Merchandise
Merchandise based on the show ranges from Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Go-Gurt, Kellogg's cereal, and video games to boxer shorts, flip-flops, pajamas, t-shirts, slippers, Pez dispensers, and radios. The show also spawned a large and popular merchandise line at Hot Topic, Claire's, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, RadioShack, Target, Big Lots, Walmart, Shopko, Pamida, Meijer, Kmart, Sears, JCPenney, Kohl's, Lowe's, T.J. Maxx, Toys "R" Us, and the defunct stores Ames, Borders Books and KB Toys in the United States as well as the Zellers, Wal-Mart Canada, and Toys "R" Us stores in Canada, and a limited selection of merchandise in Australia at Kmart Australia, Target Australia, Big W, and The Warehouse.
Kids' meal tie-ins have been released in fast-food restaurants in many different parts of the world, including Burger King in Europe and North America, as well as Wendy's in North America, and Hungry Jack's in Australia. A McDonald's Happy Meal tie-in with SpongeBob-themed Happy Meal boxes and toys has not been released in North America yet, but was released in Europe and other international markets in the summer of 2007. In Australia, the advertisement for the McDonald's SpongeBob Happy Meal won the Pester Power Award for the fact that the ads are enticing young children to want its food because of the free toy. In Japan, they had a kids meal tie-in with KFC which featured different toys based on the TV series. As a tie-in beverage for the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, 7-Eleven convenience stores created a pineapple-flavored Slurpee in 2004, which was discontinued in 2005.
In 2007, some new high-end SpongeBob-themed electronics have been introduced by Imation Electronics Products under the Npower brand, such as MP3 players, digital cameras, a DVD player, and a flatscreen television. Other items featuring SpongeBob include a special edition Monopoly board game, Life and Operation board game as well as a SpongeBob SquarePants edition of Ants in the Pants and Yahtzee. There are also rarer items such as SpongeBob Surfboards and electric guitars.
Pictures of SpongeBob SquarePants also started to appear on the labels of 8 oz. cans of Green Giant cut green beans and frozen packages of Green Giant green beans and butter sauce which featured free stickers in 2007 as part of an initiative to get kids to eat their vegetables. In the United Kingdom, a SpongeBob SquarePants magazine is currently being published by Titan Magazines every four weeks. It was first published on February 3, 2005. The issue published on February 1, 2007 was the second anniversary of the magazine. The magazine contains comic strips, fan letters, competitions and several features including games.
A SpongeBob SquarePants 2009 calendar has been released featuring the caption on the bottom right corner of the front cover, "Celebrating his 10th Anniversary!", which was on May 1 and July 17, 2009 respectively. On March 31, 2009 three songs from the show were released as downloadable content for the music video game series Rock Band. Nickelodeon has also created a Facebook page and Twitter account for SpongeBob. His best friend, Patrick Star, has been given a page on Facebook as well.
The popularity of SpongeBob translated well into sales figures. In 2002, SpongeBob SquarePants dolls sold at a rate of 75,000 per week, which was faster than Tickle Me Elmo dolls were selling at the time. SpongeBob has gained popularity in Japan, specifically with Japanese women. Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom purposefully targeted marketing at women in the country as a method of the SpongeBob SquarePants brand. Skeptics initially doubted that SpongeBob could be popular in Japan as the character's design is very different to already popular designs for Hello Kitty and Pikachu.
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