Computer game that slims

A special band of action heroes and exponents of a healthy lifestyle are role models for children all over the world. The heroes live in the imaginary town of LazyTown and appear on television, in live shows and on radio programmes.

Obesity currently costs more lives than cancer and accidents put together. There are 155 million overweight children in the world and, for the first time ever, the life expectancy of children is actually shorter than that of their parents.

Magnús Scheving founded the company LazyTown in Reykjavik in 1992 with a view to promoting healthier habits to the children of the world. The company's goal to improve children's health is mainly achieved via a TV series that airs in 128 countries worldwide, live shows, books,  radio programmes, CDs and a number of other LazyTown products which send out positive, wholesome messages and help to increase ethical awareness.

Action heroes are healthy role models
LazyTown has developed a special, fictional town with the same name as the company. The citizens of LazyTown include action hero Sportacus, and are all role models of a sort. There is, for example, Sportacus 10, who is LazyTown’s 'action-health hero'. Sportacus is the hero that many young boys and girls would like to be: fit, agile and a fantastic acrobat with movements as fast as lightning.The different characters in LazyTown find themselves in all manner of entertaining situations and have to make decisions that affect their health.

The message, which is reinforced through the technological inventiveness of the products, is conveyed to children in a fun way. LazyTown also teams up with strategic business partners who help market the concept all over the world.

Former sportsman behind it
Before establishing LazyTown, founder Magnús Scheving was a well-known sportsman and public advocate of fitness training. He spelt out the need to communicate with children about health in a motivating, fun and irresistible way. He developed the idea for LazyTown on the basis of feedback received from children and their parents, who had responded to the health messages from books and live shows.

Having developed the idea and marketed it in different contexts for ten years, the LazyTown TV series was initially bought by the American TV channel Nickelodeon in 2003, and today the award-winning series is shown in 128 countries around the world and has received a numerous prizes and accolades.