Nickelodeon has ordered 20 additional episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the highly popular animated series produced at the Nicktoons Studios in Burbank, California.  The anime-influenced series, which debuted in February of 2005, has been renewed for its third season and will now run for at least 60 episodes.  Avatar is the number one animated series on all of TV (broadcast and cable) among boys 9-14.  This May the series posted double-digit, year-over-year gains posting a 5.2 tween rating, up 25% over 2005.  An hour long Avatar movie, The Fury of Aang, will debut on Nickelodeon on Friday, July 14th at 8pm (ET, PT).

Avatar's TV popularity has translated into solid sales of tie-in merchandise including a cine-manga from Tokyopop, which has sold over 500,000 copies (see 'Avatar Cine-Manga Tops 500K'), action figures and toys from Mattel and Lego, as well as a trading card game from Upper Deck (see 'Avatar TCG TV Ads Start Monday').