Angry Birds (video game) was being played, the staff liked the characters, and the team elected to design a game around them. In early 2009, physics games, such as "Crush the Castle", were popular flash-based web games, so the Rovio team was inspired by these games. During the development of "Angry Birds", the staff realized the birds needed an enemy. At the time, the "swine flu" epidemic was in the news, so the staff made the birds' enemies pigs. Angry Birds was the studio's 52nd produced game and on its initial release, the game did not sell many copies. After Angry Birds was a
Angry Birds retail store somewhere in China, considered the game's fastest-growing market. Merchandise has been successful, with 45% of Rovio's revenues in 2012 coming from branded merchandise. The most notable toys are the Telepods, created by Hasbro. These figures are created for "Angry Birds Star Wars II", "Angry Birds Go!", Angry Birds "Stella", and Angry Birds "Transformers". Telepods use a similar digital toy hybrid concept as Skylanders or Disney Infinity characters, but there is a different technology behind it. These are figures used to "teleport" a character of the corresponding figure into the game by scanning a tiny QR code via the