Talking Tom and Friends

Talking Tom and Friends (known as Talking Friends until late 2014) is a media franchise created and owned by Outfit7 Limited. The franchise focuses on various mobile apps involving anthropomorphic animal characters repeating things said by the user. The first app, Talking Tom Cat, launched in July 2010. As of February 2019, the apps have achieved more than 9 billion downloads.

Characters

 * Talking Tom is a gray tabby cat and title character of the franchise. Tom is a wisecracking, adventure-seeking cat, described as the "world's most popular cat." In his app, he is a fully animated interactive 3D character that users can tickle, poke and play with in the apps. Users can also get Tom to repeat what they say. The original Talking Tom Cat app was launched in July 2010 for iOS, closely followed by Talking Tom 2 in 2011. Talking Tom 2 is briefly featured in Nine Lives.
 * Talking Angela is Tom's love interest, a stylish but short-tempered white cat with a love of travel and singing. Angela has also appeared in other apps in Outfit7's flagship entertainment franchise: Tom's Love Letters and Tom Loves Angela.
 * Talking Ginger is a mischievous, fun-loving kitten. In the Talking Tom and Friends web series, he is Tom's neighbor.
 * Talking Ben is a brown dog who is described in his Talking Ben the Dog app as "a grumpy dog and chemistry professor". He enjoys working in the lab and the player can tickle him and make him do phone calls, or retreat to the lab where he does experiments that sometimes explodes.
 * Talking Hank is a white dog with blue spots (one on his right eye, one on his tail tip, and the other on his rear). He was introduced in December 2014 with the premiere of the Talking Tom and Friends web series. His hobby is watching sitcoms.
 * Talking Pierre is a green bird with a yellow beak who is quite grumpy and annoying. He was mainly a character who provided comic relief in the Talking Friends webisodes, just like Hank.

Talking Friends
Talking Friends was the first Talking Tom animated web series. It was produced by Disney Interactive Studios, and ran on YouTube from 8 June to 31 August 2012 for 10 episodes.

Talking Tom and Friends
Outfit7 Limited launched an animated series called Talking Tom and Friends in 2015, based on the antics of Talking Tom and his Friends. The show is produced by the Austrian animation-studio 'arx anima'.

Talking Tom Shorts
Talking Tom Shorts is an ongoing web series. Unlike the TV series, the characters do not have dialogue. It was released to YouTube starting March 13, 2014.

Talking Tom and Friends Minis
Minis is a South Korean-American animated web series featuring Talking Tom and his friends. The characters are presented in 2D cartoons, and without any particular language dialogue. It is developed and produced by Outfit7 and Plenus.

Other media
The Talking Tom and Friends brand has expanded beyond second screen entertainment in the years since its launch in 2010. There is now branded merchandise, YouTube music videos, an animated web series and a 3D animated series.

Talking Tom and Talking Angela's music video for their single "You Get Me", created in cooperation with Walt Disney Records/Hollywood Records, has received over 330 million views on YouTube as of November 2017. Talking Angela has also recorded her first solo song called ‘That's Falling in Love’.

Talking Tom and Friends launched a range of interactive toys called Superstar in 2012. The plush toys talk and interact with multiple Talking Tom and Friends apps, as well as with each other, using an advanced voice recognition system.

Reception
My Talking Tom had over 11 million downloads and was the top games app in 135 countries worldwide within 10 days of its launch.

The Talking Tom and Friends YouTube channel has over 8.9 million subscribers and 2.7 billion views as of February 2019.

In popular culture
Talking Tom was featured in the 2016 film Nine Lives.

Accolades
The My Talking Tom app won the award for "Best iPad Game: Kids, Education & Family" at the 2014 Tabby Awards, the global competition for the best tablet app.

My Talking Tom was also voted the 2014 Tabby Award Users’ Choice favorite in two categories, "Best iPad Game: Kids, Education & Family" and "Best Android Game: Puzzle, Cards & Family".

The Talking Tom and Talking Ben Talk Back plush toys won the Best Girls Licensed Toy award at the Australian Toy Association Awards in 2012.

The Talking Tom and Friends television series won Best Animated Series at the 2016 Cablefax Awards. This announcement greenlit season 2 of the series in 2017.