St. Petersburg-based Riki Group has acquired the controlling interest and 100% of the shares of Moscow’s Aeroplane Productions.

General producer of the Riki Group, Ilya Popov, will become the general producer of the newly consolidated company. Meanwhile, founder of Aeroplane Productions, Georgiy Vasilyev will serve as a creative producer on major animation projects for Aeroplane.

The deal allows Riki Group to expand its portfolio of children’s media brands, which is already one of the largest in Russia, and will grow its presence on the national level with the new Moscow outfit.

Establish in 2005, Aeroplane is best known for creating The Fixies (pictured). The 156 x five-minute series first premiered in December 2010, and is about tiny human-like creatures who keep our tech world running smoothly. Since then it has spawned two feature films and the TV rights for the show have been sold to more than 80 countries. The English-language version of the show is available on Discovery Education, Learn 360, ClickView and Hopster. Its Russian language YouTube channel has more than 6.5 billion views and the English language version, managed by WildBrain Spark, gets 40 million views per month.