The Winx Club phenomenon in the global animation landscape

This article analyses the global rise of the Italian animated franchise the Winx Club (2004–) within the flows and contra-flows of entertainment content crossing the globe. A brain child of the entrepreneur Iginio Straffi, the Winx Club started out as a television series broadcasted in the Italian media landscape, and became a successful global entertainment franchise, distributed and licensed all over the world. The article situates this phenomenon in the evolving body of literature and scholarly conversations on media targeting children, their dynamics, industry practices, consequences and ramifications. In particular, the Winx Club appears to blend into the endless flow of images crossing national and cultural borders without providing images and specific cultural references drawn from the rich Italian cultural heritage, but trying instead to capture and fulfil the demand for entertainment of international children audiences proposing storylines not rooted in any specific culture, while being stylistically inspired by Japanese anime. This feature, combined with the application of successful business models practised for decades by the global leaders in the media industry, the US media conglomerates, appears to reveal the key to explicate the roots of the success of the Winx Club phenomenon in the competitive global media landscape targeting kids.