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Angry Birds is so successful, its founder – Rovio – plans to turn it into a bestselling TV show and create a massive merchandising campaign around it, set to squash the likes of SpongeBob and Hello Kitty.

Speaking at Rovio’s HQ in Helsinki, Finland, Mighty Eagle in chief Peter Vesterbacka told press how Angry Birds’ success was certainly no fluke. “Angry birds was built to be a hit,” he said explaining how the game had been carefully analyzed at every point in its design, built to eliminate luck at every stage.

“It was built to be an entertainment franchise from the beginning,” said Vesterbacka, admitting that in the early stages, the firm had lobbied all its employees, their families and their friends to buy the game and push it to the top of the Finnish Apple App store.

Once it was number one in Finland, Rovio set its sights on Sweden, catapulting its angry birds to the top of that country’s app store too. Once Sweden had fallen to the furious fowl, it was just a short step until it was noticed and featured on the UK Apple app store, where it has been perched at the number one spot for the past six months. It has spent five months at number one in the US, and bombarded the top spots of a further 70 markets around the world.

“It’s a huge global thing, we’re all over the planet,” chirped Vesterbacka, boasting that the firm had seen  seven million plus paid for downloads at 99 cents a pop – a well padded magpie’s nest.

Vesterbacka said Rovio was already in talks with people in Hollywood about “TV programmmes movies, all that jazz,” building on what it says has become “a household name.”

Rovio’s 27 employees are no retiring robins, either, with Vesterbacka noting he and his colleagues quite enjoy the new found fame and having “random people in the street recognize you and recognize the brand – that’s when you know you’re on to something. It’s really tough to create that kind of recognition.”

While already flying high on the iPhone, WebOS and on Symbian devices – with a Symbian^3 version about to hatch – the firm has yet to release a full version of its popular game on Android.

The game has been in Beta testing on Android for just under two weeks and has already seen its millionth download, but it’s unclear when the full version will be released.

It will apparently be in the “not too distant future,” with Vesterbacka saying the process had been sped up immeasurably thanks to the massive beta. “That’s why we did a beta in the first place,” he said decrying the number of different devices and fragmentation Android had.  “But now we have so many people testing it with us, and offering feedback on bugs and problems, which means we can release it much faster.”

Rovio is setting its target at a lofty 100 million downloads across all platforms .This would be something akin to a “Tetris strategy” said Vesterbacka, who explained the game would also be sold on the stores for Xbox, Wii and other consoles.

Rovio is flocking to the merchandising bandwagon too, with Vesterbacka declaring the firm wanted to “beat the crap out of SpongeBob strategy.” SpongeBob, of course, makes around four billion dollars a year in merchandising for Nickelodean.

“Hello Kitty is also a very interesting franchise,” said Vesterbacka, noting “it’s all built around one image, it’s all very cute. We’re looking at what these guys are doing right and we’re looking at doing that.”

Of course, free plugs from massive celebrities certainly doesn’t hurt. “We get these random celebrity endorsements almost every day,” said Vesterbacka citing British PM David Cameron, the President of Australia, Conan O’Brian, Kylie Minogue, Tony Hawk and disgraced British soccer player Paul Gascoigne. “At least it’s a better addiction than his last one,” quipped Vesterbacka

Vesterbacka said Angry Birds was a full quadrant app, meaning it was cross generation, appealing to all ages, and both sexes.

And with the recent release of the Mighty Eagle “silver bullet” which clears difficult levels for users who lure the big bird from its cage with a purchasable can of sardines, Rovio is swiftly flying towards an in-app purchasing model.

“Our ambition is to have over half of our fans to buy the angry eagle for 99 cents,” said Vesterbacka, noting that some of the levels were “pretty tough, and you can be stuck on it for hours or even days.”

Some app developers only aimed at getting three to five percent of their users to buy in-app downloads, which Vesterbacka said was “kind of like spamming.” Unfortunately, because of the nature of the Android Market, even when the full version does become available on Android, in-app purchasing won’t be available.

“I don’t know why he lives in a cave,” mused Vesterbacka, “I guess it’s just part of the story.”

The Eagle will be landing in October for iPhone and Symbian, but the updates don’t stop there. “When we do an update, about 80% of people update the game,” Vesterbacka said adding, “as a benchmark that’s pretty good.”

Just how will the firm follow up on its incredible success? Vesterbacka says Rovio will continue to make other games but that those will likely be spin-off titles from Angry Birds itself.

“They will be quite different, but they will fit perfectly into the story,” he said adding, “no one has told the story from the pigs’ perspective yet.” Of course, the original version of the “story” is a pretty simple and universal tale of hungry pigs stealing the eggs of increasingly angry poultry. “It’s all about telling a story without too many words. That’s by design,” he noted, aspiring to another famous birdie title – RoadRunner.

There won’t be an “angry birds two,” though, says Vesterbacka, telling the press to “expect the unexpected from us.”

Angry Birds apparently took a full eight months to develop, but the firm claims it’s “not about volume, it’s about making every game very good.”

“We really took time and got everything right,” he said concluding with a rallying craw to developers to join the company. “We’re actively hiring, designers, artists and coders,” he said concluding, “We want to have a surplus in that area. We’re ready to invest a lot.”