New York, NY-In a highly competitive marketplace, companies that have achieved brand name recognition in one medium are exploring ways to extend their brand into other, synergistic mediums in order to expand their public recognition and increase demand for their products or services. One wildly successful example: the award-winning I Spy™ CD-ROMs that Black Hammer Productions developed for Scholastic from their I Spy™ books series. A five-year-old company, Black Hammer is known as one of the country's most creative new media agencies. In addition to CD-ROMs, their reputation is derived from cutting edge solutions that result in powerful and effective CD-ROMs, websites, e-commerce systems and marketing materials. Says Susan Gargiulo, Executive Producer at Scholastic's Software and Internet Group: "Black Hammer was committed to developing the I SpyTM Spooky Mansion CD-ROM within our budget and schedule restraints, without sacrificing game play or interactivity. They did a terrific job and we loved working with them."

In fact, Black Hammer's development of the I Spy Spooky Mansion CD-ROM, a highly successful title in Scholastic's series, was such an extraordinary hit that journalists and reviewers of children's software lined up in praise. Among the coveted awards coming in from all over the world for the I Spy Spooky Mansion CD-ROM: The Software and Information Industry Association's prestigious Codie Award, the Milia D'Or, the Canadian Toy Testing Council's "Children's Choice Award," and the National Parenting Center's Seal of Approval. The CD-ROM was also selected as one of the best "New Software for Kids" by Parents Magazine, voted "Child's Best" by Child Magazine, given a 4.2 (out of 5) star rating by Children's Software Revue, and was the best-selling retail educational title for October 1999 and January 2000 (PC Data).

Black Hammer programmed the I Spy Spooky Mansion CD-ROM as well as two others in the series, I Spy™ and I Spy™ Junior, using their proprietary object-oriented design model to create a cross-platform title with high performance animation, intelligent game play and minimal memory requirements. While interacting with I Spy Spooky Mansion children are presented with hundreds of mentally challenging riddles and puzzles, and are confronted by hundreds of object and word searches that entertain while stimulating children's problem solving skills.

Founder and President Matthew Schlanger comments: "We thoroughly enjoyed bringing the riddles, puzzles and other educational materials to life for the millions of I Spy fans of all ages!"

In addition to working with Scholastic, Black Hammer recently completed a major web-based project for The Oxygen Network, and has developed interactive web games for General Mills, Showtime and Nickelodeon. They designed and produced Simon and Schuster's CD-ROM "Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy" by Vicky Iovine. Other noteworthy projects include the award-winning CD-ROM, "Virtual Serengeti," for WNET, and an interactive sales presentation for the Pyramid Companies, to help Pyramid sell their multi-billion-dollar shopping complex. The presentation featured Flash animation maps, photorealistic 3D models of expansion plans, and an organization chart that incorporates videotaped interviews with executives. Black Hammer has also developed compelling educational interactive trade show exhibits for pharmaceutical companies. Their clients, many from them from the dot com, entertainment, publishing and corporate arenas, include WatchNetwork.com, the Wall Street Journal, the National Basketball Association, Globo Latino, Qualcomm, Thomas Publishing and Advanstar.