Brands Ride Along with Disney's Theme Park Expansion Plans

Walt Disney has a new theme park, Shanghai Disneyland. PepsiCo was at the opening, with a limited-edition.

PepsiCo also partnered on a branded stage inside the Shanghai park. Four years ago, Pepsi opened a special R&D center to develop products that fit the taste buds of customers in China. Working with Disney furthers PepsiCo's expansion in China.

Starbucks is another brand that sees opportunity in working with Disney. In Shanghai at the Disney Resort, Starbucks just opened what will be its busiest coffee shop in the world, with 110 baristas to serve 25 million customers yearly. Starbucks already had a presence in each of the Disney parks in Orlando, and in Disneyland California.

These are only two of the global brands that are riding along with Disney's marketing magic in its global expansion. One more brand enjoying the ride is Hasbro, which won the lucrative doll license from Mattel and now produces princess dolls and other toys based on strong Disney brand franchises like Frozen.

Star Wars and Trans-Generational Emotional Resonance

The president of Hasbro's brand division coined a term for what happens when parents (well, primarily fathers) who grew up loving Star Wars or Marvel comics characters and shared that brand fandom with their children. The term is "trans-generational emotional resonance." Hasbro makes Star Wars toys under license from Disney, and it's a particularly lucrative partnership this year. Force Friday showed the power of the brand, and it's only the beginning.

The immense opening weekend box office success of Disney's Star Wars: The Force Awakens demonstrates the power of trans-generational emotional resonance. Disney says the new movie took in $248 million in North America alone. Worldwide, the movie generated ticket sales of $529 million. Both are records for opening weekend ticket sales. News coverage often showed parents and children attending the movie together, some dressed as Star Wars characters, some chanting dialogue from older movies in the series.

This latest movie is tweaking the brand marketing to appeal to females, by casting Daisy Ridley in the leading role of Rey. Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens, supported by star power and many millions of dollars in marketing, make Rey as popular a character as Hunger Games's Katniss Everdeen? Will it tap into trans-generational emotional resonance so that, 20 years in the future, mothers buy Rey merchandise for their daughters? Hasbro is in good position to benefit, because it has the Star Wars toy license until 2020.

Dino-Sized Marketing Deals for Jurassic World

Jurassic World, the latest summer blockbuster movie sequel to Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel, has some dino-sized marketing deals with brand partners. Just click to the store on the Jurassic World site, for instance, and you'll see Hasbro's tie-in toys, LEGO's new tie-in sets, and a closet-full of T-shirts for sale.

Critics aren't just talking about the plot--they're also talking about the product placement. For instance, the movie's website displays authorized Mike and Ike candies, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant on the island, and of course a 5-star Hilton hotel plug. Triumph motorcycles are prominently featured in the movie, as are Mercedes cars. Oh, and in-park shopping shown on the big screen? Lots of familiar logos there (Columbia Sportswear, Brookstone, and Oakley, to name just a few).

By the way, the official FB page has, on the movie's opening day, more than 400,000 likes (it's classified as "travel/leisure") and some fun comments that are very much in keeping with the idea of the sudden disaster that befalls the park. The Jurassic World Twitter account was opened 3 years before the movie's debut. The Instagram page has 90,000+ followers.

Whether or not movie critics love it, this movie sounds like a dino-sized marketing bonanza for all the brands involved.

UPDATE: Jurassic World broke box-office records, becoming the first movie to exceed $500 million in opening weekend receipts!

Toy Fair Time: First Look at 2015's Newest Toys

Want to know what you'll see on store shelves come November? The wholesale Toy Fair (which just completed its NYC run) offers an early look at what 13,000 toy retailers from around the globe are buying for the holiday season.

Lots and lots of dinosaurs, for a start, thanks to the upcoming release of the new Jurassic World movie, one of the sequels to the wildly popular classic film Jurassic Park. And, as Fortune notes, generic dinosaur toys can be produced without being licensed from Jurassic Park's owner, Universal Studios. At the same time, LEGO licensed dinos for its new Jurassic World brick set, introduced at the Toy Fair.

All the usual suspects had exhibits at the fair, including Mattel and Hasbro, plus many up-and-coming firms. In addition to new Barbies and Furbys, watch for new Marvel comics superhero toys, drone-type playthings, Star Wars tie-ins, even fake snow. Really.

For more news, follow Toy Fair on Facebook or Twitter.

Less Packaging = More Satisfaction

Less is more: Amazon and Walmart are putting pressure on manufacturers to reduce the amount of packaging on their products, especially targeting those hard-to-open protective plastic shells in which small items arrive. Amazon calls this its "frustration-free" initiative. Already, toymakers are doing away with frustrating and unnecessary packaging.

With the holidays here, less packaging (and less frustrating packaging) can mean more satisfied buyers AND a cleaner planet.

Each American sends about 800 pounds of packaging to landfills each year. The frenzy peaks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, when the EPA estimates that the average US household’s trash load headed for landfills skyrockets about 25 percent.

Think how much greener we can keep our planet if all manufacturers slash the amount of packaging they use. Hasbro recently introduced new Play-Doh packaging (above) without paper labels and with tapered bottoms to stack neatly, encouraging reuse. A big change? No, but that's the point: Little steps can add up to big environmental savings and less frustration.

Think how much time will be saved too: The Daily Mail cites a survey saying that parents blame excessive packaging for much of the time they have to invest to assemble toys such as doll houses and bicycles.