I had the opportunity to interview Carlin West of Carlin West Agency who has worked in marketing and development of some of the biggest brands in entertainment, especially children’s brands. Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are just a few of the many brands that Carlin has worked with. We met at the Neopets booth at NYCC and got to learn about how her agency is helping to bring Neopets back in a huge way.
A: So I had a few questions. My first is, what made you bring Neopets back? Like she (another person at the table) pointed out, our Neopets are all dying.
C: Here’s a special secret: it never left. So Neopets was first launched in 1999 and has continued to be very robust since then. But it’s been mostly…the focus of the brand has been the online game, and now we are doing cookbooks and tarot cards and merchandise and all kinds of exciting things.
A: So what made you decide to branch into them because those are very different things, the cook book, the tarot, those are so different. And then having the online game and the mobile game now. What made you decide to get into all those different avenues?
C: Well the cookbook is a natural progression from the game because there’s so much food in the game. So you will learn how to make your favorite recipes from the Neopets game. The tarot card deck just has to do with the fact that people love tarot and there are so many fairy based tarot card decks so it just makes sense for us to have one of those. The merchandise, people love to wear their favorite Neopets and things of that nature. So it kind of goes with everything else, we just started doing it the last couple of years.
A: That’s awesome. I love that. I was so excited when I saw you guys were kind of bringing it back and making it big again. So if you had to pick 1 Neopet to have as your pet in real life, which one would you pick?
C: Shoyru because it’s cute, it’s adorable, it’s fun, and it’s just really fun.
A: Absolutely. I agree. That would probably be my pick too.
C: Kougra’s my second favorite.
A: Those were the first 2 I ever started with on my Neopets account. So what does it mean to you to be at comic con and just have these experiences and really bring it bigger again?
C: I think the best, the very best, best, best thing is seeing the reaction from people who played the game. Because we were at San Diego Comic Con and it was amazing. People came up to the booth and started crying, because they were like “I can’t believe Neopets is here.” And so the best thing is seeing the fans and seeing what their reaction is to us being here and offering them other ways to interact with the brand.
A: So how did you get started with Neopets?
C: Well…that’s a little bit of a longer story. So I’ll give you the short version. I actually was part of the team that launched Pokémon back in 1998. So I love this sort of thing. And when Neopets was looking for someone to take the world of online gaming into the world of merchandise, I was like “I’m your girl.” And so came on board and we’ve been doing different deals and we’re entering the metaverse… that is something that we’re really excited about. We’ve got a mobile game called Faerie’s Hope. So there’s a lot of activity going on with the brand now.
A: That’s amazing! And thank you for building my childhood then.
C: My pleasure
Be sure to check out the new cookbook, tarot card deck, merchandise, mobile game, and more that Neopets is coming out with and remember that your Neopets are just a click away.
-Anna
anna@comicattack.net
