Female-skewing Hit in Asia Comes to U.S.
We caught up with Kayou U.S. COO Sergio Godinho at New York Toy Fair to learn more about the company’s U.S. launch of the My Little Pony TCG and learned that the Chinese company’s female-skewing TCG has an impressive track record in Asia, where it launched first. The game was previewed at New York Comic Con last fall and will now launch to the trade with a booster set in April (see “New Booster”).
Godinho described Kayou as “…one of the largest trading-card companies in the world,” with over $1 billion in sales in 2024. It launched in the U.S. in November with three trading card sets, for My Little Pony, Naruto, and Tokidoki.
My Little Pony TCG launched in China last April and in other Asia territories to a big response, Godinho told us. “We’re over seven million booster packs,” he said. “Very, very, phenomenally successful. There’s a very strong My Little Pony audience because the license has been around for 40 years. It’s multi-generational; kids, teens, parents, grandparents are all familiar with the license.”
“We just launched in Japan,” he continued. “It had a line out the door for people picking up the TCG.”
Godinho noted the gender skew and how that made the audience for My Little Pony different from the audience for other TCGs. “As you know there’s a lot of competitors in the TCG market in the US,” he noted. “When we launch in the market, we like it to be unique. It’s part of the reason why we bought the My Little Pony license. Most of the IP is anime or it tends to be male-skewing. My Little Pony tends to be a female-skewing license and brand, and that’s why we brought it into the US. When we do bring something to the US, we do want to be calculated about what we do and make sure we’re serving fandom.”
The age range for the property’s fandom is wider than expected. “People think of My Little Pony as content that generally is younger, but I think Friendship Is Magic elevated it, besides the fact that it’s been around for 40 years. I would say My Little Pony is for everybody. We have 20-somethings who grew up with the franchise, watching the show as little girls. Our sweet spot tends to be, call it 10 to 25. Genuinely, it’s a franchise that really crosses different demographics and different ages. It is one of the largest IPs in Asia, the largest in China. It’s one of the reasons why I think it’s done so well — it’s been able to cross across different fandoms and different ages.”
My Little Pony TCG: Fantasy Wonderland booster packs will be released in the U.S. on April 18, 2025.
Source: ICv2
