen → store → game → phone → AI assistant → hotel → merchandise
without having to rebuild its audience from zero each time.
The rights become infrastructure for distribution.
BUT THERE IS A RISK
The more places a character appears, the easier it becomes to weaken the character.
If Snoopy is everywhere, is Snoopy still special?
If every product has a limited-edition character collaboration, does “limited edition” still mean anything?
If an AI character says things its original creators would never approve, can the brand trust survive?
That is why modern licensing increasingly requires controls around authenticity, behaviour, safety and brand consistency.
Hasbro's Behavioral Licensing model specifically addresses this problem by defining how characters can behave, not merely how they can appear.
THE REAL ASSET IS NOT THE DRAWING
A company doesn't pay millions for a cartoon face because the drawing itself is expensive to reproduce.
It pays for what the drawing represents.
Recognition.
Emotion.
Fandom.
Trust.
Cultural memory.
And increasingly:
interaction.
That is why a character can be worth more than the physical products carrying it.
MAACAT PERSPECTIVE
The old licensing question was:
“What product can we put this character on?”
The new question is:
“Where else can this character live?”
A famous character can now become a toy, a game avatar, a fashion collaboration, a hotel experience, a social-media personality or an AI companion.
That changes the economics completely.
Companies aren't simply buying characters.
They are buying pre-built audiences with emotional connections.
And in an economy where attention is increasingly expensive, a character that already has millions of people saying “I know that one” can be an extraordinarily valuable business asset.
