Chapter 58: Anthology Series

Explosive Boys had become a hit!

It wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill popularity. The hype around it had even surprised Meng Lang, its director.

Blazing Teens had made the toys popular rather than the show itself while Balala the Fairies was the other way around.

With Explosive Boys, the show was as popular as the peripheral products.

After the first two episodes, the show had already become sensational among its young audience.

There was a simple explanation to that.

Pengda didn’t work with toy and stationery stores to promote the previous two shows offline. As a result, the premiere viewership ratings of the two shows weren’t very satisfactory, and the shows only reached their full potential in the second rerun.

But this time, Pengda and Jiangchuan Children’s Channel had given all they had to promote the new show.

Explosive Boys had reached its full potential in the first run, and it was highly unlikely that it would repeat the patterns of Balala the Fairies and Blazing Teens.

However, this was expected!

For TV works, having higher viewership ratings in the second run wasn’t a good sign, for it would only indicate suggest incompetent promotion work, which was why the viewership ratings was lower in the first run.

The next day, Jiangchuan Children’s Channel broadcast the third and fourth episodes of Explosive Boys.

In these two episodes, Dr. Nan, who had been sucked into a portal and disappeared, built a secret base and began to work for Smilda.

Zhou Yihuo and his best buddy Ah You, on the other hand, triggered the popping balls by accident. A magnetic field resembling a starry world was created when their cards made contact with each other. The popping balls were then revived and ready for a duel.

The viewership ratings stopped dropping when Long Lingyin turned up.

The two new episodes still didn’t reveal the secrets of popping balls, but popping balls and the playing cards were already being sold in the toy and stationery stores in Jiangchuan.

On June 3rd, the secret of popping balls was completely revealed in the Episodes 5 and 6. A series of duels showed the kids how the battles between popping balls worked.

On the very same day, popping balls and the corresponding cards were distributed all over the country.

The toys of Explosive Boys could be divided into three categories.

They were popping balls, cards, and launchers and storage boxes.

Launchers and storage boxes were sold separately at a price range between 20 and 50 yuan.

Popping balls and cards were sold in different modes.

First of all, there were the “Explosive Boys goody bags”, which were sold at a flat rate of 99 yuan, containing a random popping ball and a pack of specially compiled cards.

They could also be sold separately.

Kids could choose to buy a certain popping ball they wanted, but the card set had to be purchased separately.

Small (common) popping balls were sold at 30 yuan each, and the prices were 50, 100, 500, and 1000 yuan respectively for medium, large, crystal, and large crystal popping balls.

As for the legendary signed collector’s edition large crystal popping balls, they couldn’t be bought anywhere, and there was only one way to get that type of popping ball.

One had to collect all 14 popping balls of all elements and an entire set of platinum cards. Only after that would Pengda send the collector’s edition popping ball to the player as a gift.

The card sets were very inexpensive.

They were sold at 10 yuan a set, and each set contained 5 cards.

The 5 cards were 3 basic and 2 special cards, and special cards consisted of commanding cards, warrior cards, auxiliary cards, battle cards, and so on and so forth.

The level of the cards inside was completely random. They could be anything from 5 platinum cards to 5 common cards.

Thanks to the hype from Explosive Boys, the toys gained popularity as soon as they hit the market.

As expected…

The goody bags and card sets were sold the most.

All kids dreamed about being the lucky one.

And someone was indeed luckier than most other people. On the second day after the toys were launched nationwide, a very lucky kid found a crystal Core of the Earth popping ball in the goody bag!

There was a similar incident in Zhonghai as well.

Some kid bought a set of cards with the change he received from buying a pair of compasses and found two platinum cards in it!

Meng Lang was dumbfounded.

He knew better than anyone else of how rare platinum cards were, and one had to be unbelievably lucky to find one in their card set.

But this kid had found two!

Was he the god of good luck or something?!

…

The viewership ratings of Explosive Boys remained relatively stable for the next few episodes and had even risen back a little in Episode 13, where Lou Wanlei challenged Zhou Yihuo, the main character.

Explosive Boys was a strangely addictive show.

The pace was very fast and there were exciting popping ball duels in almost every episode. Meanwhile, the second storyline of Smilda plotting against the Core of Earth had also intrigued the kids.

The good thing about feature shows was that as the story unfolded, if the viewership ratings stabilized, it would generally stay at that level.

The down side was that if one didn’t watch it from the beginning, the viewers would find the plot hard to follow, making the show not very newcomer-friendly.

Another type of live-action feature shows was the anthology series.

The most typical shows of that category were Ultraman and Kamen Rider.

In such feature shows, each episode told a new story that was unrelated to the previous ones.

This mode was great for the creativity of the script, and the stories could be as creative as the show wanted it to be.

Feature shows were very suitable to be made into anthology series.

That wasn’t to say that other types of shows weren’t suitable, but relatively speaking, feature shows would look much more creative and enjoyable in that mode.

Meng Lang had been considering something.

All his three works so far had been of the first type, so should he try to make an anthology series next?

This seemed a good idea. Meng Lang decided that he would come up with a project plan once he had finished his work on hand.

He certainly didn’t have time for anything else at the moment.

With the great viewership ratings of Explosive Boys, the development of peripheral products had become top priority of the entire Pengda Group.

The toys had certainly brought the biggest chunk of the revenue, but other peripheral products had been selling well, too.

Meng Lang made frequent updates on his Weibo account these days, creating 10 new posts almost every day.

The contents were pretty much the same, which were all promoting peripheral products of Explosive Boys.

“Would you like a popping ball-themed pencil case?

“How about a popping ball school bag?

“And popping ball T-shirts, are you not interested?

“No? Then what about a mini popping ball pendant?

“Or stickers, hairpins, and notebooks with the pictures of the main characters?

“Still no?

“Surely, you would like a photo album of Long Lingyin!

“Are you sure you don’t want any of those?”

“I have reason to suspect that my followers are all zombie accounts, all 2 million of them! Otherwise, why aren’t you interested in these products?” Meng Lang feigned a vexed tone in a new post.

My Star Please Love Me: “Guess what? Your followers are all parents! They have been trying to figure out your whereabouts, so that when the time is right, they can assassinate you!”

Meng Lang was rendered speechless.

Really?