11-24-2021, 08:32 PM | #11 | |
The Franchise
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: nWo Country
Posts: 27,696
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Quote:
So here's some things I DO know, as I understand them: - With regard to "as they appeared", if you take a close look at a lot of MOTU/PoP characters, their appearance varies quite a bit between their toy designs and their cartoon designs. Mattel owns outright everything that was created for the MOTU/PoP toy division - including character likenesses - but the Filmation shows were developed by different people, merely "under supervision" from Mattel, and Mattel does not own those designs. Thus, they can't do toys or other merch based distinctly on the Filmation cartoons unless they come to agreements with DreamWorks. Hordak would be a simple example. Action Figure Hordak (owned outright by Mattel) is gray; Filmation Hordak is blue. Or perhaps a better example would be She-Ra herself; her original toy looks almost NOTHING like her cartoon appearance. There are a lot of other examples. - Mattel does, and has, reached agreements in certain circumstances when it's not too much hassle or inconvenience. For example, they recently did a blue "Filmation-inspired" Hordak figure as one of this year's PowerCon Exclusives. And apparently they recently reached agreements to do even more such figures in the future. But they don't own the cartoon designs outright. - The problems all come from the fact that while MOTU was originally designed on its own, with only Mattel having any input, and then Filmation got involved later on and put their own spin on things such as character designs and story elements, She-Ra was a different case in that she was co-developed by Mattel AND Filmation with each side having some input. When He-Man was created, the cartoon show was nothing but wishful thinking; when She-Ra was created, the fact that she would have her own cartoon was a given, and as such Filmation had a lot of say in things regarding her. So Filmation had certain limited rights of ownership on the She-Ra side of things. - When Filmation went out of business, their catalog of shows got shopped around and acquired by different parties. At some point, DreamWorks obtained both the He-Man and She-Ra Filmation cartoons, and all character likenesses and story elements specifically pertaining to them. So they get "first dibs" on anything that was uniquely Filmation-based. - Things get REALLY complicated when you add sublicensing into things. To wit, when Mattel was doing their "MOTU Classics" action figure line, there were famously a lot of characters and designs that they either couldn't use at all, or didn't end up doing for a very long time, because their rights were tied up with the Filmation stuff. Meanwhile, when Mattel sublicensed MOTU to Super 7 to continue "Classics" (as well as their own 5.5-inch line and "Club Grayskull" collectors' series), Super 7's output was almost 100% Filmation-inspired as they specifically only wanted to use those versions of the characters, at least initially. For reasons I'm not 100% on, Super 7 had a much easier time getting the Filmation license than Mattel did. - Legally, no, they cannot do a "true" sequel to either Filmation cartoon. DreamWorks theoretically can, if they want to. - This also has a lot to do with why the MOTU movie that's been in development hell for decades never gets made. Since She-Ra is "supposed to be there" from the beginning, most of the scriptwriters who get hired to write the movie include some reference to her in the script... only to be told AFTER the fact by the suits, "We can't use She-Ra in the live-action movie, it's a separate set of rights we have to pay for and we don't want to." Then they have to start over. It's not the ONLY reason the movie isn't happening but it has been a commonly-recurring problem; multiple writers have claimed "They never told me we couldn't use She-Ra!" until it was too late. Short version: Mattel owns (most of) the characters, but not all the cartoon-specific stuff. They can use the cartoon stuff sometimes, but they have to jump through hoops, and sometimes they'd rather not bother. She-Ra/PoP is considered a completely separate line (and license) than He-Man/MOTU, despite the fact that they're intertwined. It is all very, VERY complicated. Sorry I'm not more help, but like I said, this is about as much as I can give since I'm just a layman at such things. Pretty sure I got MOST of it correct however.
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"I left some words quite far from here to be a short reminder... I laid them out in stone, in case they need to last forever..." "But hey... I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know." nWo Tech: The Official Thread Poison of the Technodrome Forums https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...awnHgDz1ceDcfA https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/ Last edited by Leo656; 11-24-2021 at 08:38 PM. |
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