Fictional characters with the most bling

This was interesting. It lists the ten most lucrative fictional characters. They are:

1. Mickey Mouse & Friends
2. Winnie the Pooh & Friends
3. Frodo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings
4. Harry Potter
5. Nemo, Finding Nemo
6. Yu-Gi-Oh
7. SpongeBob SquarePants
8. Spider-Man
9. Wolverine, X-Men
10. Pikachu, Pokemon

Not too surprising. Near misses include Homer Simpson, Dora the Explorer, The Power Rangers (they’re still making that much money?), The Hulk, and Buzz Lightyear.

This bit about the methodology explains why characters like Barbie were left out, and why “Frodo Baggins” and “Wolverine” speak for a whole cast of caracters:

To qualify for our list of the top-earning fictional characters, a property must be both “fictional”–not based on a real person–and a “character” in the sense of having made its debut in a narrative story, be it a book, a film or even a videogame. That excluded pure toys, like Barbie and G.I. Joe.

Earnings were calculated by adding together worldwide toy/merchandise sales, videogame sales, publishing and box-office revenue, and DVD/VHS sales and rental revenue. Actual numbers were used whenever possible, but in some cases we were forced to rely on the estimates of industry insiders. Excluded were advertising and promotional revenue.

Many intellectual properties are managed as a group of characters. In other words, Mickey Mouse speaks for his whole gang–Minnie, Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy and Daisy Duck, and the earnings of the whole group were considered when we did our ranking. But we only allowed groups of characters when they came from the same story line.

Alas, nobody that started as a video game character. Yet. Also kind of discouraging that only one of the characters is there because of his books (not including comic book characters). Sure, Winnie the Pooh and The LotR cast got their start in books, but they made the majority of their money recently from movies, toys, etc.