Industry Veterans Announce New Venture

Ira Friedman, former VP of Global Licensing and Product Development at Topps, and Joe Simko, genre-busting, artistic visionary behind Garbage Pail Kids, announce an animated series development partnership with Titmouse – widely considered one of the hottest producers of animated content in the world – for their wholly original creation ‘CRANIACS.’

In the ‘CRANIACS’ universe of skull-headed folks, two planets collide and force two very different societies – stone-aged Retrovia and ultra-futuristic Futerra – to figure out how they’re going to make this new planet-sharing world order work! High-octane action, wacky physical comedy and outrageous competitions will be at the heart of every episode, alongside the importance of friendship, fraternity and family. As a result of the newly announced development collaboration, Titmouse will build out a ‘CRANIACS’ animated universe primarily for kids aged 6-12. The animation will be inspired by prior and upcoming card releases, where a wealth of engaging storylines and memorable original characters are introduced.

“Joe and I are enormously pleased to let the public know of our development deal with such a cutting-edge and wildly innovative animation studio,” says Ira Friedman. “It’s a real vote of confidence for ‘CRANIACS’ that Titmouse, a company with such talent and high regard, will be applying their special magic to our original IP. We’re super-psyched to see all that their creative team will contribute to the brand going forward.”

“Skulls? Skateboards? Planets smashing together? Hell yeah we want to make a cartoon about that!” says Alexei Bochenek, Creative Director at Titmouse. “I was basically Futurama-shut-up-and-take-my-money-meme when I saw Joe’s incredible artwork and heard about Ira’s big plans for this new IP. I can’t wait for audiences to see what we can do with a world like this in our hands.”