Melbourne bakery franchise, Ferguson Plarre has capitalised on the popularity of the Angry Birds video game, being granted an exclusive Australian licence to the brand and creating a range of cupcakes donning the faces of some of the game’s characters.

Director of Ferguson Plarre, Steve Plarre, a self-confessed Angry Birds fan, said it was important for the franchise to gain the licensing arrangement from the game’s developer in Finland, because a number of bakeries in Melbourne have been using Angry Birds imagery without permission and haven’t been doing it justice.

“A lot of bakeries, particularly in Melbourne are doing a lot of unlicensed Angry Birds products. They’re not doing a great job of it, they’re not doing all the things that they [the developers] like to see. The colours are wrong, the facial expressions are wrong and so I think they were really happy to have someone who was going to honour the images properly and so within a couple of weeks we just made sure the colours were right and they granted us a license,” Plarre told Franchising.

Plarre says the Angry Birds cupcakes, which sell for $2.70 each or $24 for a box of nine, are hugely popular and outsell any other cupcake three or four to one.

“They’re super colourful, they catch the eye, they’re popular with the kids, but I know a couple of grandparents who also play the game, so it’s cool,” he said.

Ferguson Plarre is promoting the new cupcake range via Facebook and hoping it will drive traffic back to its own website, where orders can be submitted.

“We’ve got a fairly good Facebook presence as well as our website. We have the ability to advertise through Facebook and link and track people from a Facebook advertisement straight through to our website where we sell the Angry Birds party packs,” Plarre said.

“Just in Melbourne alone there are 49,000 registered Angry Birds fans that I can target directly through Facebook advertising.”