Scholastic and its “I Spy” brand celebrated 20 years last week with an event in New York City around the classic cadence of riddles and clues that are found among the pages of the beloved series.
A gigantic 12-foot two-tier cake was constructed with objects attached around the base that a class of second graders from Manhattan Country School were tasked with finding. Clues were read aloud in 10-minute intervals and the 20 kids ran around with oversized magnifying glasses searching the cake to find 20 objects.
A much smaller (real) version of the cake was brought out to celebrate the event at the end of the game. The author of the books, Jean Marzollo, cut the first slice.
The Michael Alan Group staged the event, which took place on Military Island in Times Square in New York City.
“We wanted to do something celebratory and to make sure that it evoked the participatory, collaborative nature of the books and games,” Daisy Kline, vice president of marketing and brand management for Scholastic Media, said. “At Scholastic, it’s all about the kids.”
The Manhattan Country School class received 500 books from Scholastic.
The first “I Spy” book was published 20 years ago and has 42 million books in print. Since then, the brand has evolved into a global franchise with a TV series, an interactive franchise, video games and apps and a very successful line of games and puzzles.
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