Random House will be adding a number of new products to its Little Golden Books franchise, including a 100th-Anniversary Disney Set.
What’s Happening:
- Random House is adding new products to its Little Golden Books franchise.
- One of the big releases is a 12-book boxed set of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars titles. This is the first time a boxed set has crossed all of Disney’s major brands to mark the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company in 2023. This will be published in December.
- “They have plans for an epic, year-long celebration,” said Chris Angelilli, v-p and editor-in-chief of licensed publishing at Random House. “Our first Little Golden Book with Disney was in 1944 and we’ve done countless books over many of their properties. We like to think we’ve played at least a small part in Disney’s history.”
- This anniversary branded box includes titles that cross the decades, as well as tie-ins to Toy Story, Star Wars: A New Hope, It’s a Small World, The Lion King, Moana, Frozen, 101 Dalmatians, Princess and the Frog, Pixar Cars, and Iron Man.
- There is also a vintage Cinderella title, as well as a 1950 book, Mickey Mouse’s Picnic, that is exclusive to this box.
- They’re releasing a new Little Golden Book for Star Wars: Visions, an anime-inspired anthology series that is mostly adult-skewing. “For Star Wars, we only have Little Golden Book rights, and we thought there would be nothing age-appropriate from Visions,” Angelilli said. “But the creative director at Lucas called and said to look at this one episode, T0-B1. I’m glad he did. It’s child-friendly, about a droid who dreams of being a Jedi Knight. It reminds me of Pinocchio. And the animation style is perfect for Golden Books. We were planning to find an illustrator, but we ended up using screen grabs.”
- “Black Adam is a unique and complicated character that rides the line between villain and hero,” Angelilli said. The book, Heroes Help!, shows Shazam teaching Black Adam what it means to be a hero.