Within the first year she had sold 40,000 videos and she followed on the year after with 'Baby Mozart', which sold 60,000 copies. By 1999 she had sold one million copies and she had rung up sales of 4.5 million, before selling out to Disney for $25m.The Baby Einstein range is now one of their major divisions and includes 16 videos, 50 books, flashcards, mobiles, bouncy seats, shape sorters, stackers, teething rings and puppets.

However, concerns about Baby Einstein include studies that show a high correlation between cases of reported autism and television watching by very young babies.

Dora the Explorer
There's no escaping Dora, no matter where you go in the world. Her face is on everything from children's underwear to notebooks, jigsaws, lunchboxes and colouring books. When first launched, PR material for Dora claimed that when Dora dances to her theme song, 'We did it', she is modelling 'bodilykinaesthetic intelligence' and when she pulls out her map she is using 'spatial' skills and when she asks children for help in building something she is enforcing 'interpersonal intelligence'.

Disney Princess
Gathered under a single brand since 2001, the Disney Princess heroines include Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel (from the 'Little Mermaid'), Belle ('Beauty and the Beast'), Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine ('Aladdin'), Pocahontas and Mulan. In 2005 sales of products in the Princess line topped $3bn and 91% of mothers with daughters aged two to five knew the brand, Disney Princess magazine had a circulation of 10 million copies in 75 countries, Disney Princess albums from Walt Disney Records reached platinum and, by Halloween 2005, the National Retail Federation reported that princesses outnumbered witches by more than two to one!