Tinker Bell Finds an Online Home, and Some Virtual Bling

Tinker Bell and her sprite pals have a new hangout online, with the launch yesterday of a new virtual world from Disney Online, “Pixie Hollow.”

The virtual space, online, will offer free memberships and give members a chance to build and personalize their own fairy avatars, furnish their tree-top homes, earn badges and credits by completing games, record their virtual achievements and talents in a personal online journal, and interact with other players’ avatars.

In conjunction with the launch, Disney Consumer Products is partnering on an assortment of Pixie Hollow-related toy items, many of which link into the new virtual space to unlock special features and items. All the items will be available at both mass retail outlets and online.

For example, the company has collaborated with toy maker Techno Source to produce the Clickables line of toy jewelry. Players can buy chip-equipped charms, then connect them to a PC using a bracelet or jewelry box USB docking station to access virtual clothing, accessories or décor items to their online fairies’ collections, and to turn on a feature allowing them to set up online fairy friendships.

Players can also play a handheld electronic LCD game to earn offline Tink Points that can then be redeemed online for butterfly pets that will fly around their Pixie Hollow avatars. Other Disney Fairies toys will include a “Pixie Pass” that will let kids log onto a special Web site to acquire other special virtual items for their avatars.

Future enhancements to the Pixie Hollow virtual world will include multi-member fairy parties and quest challenges. Basic membership is free, with a premium membership available for a monthly fee of $5.95.

Disney launched a Create-a-Fairy feature back in January 2007 that let users build, customize and dress fairy avatars. But the site didn’t offer any kind of mobility or social interaction among the avatars.

“More than 7.5 million fairies have already been created online and, until now have been all dress up with no place to go,” Disney Online senior vice president Steve Parkis said in a statement. “Now in Pixie Hollow, fairies can join their friends, take flight and live their very own fairy adventures.”

Disney launched its Disney Fairies toy line three years ago to build out the popularity of the Tinker Bell figure with a new circle of associated fairy friends. The company says the books, stationery, toys, apparel, décor and electronics in the Disney Fairies franchise generated $800 million in global retail sales in 2007.

The company is also promoting “Tinker Bell,” the first in a planned series of four animated films around the character, scheduled to appear in stores in Oct. 28.

Pixie Hollow is the latest virtual world to come from Disney Online, part of the Disney Interactive media Group. The division already operates “Toon Town,” a cartoon-related world, and earlier this year introduced a virtual space based on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and theme-park attraction. The company also acquired the highly popular Club Penguin kids’ world more than a year ago. Disney reportedly plans another world based on the Pixar movie “Cars,” which will presumably have more appeal for young boys than Pixie Hollow.

In an interview with Promo this August, Disney Online executive vice president Paul Yanover said that Pixie Hollow would also eventually integrate mobile capabilities so that members could tend their avatars from their cell phones.

And in other Tinker Bell-related news, Tink—or rather the actress who provides the fairy’s movie voice, Mae Whitma—will spend three months as the voice of the “speaking clock” offered by British phone service BT starting this Sunday.

The joint promotion by BT and Disney centered on the “Tinker Bell” movie release marks the first time BT has struck a marketing deal using the 72-year-old phone time service, and the first time a fictional character has provided the clock’s voice.

“Tinker Bell … is a natural choice for such an important job given her very British heritage,” Brad Raymond, director of the movie, said in a press report.

He may be right. After all, Tink did buzz Big Ben back in 1953, alongside Peter Pan, Wendy and the rest of the Darling clan in the Disney animated movie.