Commentary

Memo To Disney: Don't Wreck Club Penguin

M&A news never hit me in my Mommy spot before, but when I saw the first Disney/Club Penguin deal headlines, it felt like a personal assault on my family: "No! They're going to wreck it!"

In case you've been vacationing, Disney announced last week that it paid $350 million upfront to buy the popular animated virtual hangout for kids, and gave the founders the incentive of $350 million more if they hit very aggressive targets by 2009.

What made Club Penguin what it is--to me at least--is its illusion of homegrown innocence; even if this snowy land lets kids upgrade to a $5.95 membership that recurs monthly on the parent's credit card.

Seeing the penguin splashed all over the Disney.com home page on Wednesday in the company of the many hyper-commercial Disney properties felt as if the brand was on its way down the path of tawdriness. All that was missing were the mouse ears.

Oops. There they were on the letter from the founders, promising that nothing but good stuff will come of the deal. International expansion so more kids can experience Club Penguin in their languages. It's a small world, after all.

For the record, Club Penguin is ad- and commercial-free. Tell the truth. Is that the image the Disney brand conjures in you? And do you really think $700 million doesn't make monetization a new priority?

(Membership numbers no doubt hit a new crest last week with the curious grownups also invading the club with new penguin avatars to see what all that Disney money was buying.)

For the most part, the comments on the official Club Penguin blog were very upbeat on the news. The biggest worry centered on making sure the servers can handle the influx of new Disney-fed traffic.

I put my disillusion to the test. I broke the news casually to the expert in the household--my resident tween daughter, who introduced me to Club Penguin and all its sweet idiosyncrasies last fall after it spread like fire through the fourth grade of the Hoboken Charter School.

While she IMs her classmates and other online friends through Club Penguin, plays games and decorates her igloo with abandon, she's also done her fair share of "High School Musical" mashups over at Disney.com. For the record, she also watches Disney Channel and would like to go back to Disney World.

"Disney bought Club Penguin," I said, in my first-ever conversation with her that centered on an M&A transaction.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It's now Disney's Club Penguin," I answered.

"No!" she said, as her face filled with exasperation, and if I detected correctly, tearing-up eyes. "They don't match! They're totally different things! It's going to get ruined!"

We talked some more about it during the commute to summer camp and she asked me to get the word out: "No Disney stuff should get into Club Penguin. Ever." So there.

The temptation to keep Disney out of the Club will be a hard one to resist. But it will be very easy to screw up the mix that made Club Penguin what it is--with a purported 700,000 paying subscribers in just two years.

Of course, they can always be replaced by a new Disney-fed crew who won't ever know what they missed.

But let's hope the founders can straddle the fine line. Waddle on!

Next story loading loading..