Noddy has a secret rival waiting in the wings. The much-loved Enid Blyton character in the hat with a bell may have Toytown 'sewn up', but another Blyton character, a woodland pixie called Pip, is poised to become the next hero for toddlers.
Created by Blyton in 1948, Pip is the leading candidate in a behind-closed-doors search for a character to follow Noddy into the global market for pre-school entertainment.
A nature-loving soul with pointy ears, Pip is the leading subject of covert market research being carried out by Channel 5 with a view to an announcement later this year.
Chorion, the company that owns Blyton's literary creations, has issued shares to raise the money needed to take the project further, as well as another £7 million to reintroduce several of Blyton's other children's characters into the marketplace at a later date. Pip is due to be developed and branded at a cost of £5m.
Earlier this month the company, headed by Lord Waheed Alli, said it was looking at ways to relaunch other much-loved Blyton properties, including those aimed at older children such as the Famous Five and the Amelia Jane titles.
But the pre-school market is the most lucrative, because basic, non-verbal stories and animations can be sold all over the world.
Noddy was created by Blyton a year after Pip, and has gone on to become one of the most popular fictional characters of all time, with global book sales exceeding 200 million. Chorion relaunched Noddy in September 2002 with a new computer-generated animation television series.
Sales of Noddy products in Britain quadrupled to more than £20m. Book sales rose by 127 per cent. In France, where Noddy is known as Oui-Oui, he is more popular than native children's stars such as Babar and Asterix.
Pip was introduced to readers in a book called The Adventures of Pip, followed shortly afterwards by More Adventures of Pip. The simple tales tell of the pixie's first encounters with woodland animals and plants.
Chorion, which manages intellectual property brands, owns all of Blyton's hundreds of fictional characters, as well as the Agatha Christie sleuths Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot and Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret.
Last week the company added Roger Hargreaves' Mr Men to its portfolio at a cost of £28m.
