Mattel linked with bid for Bob The Builder maker

HOT Animation, the North West company behind the popular children’s TV show and character Bob The Builder, could become part of US toymaker Mattel, according to reports.

Hit Entertainment, the London-based parent company of Broadheath-based Hot Animation, is being sold by its private equity owner Apax Partners.

Hot, founded in 1998, also makes the Pingu and Brambly Hedge cartoons, was recently behind an animated sequence paying homage to the 1970s children’s programme Camberwick Green which was featured on Life on Mars, the hit BBC show.

According to a report in The Sunday Times, Mattel, the company behind Barbie, is the front runner to buy the business.

The newspaper believes a deal may be close – and reveals the two parties already have a commercial relationship with Mattel having a licence to sell Thomas The Tank Engine products for its Fisher Price range.

Apax took Hit Entertainment private for around £490m in 2005 and appointed Bank of America Merril Lynch to handle the sale.

Other interested parties are said to include Disney, Hasbro and Chorion. A price tag of more than £700m has been mooted.