The Angry Birds characters have been referenced in television programs throughout the world. The Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet (in English: a Wonderful Country), one of the nation’s most popular TV programs, satirized recent failed Israeli-Palestinian peace attempts by featuring the Angry Birds in peace negotiations with the pigs.
Clips of the segment went viral, getting viewers from all around the world. The sketch received favorable coverage from a variety of independent blogs such as digitaltrends.com, hotair.com, and intomobile.com, as well as from online news media agencies such as Haaretz, The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, and MSNBC. American television hosts Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Daniel Tosh have referenced the game in comedy sketches on their respective series, Conan, The Daily Show, and Tosh .0.
In the 30 Rock episode “Plan B”, guest star Aaron Sorkin laments to Liz Lemon, “Our craft is dying while people are playing Angry Birds and poking each other on Facebook”. He then provides a tip for Liz to improve her score in the game.
In February 2011, American journalist Jake Tapper mockingly introduced U. S. Senator Chris Coons as the “Angry Birds champion of the Senate” during the National Press Club’s annual dinner. Some of the game’s more notable fans include Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, who plays the iPad version of the game, and author Salman Rushdie, who claims he is “something of a master at Angry Birds”.
Basketball star Kevin Durant is an avid fan of Angry Birds and regularly plays other NBA stars in matches, although he is wary of cheating. In August 2011, the Milwaukee Brewers played the Angry Birds theme song during the pre-game introductions of the arch-rival St. Louis Cardinals players, in reference to former Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa’s propensity to bean opposing players. Angry Birds also appears briefly, for comic relief, during a scene in the 2013 film G. I. Joe: Retaliation, in which the villain of the film plays the game while waiting for the world leaders’ response to his threats of annihilation.
A screenshot from the T-Mobile advertisement. The advertisement was shown in Greece by Cosmote. Angry Birds and its characters have been featured in advertisements for other products. In March 2011, the characters began appearing in a series of advertisements for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. At the 2011 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Nokia used scrims on a downtown building to project an advertisement for its new N8 handset that included the game’s characters. 24] A June 2011 T-Mobile advertisement filmed in Barcelona, Spain included a real-life mock-up of the game in a city plaza, while Nokia used the game in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to promote an attempt to set a world record for the largest number of people playing a single mobile game.
Finnair has also used Angry Birds in their advertising, including taping an Airbus A340 airliner with the Angry Birds figures and holding an Angry Birds tournament onboard a flight to Singapore. Rovio has also prepared a number of web-based promotional variants of Angry Birds themed around creations of other companies, such as Finnish snack company Fazer, Spanish pizza delivery chain Telepizza, and Japanese television network Fuji TV, as well as promotions of American brands including Cheetos, Wonderful Pistachios and Coca-Cola. One of the 2012 New Models for Hot Wheels cars from Mattel is based on the Red Bird from Angry Birds. The package card bears both the Hot Wheels and Angry Birds logo. The game’s characters have been used, officially or otherwise, in amusement park attractions.
In September 2011, the Window of the World theme park in Changsha, China opened an unlicensed Angry Birds attraction. Visitors to the park use a large slingshot to launch stuffed versions of the bird characters at green balloons representing the pigs. Upon learning of the attraction, Rovio Mobile was reported to be considering working with the theme park to officially license it. In March 2012, Rovio announced plans for an official Angry Birds land (opened April 28, 2012) at the Sarkanniemi adventure park in Finland. Also in March 2012, Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen unveiled an Angry Birds crash helmet that he will use in the 2012 season, following sponsorship from Rovio.
Kimi Raikkonen has also a Angry Birds Space logo on his cap. Angry Birds has teamed up with the Lotus F1 Team for the upcoming 2012 Monaco Grand Prix, with its logo on the top of each Lotus Renault F1 car’s nosecone, as well as a promotional web-based version of Angry Birds in honor of Kovalainen. HockeyBird, an angry hockey-playing bird, was the official mascot of the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships.
It was designed by Toni Kysenius and Rovio Entertainment. Angry Birds Land in Sarkanniemi, Finland. The game’s popularity has spawned knock-off and parody games that utilize the same basic mechanics as Angry Birds. For example, Angry Turds features monkeys hurling feces and other objects at hunters who have stolen their babies. Another game, entitled Chicks’n’Vixens and released in beta form on Windows Phone devices, replaces the birds and pigs with chickens and foxes, respectively. The developer of Chicks’n’Vixens intended the game as a challenge to Rovio Mobile, which stated at the time that a Windows Phone port of Angry Birds would not be ready until later in 2011.
Angry Birds has inspired works of religious analogy. A five-part essay entitled “Angry Birds™ Yoga – How to Eliminate the Green Pigs in Your Life” was written by Giridhari Dasa of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (i. e. Hare Krishna) of Brazil, utilizing the characters and gameplay mechanics to explain various concepts of yoga in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as understood and interpreted by the Hare Krishna. The piece attracted much media attention, in Brazil and abroad, for its unique method of philosophic-religious presentation. The piece was also recognized and appreciated by Rovio Mobile’s Peter Vesterbacka, who was prompted to comment on Twitter, “Very cool! I can see Angry Birds Yoga becoming a worldwide craze;-)”. Rovio is investigating ways to expand the Angry Birds brand, including merchandise, television shows, and movies.
The game’s official website offers plush versions of the birds and pigs for sale, along with T-shirts featuring the game’s logo and characters. In May 2011, Mattel released an Angry Birds board game, entitled “Angry Birds: Knock on Wood”. Over 10 million Angry Birds toys have been sold thus far. Rovio opened the first official Angry Birds retail store in Helsinki on November 11, 2011, at 11:11 am local time. It expects to open its next retail store somewhere in China, considered the game’s fastest-growing market. Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Mobile, has envisioned a feature film in the stop-motion animation style of Aardman Animation.
To that end, Rovio has purchased a Helsinki-based animation studio to prepare Angry Birds short cartoons on the Nicktoons station’s Nickelodeon Extra, the first of which was a Christmas special named “Wreck the Halls” that debuted in December 2011. Rovio also hired David Maisel, former executive producer of Marvel Studios films such as Iron Man and Thor, to head up production of feature-length films. Hed acknowledges that such a film would be years away and that Rovio must keep the characters relevant until then, by producing sequels or new ports of the original game. Rovio officials have hinted that one such “sequel” will be told from the pigs’ point of view. On March 20, 2012, National Geographic published a paperback book titled Angry Birds Space: A Furious Flight Into The Final Frontier shortly before the release of Angry Birds Space which became available on March 22, 2012.
In Spring 2012, Olvi started to manufacture Angry Birds soft drink, when It made a deal with Rovio for making of them. First, there came two different tastes, Tropic (tropical fruits) and Paradise (pineapple-mandarin). In September 2012 Olvi released two new tastes to the soft drink collection, they were Lagoon (pear-apple) and Space Comet (orange-cola). Angry Birds Toons, a TV series based on the game will make its debut on March 16, 2013. Initially, it will consist of 52 episodes, with a duration between two and a half and three minutes each.
Toons will be released through third-party video distribution platforms, including Comcast’s Xfinity On-Demand in the US, Samsung Smart TVs, and Roku set-top boxes. It will also be available in a number of countries on traditional television broadcasts. Rovio will also be bringing Angry Birds Toons on the mobile devices by adding an additional Toons channel on the Angry Birds apps home screen. A 3D computer-animated film has been officially announced for release in 2016.
