Angry Birds empire expands to include a cookbook

The mobile video game colossus that is Angry Birds now includes a cookbook.

Rovio, the Finland-based company responsible for bringing Angry Birds and their swine enemies into this world, has officially released Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes. The cookbook will reportedly be the first of three such publications from Rovio.

Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes will, obviously, feature a whole lot of nifty ways to cook eggs. Recipes include everything from simple scrambled eggs to exotic dishes, like egg sushi and egg kulambu.

Now, those of you out of the loop my be wondering what a video game has to do with cooking. And the answer is, “nothing” — at least on the surface. But if you dive deeper into the world of Angry Birds fandom, you’d see that Angry Birds-themed food is highly popular. Unfortunately, the only thing people seem to be able to make are cupcakes. So a cookbook to give them some new ideas actually seems like a wise move.

As the Guardian reports, the other two books up Rovio’s sleeves are both “light-hearted educational books for kids ages four to 18.” The books are designed primarily for teachers and parents.

Aside from books, Rovio also recently partnered with SwaddleDesigns to create a line of baby merchandise, which will include clothes and blankets.

As you might have guessed, Rovio has made the wise move to license its highly popular Angry Birds brand — the game has 120 million active mobile users, and has been downloaded more than 300 million times, on a wide variety of gaming platforms — in order to expand its business significantly. In addition to books and baby things, the Angry Birds franchise now also includes a line of plush toys, a TV show and a movie.

“We have been told time after time that we’re not supposed to do movies, books, toys,” Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s chief marketing officer, told AFP. “We sold like eight million toys.”

It’s not “rocket science,” he continued. “If you are strong brand, if you have a strong following of fans you can do anything.”