Nelvana, the Canadian-based company that packaged Cardcaptors for American (and Canadian) television, has just announced that its latest anime import, Medabot will appear this fall on the Fox Kids network Like Cardcaptors, the Medabot anime series comes from NAS/Kodansha, Japan's largest multi-media company. Nelvana has acquired worldwide distribution and merchandising rights.

AIA, a new game company, is preparing an Akira videogame for the Sony Playstation 2. The Akira game will be out in August, just a few weeks after the release of the remastered Akira video and DVD. Other Akira merchandise includes the McFarlane Toys second series of Anime toys, shipping in September, and the Dark Horse manga series.

The latest word from Pioneer about the release of the newly remastered Akira on DVD and VHS concerns the collector's edition of the DVD, which will come in a super cool collector's tin. Only 75,000 tins will be produced. After they are gone, Pioneer will go back to conventional jewel box packaging.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the most critically acclaimed show on the WB network, will be heading to archrival UPN next fall. Buffy is important to specialty retailers since the show represents one of the strongest TV licenses of the past five years

List of the many makers of POTA merchandise in conjunction with the Tim Burton movie.

Entertainment Weekly's influential 'Summer Movie Preview' issue which hit the stands Monday, April 23 features a spectacular fold-out Planet of the Apes cover. The coveted EW cover spot goes to the summer film with the most 'buzz' and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes fits the bill for this highly competitive summer season.

Canadian card manufacturer Dart Flipcards has landed the license for Shrek, the computer-generated animated comedy from Dreamworks featuring the vocal talents of Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow.

An official ICv2 release. Milton Griepp, owner of ICv2, has announced that the company has kicked off its initial ad sales campaign. 'Our retailer audience is growing every week,' said Griepp, 'and it's time to open the site to outside advertisers that want to reach this group.'

Bandai Entertainment will release a DVD featuring four episodes of The Big O on June 19, 2001. The Big O DVD will include the full, uncut, Japanese version of the anime.

Maybe it's because the specialty market is counter-cyclical, or maybe it's because it is product driven and there are lots of good products in the offing, but according to retailers ICv2 heard from, the pulse of the industry is strong right now, at least judging from the talk at the DC RRP.