Anime Character Break into World’s Highest Grossing List

Financial magazine Forbes has published its list of 2002’s worldwide highest grossing fictional characters. The list was isolated to narrative source franchises (movies, books, video games) and excluded pure toys with no narrative origin, such as Barbie dolls.

Two anime franchises broke into the top 10 list, but the highest ranking anime still earned less than a fifth of the number one franchise worldwide, suggesting that anime still has a long way to go before it’s recognized internationally as truly massively successful.

The list of worldwide merchandise sales in 2002:

01. Winnie the Pooh – $5.9 billion
02. Mickey Mouse & company – $4.7 billion
03. Harry Potter – $2.9 billion
04. Spiderman – $2.7 billion
05. Lord of the Rings – $2.2 billion
06. Star Wars – $1.3 billion
07. Monsters Inc. – $993 million
08. Pokemon – $825 million
09. Spongebob Squarepants – $800 million
10. Yu-Gi-Oh – $725 million

Source: Anime News Network