McDonald’s Fuels Fairies and Dragons
Today’s Ottawa Citizen features a front page story about another advergaming success story in Canada. Ottawa-based Fuel Industries Inc. is gearing up to put a smile on the faces of 80 million children across Europe and create 50 new jobs in Ottawa, all thanks to a Happy Meal promotion with McDonald’s restaurants.
Fuel will kick off its new Fairies and Dragons franchise with McDonald’s in 40 countries across Europe introducing children to four friendly fairies and four ferocious dragons that come to life on home computer screens. Once the promotion begins in mid-April, Fuel says more than 235,000 CDs containing the creatures will ship to McDonalds across Europe every day. Wow!
According to Fuel’s Chief Creative Officer Warren Tomlin, Fuel is also in discussions with major broadcasters and toy companies about taking the Fairies and Dragons franchise mainstream. The characters were all designed in Fuel’s Westboro studios - the same building that was once home to Hinton Animation Studios, the creators of popular ’80s cartoon The Racoons.
McDonalds has told Fuel it will closely monitor the Happy Meal giveaway and consider expanding the promotion to its North American and Japanese stores within 12 months.
Not content to rest on its laurels, Fuel is also gearing up to release a new video game website, All Girl Arcade, which will offer puzzles, strategy and action games tailored at girls between seven and 11 years of age.
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14 comments
McDonald: Fairies and Dragons - Wonderland said on Mar 19, 2008 at 12:03 am:
[...] Quellen: ottawacitizen, Adrants, techvibes [...]
fiona said on Apr 18, 2008 at 12:45 am:
the game is not working properly
steve said on Apr 18, 2008 at 10:58 am:
no info available on install. it changed wallpaper without asking. no read me or EULA agreement. right click was disabled even after closing the program, required restart. Task Manager disabled, even after restart. this software is ill conceived, every piece of software I have used at least gives you options. I appreciate that it has obviously been written so a child could easily install it, but the problems it has caused were not so easy to rectify. My daughter liked the games though.
Louise said on Apr 19, 2008 at 5:05 am:
Agreeing with above poster. Dont like the fact it changes the wallpaper without asking, and the game slows the pc down quite alot. Also, whats with the thought bubbles? The dragon keeps ‘thinking’ of food and playing and the like. My son does like it though
jediknight said on Apr 22, 2008 at 10:34 am:
good game,like drgons and the fairies,but can only open one on each,the one you start with,how do you open the others?played games for hours filling up treasure chest but still hasnt opene closed icons,how do you do it????
steve said on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:33 am:
jedinight i think you have to buy another meal to get another disk with a differrent fairy to add to the game, maybe im wrong but it stands to reason
Paul said on Apr 27, 2008 at 9:54 am:
I am extremely disgusted with this CD. Not only has it changed my screen display (as someone else has mentioned above) but it has added a user account to my computer, forcing me to choose an account when I log on. Unfortunately, whenever I pick an account, it loads the settings and then immediately saves the settings again without giving me a chance to do anything. It has rendered the computer unuseable!!
A word of advice - DO NOT LET AN F&D CD ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR PC. I have contacted Mcdonalds for a response.
Ryan Anderson said on Apr 28, 2008 at 7:40 am:
JediKnight - the extra icons are opened up when the additional characters are installed - there’s a new one each week.
I work for the company that created the digital toys. We’ve heard of some isolated incidents where there have been problems with installations, and we’re working hard to correct those problems. If you’re having technical problems with the disc, please contact us at support@fairiesanddragons.com and we’ll do our best to resolve the problem.
Ryan Anderson - Fuel Industries
Gert-jan Groenhof said on May 10, 2008 at 10:45 am:
I’ve filled up the bottle of hearts but nothing special happened, should something happen?!? If not, why is there such a bottle?
Penny said on May 16, 2008 at 9:15 am:
Hiya, my daughter has installed fairies and dragons. she said she should be able to click on the flower and play games. but theres apsolutely no interact whatsoever. Is there some sort of setting that can be changed so she can start using it?
Thanks
Penny
joeri said on May 17, 2008 at 6:11 am:
Windows user should stop complaining, get a real os and all will be okay. Runs like a charm on my little daughters windows pc, she put in the cd and could play. I put the cd in my Intel Macbook pro and it runs simular great.
I tip my hat, (made some games myself), very good work.
Graphics are excellent, nice 3d stuff, nice style, bright, chearfull. I got bored of on game pretty fast (hee im 41) but my 5 year old loves it. Dont like the shoe tasting burgers to get all character though.
I’m giving it 4 out of 5 because I think it fits the target group like a glove.
Penny said on May 17, 2008 at 9:31 am:
hmm, i didnt think anyone here was complaining. I understood everyone wanting some technical help. theres a big difference. decent technical help is NOT telling everyone else that their installation works fine!
Tia said on May 21, 2008 at 8:31 am:
the game i got was not working the child was very upset
Tom said on May 28, 2008 at 8:44 am:
Unless you’re running your own cobbled-together machine language, Joeri, you’re eating at the same trough as everyone else, so don’t start flexing those pretentious “I’m-on-a-Mac-so-I’m-WAY-cooler-than-you” muscles, that went out around 2002. Also, if you program as well as you write in English, I can see why you weren’t snapped up by the majors.
Now, can anyone tell me what the hell the treasure chest is for? Oh look, I ended that sentence with a preposition. Shoot me.
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