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Now you, too, can create a My Little Pony character at Build-A-Bear Workshop stores throughout North America.

When grown-ups co-opt a cartoon animal franchise aimed at little girls, everybody wins. Or, in this case, Hasbro and Build-A-Bear Workshop stand to hit it big with a new pair of plush My Little Pony toys that launch Monday.

Sure, elementary-school girls might be excited about the new toys, but men, some old enough to be their dads, are giving them a run for their money. This phenomenon of adults, primarily men (86 percent, according to one online survey), has given the newest iteration of a three-decade-old franchise a shot in the arm.

These aficionados self-identify as “bronies” (the word is a mashup of “bro” plus “ponies”) and connect via conventions like “BronyCon” and websites like EquestriaDaily.com, an exhaustive repository of all things MLP-related. In response to posts about the upcoming events, some site users joked about wanting to bring younger relatives as a cover story for why they were playing with or buying the plush toys.

When the “Pinkie Pie” and “Rainbow Dash” stuffed ponies go on sale Monday, Build-A-Bear locations around the country are holding special events, for which fans are encouraged to dress to fit the theme. (For many customers, this probably means My Little Pony t-shirts, although some BronyCon attendees take it a step further and actually dress like the equine characters.)

Build-A-Bear and Hasbro were smart to cultivate this unlikely fan base, said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis for the NPD Group. “It’s hard to develop new franchises,” he said. “Anything you can do to invigorate the classics and keep the classic franchises moving is certainly helpful.”

Last year, sales of plush toys dropped by about 20 percent, Crupnick said, so expanding its product offerings should be especially beneficial for Build-A-Bear.

There’s a strong vein of nostalgia in toy markets today, which Hasbro has tapped into by growing its roster of pony merchandise. “While we will always market our brand for young girls, we’ve found ways to strike the right balance by working with licensees to offer our adult fans exciting merchandise geared just for them,” Julie Duffy, Hasbro’s vice president of global brand publicity, said in a statement. To that end, the company partnered with licensees that make everything from My Little Pony trading cards to comic books to USB drives.

On a conference call in November, Gerrick Johnson, equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets, noted that retro toys like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Furby were poised to be popular for the holiday season.

“It’s one of the things we saw very much at the toy fair in New York this year,” said Stacy Leistner, spokesperson at the Toy Industry Association. “There were so many retro toys... In the case of My Little Pony, everything we’re hearing and seeing about the adult fan base is that they’ve just gone crazy with the art, the colors, the design.” The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon series from which the new plush characters are drawn is designed to appeal to parents as well to kids with grown-up nods to pop culture.

“To the extent that you can broaden your user [base], it’s just a strategy that makes sense as birth rates are down, the economy is still tight... and there’s increased competition from devices,” Crupnick said. “Hasbro has been one of the companies on the cutting edge” of integrating elements like social media and mobile apps into traditional toys. "My guess is you’ll see more of that from them.”

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YUM Brands

Taco Bell's slogan could take on a whole new meaning.

It sounds like a setup for a joke: Hey, did you hear the one about the high school swim champ who got Taco Bell to make him a customized Speedo?

It’s not a hoax, though — more of a lesson in the power of social media marketing and teenage chutzpah.

The week before Christmas, 15-year-old Ryan Klarner posted on Taco Bell’s Facebook page, introducing himself with a rundown of his swimming and diving achievements before making an offbeat request.

“[I]s there any way you guys could make me a customized Speedo that says think outside the buns on the back of it? If you did, that would mean the world to me,” the Illinois teen asked.

Taco Bell, a division of Yum! Brands, Inc., is quick to respond to gripes as well as kudos on its Facebook page. It also isn’t afraid to dive into the silly or the weird in the running conversation it has with its 9.5 million fans, but a request for a customized swimsuit was a new one, said Tressie Lieberman, director of digital and social engagement.

Klarner said he first came up with the idea a couple of years earlier and decided last month to go ahead and ask, even though he never had asked a company on Facebook for anything before. “I did not expect it to blow up as much as it has. I didn’t really expect to get the Speedo out of it, either,” he said.

But last Wednesday, the social media team at Taco Bell wrote back. “What size do you wear? And what’s your address?”

“He really wanted something and he went after it,” Lieberman said. When we think people are really extraordinary... then we want to reward them.”

Klarner said he was “really surprised” and “ecstatic” to hear back from the company after nearly two weeks. (The reply took as long as it did because the Taco Bell team was trying to track down a purple Speedo and come up with a design.)

“Beyond what we’re putting out to the masses, we want to engage with everyone individually,” Lieberman said. “It’s tough to respond to every single person... but we definitely want to make sure people know we’re listening.” When the company discontinued its fire-roasted salsa last year and fans protested, Lieberman said her team rounded up the final shipment and mailed out individual packages to those who posted the most vociferous objections.

In general, Taco Bell’s Facebook fans aren’t shy about asking for stuff: free food, branded merchandise, even jobs — but Lieberman said Klarner’s request, which racked up thousands of “likes” from other fans, caught her team’s attention.

“We’re seeing a lot of engagement with posts put on our wall by other fans. We really wanted to show Ryan we listened to him,” she said.

Since another element of social media is its immediacy, a quick turnaround was also a priority; even with the difficulty of tracking down a purple Speedo, Lieberman said Klarner will be getting his wish granted this week.

Klarner is actually getting two Speedos — since his request incorporated Taco Bell’s old tagline, “Think Outside the Bun,” Lieberman’s team also decided to give Klarner a second swimsuit with “Live Mas,” the slogan it adopted last year, printed on it.

Rules against corporate sponsorships will prevent Klarner from wearing the suits in competitions, but he said he’ll wear them to practices, where the rules are looser and his teammates have a tradition of wearing funny Speedos.

“But this is just way bigger than that,” he said. “I already loved Taco Bell to begin with... now it’s even more of a favorite." He said the chain's status had risen in his friends' eyes, too. "No one thought Taco Bell was this cool.”

From a marketing perspective, that scores a perfect 10.

Honda

The Honda Fit She's, which is being released in Japan, claims to improve skin quality.

It used to be that car seats were designed for babies, and pens were made for people.

But these days, it seems like everyday products from diapers to cars are being offered in a version “for her” – and that version usually comes in pink.

Experts say the proliferation of products aimed at girls and women makes some sense. That’s because women are avid consumers of everything from cars to gadgets, and they can be pickier than men.

“They want all the same things (as) men, and then some. They want more,” said Marti Barletta, a consultant and author of “Marketing to Women.”

But that doesn’t mean companies are doing it right when they create, and market, products for women. In fact, Barletta and others say, many companies are hurting themselves by adding extras they think women will want – rather than the features they’d actually like to have.

Then they add insult to injury by marketing them in a way that some women perceive as condescending.

“Women don’t like being called out as a separate market,” Barletta said. “They’re like, ‘Why don’t cars have what we want?’”

The penmaker Bic’s line of pastel-hued pens “for her” received a comedic lambasting from Ellen Degeneres and have been mocked mercilessly on Amazon.com, where hundreds of men and women have posted of tongue-in-cheek reviews poking fun at the very concept of a pen for a woman.

“I use these wonderful little pens to draw pictures of butterflies and rainbows while watching ‘Steel Magnolias’ and eating bon-bons. Thank you, BIC! You have your finger on the pulse of the 21st century woman!” goes one typical review.

The carmaker Honda also got some pushback in the United States following its plan to launch the Honda Fit She's in Japan. The small car comes in pink and includes a climate control system that the carmaker says will improve skin quality, along with UV-blocking window glass.

"Stupid name, awful color, everyone needs protection from the sun's rays, and if they want to market to women, they need to think leg to pedal ratio, especially clutch, so you don't have to scoot the seat all the way up to the steering wheel," one Life Inc. reader complained.

Barletta said there are things that women would like to have in cars, like a convenient place to put a purse. But they also want the things men want, like safety, power and maneuverability.

Also, while women may actually like to have a product that comes in pink, many are turned off when that’s automatically assumed to be the ladies’ choice.

“Women like pink,” Barletta said. “What they don’t like is the statement that women like pink.”

Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist and author of the book “Pink Brain, Blue Brain,” said her research has shown that gender roles are somewhat innate but very much a product of socialization. That’s because people reinforce gender roles starting at a very young age.

Children tend to embrace gender roles because they want to fit in. That has led marketers to offer everything from toys to infant seats to diapers in both boys’ and girls’ versions – not coincidentally boosting their market size as they encourage parents to buy gender-specific versions of everyday items.

“Gender sells, there’s no question,” Eliot said. “It works beautifully for kids, and that’s why it’s been so hard to fight gender stereotypes.”

That continues into adulthood, and is especially true for teens and young adults who are dating and may feel more insecure about their masculinity or femininity, she said.

That could explain why there are entire websites devoted to pink handguns and you can even buy a casket with pink floral detailing.

Some say boys and men are actually the bigger losers in the push to specify everyday products by gender.

For girls these days, there are many choices on how to be feminine: They can be an athlete or a tomboy or even a girly girl, Eliot said.

Boys, on the other hand, are subject to a much narrower definition of what is masculine.

“There’s more social pressure on men to be manly, and the sanctions for men being feminine are more,” said David Gal, assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University.

Gal said his research has shown that women aren’t bothered by purchasing a product geared toward men, such as a big truck or a phone with a "masculine" design.

But many men worry that they might accidentally buy something from the women’s department or choose a product with a feminine connotation.

"Even when I go to the clothes store, I'm looking for that sign to tell me that this is the men's section, so I know I'm not looking at women's clothing," Gal said.

Gal said some men were turned off when Sears, well-known for products like Craftsman tools and barbecue grills, launched an ad campaign touting its “softer side" in the 1990s.

By that logic, he noted, it’s actually surprising that marketers are spending so much time marketing to women, when men might be more receptive to a campaign that accentuated a product’s masculinity.

Some companies have picked up on that trend.

Soda makers have started creating low-calorie products for men without the word “diet” in them, like Coke Zero, since many associated diet drinks as being for women.

Others have introduced male-specific products like body washes for men. Philips even offers an iron designed to appeal to men.

That may be a marketing opportunity, but Gal said it’s not good news that guys feel like they need to conform to such a narrow definition of masculinity. He noted that some men don’t seek out mental health treatment because it doesn’t seem manly, and stereotypically manly foods like steak and burgers tend to be unhealthy.

Eliot, the neuroscientist, said she’s been heartened to see pro football players and other male athletes wearing pink in October, in a nod to breast cancer awareness. The trend seems to have trickled down to boys playing recreational sports, many of whom now can be seen sporting things like soccer cleats and accessories with bright pink accents.

“I think boys are starting to appropriate pink,” she said.

On the other side, Eliot said that things like plastic surgery are much more worrisome to her than a company that makes pens only for women.

“There are a lot worse offenses in terms of female objectification than buying pink pens,” she said.

Related: Bic pens for her united women and men in snarky Amazon reviews

Forget about Muzak. If you want put customers in the mood to purchase your innovative new product, a new study suggest you try pumping some road noise or the sounds from a busy mall into your store or showroom.

Noise, if its not too loud, can spark creative thinking — and that can lead to sales of inventive products, researchers reported in the study published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Moderate noise — around 70 decibels — is enough to distract us from our normal thought patterns, said the study’s lead author Ravi Mehta, an associate professor in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign.

And once we’re distracted, we tend to think in broader and more creative ways, which apparently allows us to better appreciate the value of innovative products.

Mehta and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments to investigate how various levels of noise impacted thinking and consumer behavior.

In one experiment, the researchers asked 65 college students to take a creativity test while seated in front of a set of speakers playing a mix of sounds that had been recorded in a busy restaurant and near a highway. The sound the volunteers heard was very much like what you would experience if you were seated near the street at an outdoor restaurant, Mehta said.

The study volunteers were divided into four groups. One heard the noise recordings turned up high, another heard the recordings at medium volume, another heard low volume and the fourth got silence.

The researchers found that the volunteers who heard a moderate level of noise did best on the test. Low noise and silence produced results that were similar to each other. Loud noise produced the poorest performance. That’s because it’s too distracting, Mehta said.

In another experiment, the researchers had 68 college students fill out a survey to determine their likelihood of buying one item out of each of eight pairs of products. In each pairing, one traditional product was matched with an innovative one. One pairing, for example, included a traditional mountain bike and a mountain bike that could be folded up so the rider could hike with it for a while and then ride it when he or she chose, Mehta said.

Once again, volunteers were exposed to different levels of noise as they filled out the surveys. Sure enough, people from the group who heard moderate noise in the background while they were filling out the surveys were more likely than those in the other groups to choose innovative products.

So, is the noise effect limited to innovative items?

 Maybe not, Mehta said.

In another experiment, the researchers asked 95 college students to come up with creative uses for a brick. Again, the students were divided into groups, some exposed to moderate noise and others exposed to low noise in the background as they wrote down their ideas.

When the researchers looked at the lists of ideas, they found no difference between the two groups when it came to the number of ideas originated by each group. But the group that heard moderate noise came up with much more creative ideas, Mehta said.

 Perhaps if you have a convertible in an auto showroom, potential customers will be able to think of more ways they might enjoy the car if they’ve got a moderate level of noise in the background — as compared to the pin-drop silence usually heard in such establishments, Mehta said. 

Tim Sloan / AFP - Getty Images

You have to give some to get some. That’s apparently the theory behind 7-Eleven’s campaign to dole out free Slurpees to customers on Monday to celebrate the chain’s unofficial birthday: 7/11.

USA Today reports that 7-Eleven expects to give out 5 million, 7.11-ounce Slurpees, or about 1,000 free drinks per store. No coupon needed.

That’s a lot of Slurpees, to be sure. But the paper says that 7-Eleven has found freebies to be very lucrative. The chain’s vice president of marketing Nancy Smith tells USA Today that the same gimmick last July 11 pushed Slurpee sales for the day up 33 percent.

"Slurpee drinkers are some of the most loyal fans we have," Smith told USA Today. "They come here to have fun." And, she said, many of them spend more on other items.

Thus proving there’s no such thing as a free lunch … uh, Slurpee.

Consumers love brand names containing numbers, and marketers know it: Levi's 501s, Heinz 57, 2000 Flushes, WD-40, iPhone 4, Windows 7 and on and on.

Paul Sakuma / AP

Levi's 501 jeans succeed despite the nonfluent numbers in the brand name, says professor Dan King of the National University of Singapore.

But is there a science behind the numbers? Do certain numbers resonate better with shoppers?

We like numbers that we encounter more often and numbers that are sums and products that are more frequently generated — think smaller numbers such as 1, 2 and 3, and rounded numbers such as 10, 100 and 1,000, according to new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

To test these theories, researchers Dan King of the National University of Singapore and Chris Janiszewski of the University of Florida queried study participants about their preference for certain brand names. In one experiment, after viewing ads for tomato juice, participants were asked if they would prefer V8 or Campbell's tomato juice. V8 was the winner. In another, an imaginary anti-dandruft product, Zinc, was liked more when it included a common product number, say Zinc 24. Prime numbers, such as Zinc 31, tended to get the cold shoulder.

"Consumers tend to believe that they have full control over what brands (or any object in general) they like or dislike, and that they are not influenced by irrelevant factors," King said. "Although the influence of numbers is largely benign, consumers need to be aware that there are many non-conscious factors, many of which have nothing to do with the intrinsic quality of the product, that influence their liking for brands."

King plans to study next whether this phenomenon occurs in product pricing. He gives the example of Wal-Mart having some of its prices end in 88, while others end in 87. Would shoppers gravitate to the product with a higher price simply because the subconsciously like the number more?  

What do you think: Do numbers in product names really make a difference? What's your favorite numbered brand?