Halfbrick going all-out with Fruit Ninja merchandise

Halfbrick’s slash-a-thon game Fruit Ninja is seriously having a moment. The game, which has surpassed 130 million downloads already and whose success inspired a Kinect-enabled console version, is about to come blasting out of the digital world and launch a full-on invasion into meatspace. Today Halfbrick announced new partnerships with a slew of partners that will spawn all manner of new Fruit Ninja themed merchandise.

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Halfbrick’s slash-a-thon game Fruit Ninja is seriously having a moment. The game, which has surpassed 130 million downloads already and whose success inspired a Kinect-enabled console version, is about to come blasting out of the digital world and launch a full-on invasion into meatspace. Today Halfbrick announced new partnerships with a slew of partners that will spawn all manner of new Fruit Ninja themed merchandise.

The “fruits” of these new partnerships (see what I did there?) will include tchotchkes like keychains, stickers and plushies, to card and board games, fruit snacks, phone cases and even underwear. If Halfbrick introduces a thong with the Sensei on it, I’m buying 12.

The products are scheduled to start appearing on store shelves this week, and new stuff will continue to be launched through the year and into 2013. Sadly we haven’t had the opportunity to see any of the products in person yet, but that’s probably for the best since we’d just try to slash them in half anyway.

Halfbrick’s moves very closely mirror those of Angry Birds, another megafranchise which has made the leap from mobile screens into the real world. Rovio managed to grow profits of the franchise from $10 million in 2010 to $100 million in 2011, largely thanks to brisk sales of branded merchandise. No doubt that Halfbrick took a look at those numbers and, once they wiped up the drool and saw a doctor about their eyeballs suddenly turning into dollar signs, went to sign up some partners themselves.