The breadth of ways in which licenses can be applied is on full display among the nominees for Best Licensed Product – Digital, Apps, Video Games as part of the 2020 Licensing International Excellence Awards.

The range of licenses utilized by the eight nominees encompasses preschool properties, a cooking app, an evergreen publishing-based series, a long-running character collection, a pair of videogames, a toy brand – and an iconic mathematician. Those trademarks and images were put to use to enhance such products as apps for children, a professional work tool, a shopping/cooking utility, an innovative game utility, and entertaining cellphone ringtones.

Overall, more than 600 entries were received this year from companies in 22 countries and were judged by a panel of 152 executives from 20 nations. The licensing industry will make its selections from a ballot that includes 175 nominees in 23 categories of brands, properties and companies. Later this week, we’ll showcase the nominees for Best Brand: Digital, Apps, Video Games.

For a full listing of the categories and the nominees please click here.

Here are the nominees for Best Licensed Product — Digital, Apps, Video Games:

Epic Games – Fortnite POSA Card

Epic Games worked together with platform partners to create a first of its kind POSA card that allows players and gift givers to purchase one card for v-bucks no matter which platform (X-Box, PlayStation, Switch) they play on. All they need is a single card! This is the first time this has ever happened allowing players to play Fortnite anywhere they go.

PBS Kids – Dr. Seuss App

Targeted for 3-5 year old children, the ‘The Cat in the Hat Builds That’ app, based on Dr. Seuss’s renowned classic character, The Cat in the Hat, is designed to help children who may lack background knowledge about, and experience with science and the world around them. ‘The Cat in the Hat Builds That’ includes 5 games: Bridge-a-rama and Slidea-ma-zoo, which both focus on the inquiry process and physics; Sorta-ma-gogo, which focuses on classification, Builda-ma-loo, an engineering and color-mixing challenge, and Sounda-pa-looza, in which players build their own music making machines.

Salesforce – Salesforce Einstein

Salesforce Einstein™ has been a tremendous success playing a major and integral role in the brand identity of Salesforce. Due to the success of the partnership, Salesforce is introducing several new initiatives launching in 2020 and 2021. Einstein Voice Skills empowers admins and developers to build custom, voice-powered Salesforce apps tailored to any role or industry. Service Cloud Voice integrates telephony into a unified agent console, enabling Einstein to offer recommendations and next best actions in real-time. Einstein Call Coaching helps managers spot trends within conversational data and provide best practices and insights needed to optimize every customer call.

Samsung Galaxy – Hello Kitty Smartphone Themes

In 2019, Samsung gave Hello Kitty fans in Latin America the opportunity to have their Galaxy cell phones decorated with Hello Kitty themes. Along with the screen home page, all of the phone´s icons, including the weather forecast, alarm and other functions, could be customized with Hello Kitty cuteness.  More than ten themes can be purchased through the Galaxy Store (Galaxy Themes), including a special holiday and Hello Kitty 45th Anniversary edition.

Steel Wool Games – Five Nights@Freddy VR: Help Wanted

Scottgames partnered with Steel Wool Games to create the first FNAF Virtual Reality game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted.”  Players are physically immersed in the creepy world of FNAF and able to interact with the malfunctioning animatronic characters that roam the restaurant at night.  Launched in June 2019, the game quickly rose to the #1 spot and made PlayStation’s list of Top Games of 2019.  All new downloadable content (DLC) was released on Halloween, which added “nightmare” themed areas and twisted versions of the main characters.  FNAF continues to scare virtually everyone who plays.

Story Toys/Touch Press – Lego DUPLO World App

Since its release in October 2019, LEGO DUPLO World has been downloaded by over 2 million people globally. It quickly rose to the number one spot in the App Store in both the Kids and Education charts in over 50 countries. It was recently awarded the KAPI award for Best App 2020. The Children’s Technology Review also awarded it both the Editor’s Choice and All Time Best App awards.

Walmart/Buzzfeed – Tasty Online Grocery App

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer. Tasty is the world’s largest food network, with over 100 million active Facebook followers in the US alone. In the summer of 2019, BuzzFeed and Walmart partnered to launch Online Grocery Pickup capability in over 5,000 recipe videos in the Tasty app. Watch a recipe video and with only a few simple taps, the recipe ingredients are ready to be picked up curbside at the user’s local Walmart or delivered to their home. Next generation grocery shopping!

Weyo Pty Ltd– The Wiggles App

Weyo launched with The Wiggles – Fun Time with Faces which won Licensed Product Innovation of the Year in Australia 2019. 100k+ downloads later, The Wiggles Fun Time with Faces has proven to not just to be an innovation that has created a new user behavior, it is also a commercial success.