This is news from last week, but missed by many. Rovio has announced they are going to open Angry Birds pre-schools in China.
Game company Rovio, which is known of being behind the Angry Birds game, has stuck their logos and funny animal heads on so many products that I bet nobody can’t even count anymore. From the supermarket you can find Angry Birds products like coffee, bicycles, spinning rods, shoes, cookbooks and even face cream, just to name a few. The brand has been licensed to almost anything you can think of and there seems to be no end to it. There are already Angry Birds themed amusement parks and playgrounds, but now they are going to open pre-schools too as a new Angry Birds Playground product.
The project was announced at a ceremony in Beijing, which was also attended by a Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen. The program was developed in collaboration with the University of Helsinki. The aim is to combine the Angry Birds game in Finnish educational system.
“We integrate it into a deep educational expertise, it is the kind of package that is unbeatable. It is about much more than the game. It’s about teacher training, learning facilities, products”, lists Rovio’s Vice President of Learning and Book Publishing, Sanna Lukander, on Yle News (in Finnish).
Lukander also said on Yle’s English news that the project is making education both engaging and inspiring.
In other words, they are exposing children to company’s ads and ideology in situations when children are encouraged to learn, to absorb influences and information.
The concept of pre-schools are scheduled to open in the big cities of China, Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, but is intended also for worldwide export.
Get them while they’re young.
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