By Mark Seavy

Nostalgic brands have been having a moment, but many are now reinventing themselves for new audiences.

These are evergreen brands that have shifted their strategies to take advantage of changing pop culture tastes and connect with the younger consumers needed to carry the property forward.

Cloudco Entertainment, for example, reimagined the 42-year-old Care Bears brands following its spinoff from American Greetings. The IP launched a new look and has recently appeared across toys (Basic Fun), collaborations (Hot Topic, Shein), and a host of other products. Most recently, the property launched an amusement park ride with Sally Dark Rides. That agreement with was in itself a reinvention, as the company previously supplied a Care Bears animatronic ride to Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, PA in 1988.

The Harlem Globetrotters, meanwhile, have a 98-year-old brand. For the last 30 years the basketball team relied solely on tour revenue. That was a major departure from the 1970s, when the franchise ruled the airwaves as well as shelves with a cartoon series, lunch boxes, and a spot of ABC-TV’s Wide World of Sports.

While the tour remains the heart of the Globetrotters franchise—there are 250 stops annually in the U.S. and 100 in international markets—it has recently grown to include licensed goods from Sprayground (backpacks), Lids (caps and jerseys), and other suppliers. IMG also recently signed a deal to represent the brand for licensing.

And that is in addition to meeting the modern media landscape through a number of new carriage deals. AspireTV, which is available on DirecTV and other platforms, recently committed to producing eight, 30-minute episodes of Harlem Globetrotters: Secrets of the City, which will follow the team’s global tour this year. Hearst Corp. delivered the 30-minute Play It Forward programming on NBC-TV, while Atmosphere Sports is providing business-to-business programming in restaurants and other locations inspired by the brand.

“This wasn’t rocket science, but this was seismic shift in moving from tour-only to buying into that we were not [just] a tour but a beloved global IP,” said Keith Dawkins, President of The Harlem Globetrotters and Herschend Entertainment Studios. “We need to position the brand at the center of the wheel and start winding down all the pathways around the audience so they know who we are and can start to create those deep connections.”

Repositioning a beloved brand and creating connections with new consumer demographics is occurring with greater frequency given the growing influence of social media, streaming, and other services.

The 1997 science fiction film Starship Troopers, which spawned four sequels, recently regained popularity through its inclusion in Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2, which was released February 8th for Sony PlayStation 5. It has since been swapped out for 21-year-old Star Wars: Clone Wars. And the massive popularity of Netflix’s Stranger Things series gave a boost to singer Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” a single released in 1985, when the song was prominently featured in the show’s most recent season.

And while the market for nostalgic brands ebbs and flows, reinventing a classic property can be tricky. By changing to appeal to a new generation, you risk alienating your existing fanbase. And there are no guarantees the evolution from evergreen to something new will be successful. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, once bellwethers for licensed brands, have struggled recently amid ownership changes and a decline in cable TV viewership, industry executives said.

“Brands can die when they are not being nurtured and taken care of and don’t realize that market forces are shifting around them,” said Dawkins, a former Nickelodeon executive. “Everyone is in this entertainment and content game, and we must get the Globetrotters up there. We are trying to create a deeper and more meaningful connection with the audience and the new media landscape brings a plethora of new touchpoints.”