Vídeo Brinquedo

Vídeo Brinquedo (also known as Toyland Video or Toy Video in English, formerly known as Spot Films) is a Brazilian animation studio based in São Paulo, known for producing animated films widely viewed as cheap mockbusters of comparable, more successful films from studios such as Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, 20th Century Animation, and Blue Sky Studios.

The company was founded in 1995 as a Brazilian subsidiary of the American distributor Spot Films, to distribute animation in its home market of Brazil, then seemingly split up and became Vídeo Brinquedo in 2004. Later on, in 2006, they expanded to North America with the falling costs of DVD duplication and packaging and easier access to language translation services. Most of Vídeo Brinquedo's films are still available on DVD and streaming services, though it is unclear who the current owners of the studio's output are.

Background

For its first nine years, Vídeo Brinquedo distributed Portuguese-dubbed home video releases of shows such as ''Sonic X'' and ''The Little Lulu Show'' in the Brazilian market.

One of the studio's early distributions was the obscure religious-themed cartoon ''Kingdom Under the Sea'' (), which experienced an increase of sales following the release of the 2003 Pixar film ''Finding Nemo''. ''Kingdom Under the Sea'' and ''Finding Nemo'' shared several similarities, such as the presence of a clownfish and a story centered on a parent-child relationship. As a result of its sales, Brinquedo wanted to start not only distributing cartoons, but also create their own.

Vídeo Brinquedo's first animations were traditional 2D animations, based on public domain fairy tales such as Pinocchio and The Three Little Pigs, but with scripts that modernized the characters. They later expanded to 3D animation, their first 3D animated film being ''The Little Cars'' (), loosely based on the 2006 Pixar animated film ''Cars''. Originally aimed at children between two and three years old, the film sold over a million copies in its first month in Brazil, as well as over 5,000 copies per week in the United States at stores like Walmart.

The original idea of the company was to jump on trends raised by the major studios and start production of animation two to three years in advance. With the company borrowing ideas established in Hollywood, company director Mauricio Milani stated, "we tried to imagine what it will be in advance". The films are often only just over 40 minutes in length, the minimum required to qualify as a feature film and awards qualification. Their films' English-dubbed casts, such as ''The Little Panda Fighter'', featured voice actors from 4Kids Entertainment and ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' video games from the 2000's.

Originally released with a Portuguese-language soundtrack, many of Vídeo Brinquedo's titles were co-produced with Rexmore Company in Brazil, and distributed in North America by Branscome International, MorningStar Entertainment with English and Spanish soundtracks, Brightspark Productions in the United Kingdom, and Janson Media on Amazon Prime Video.

Filmography

Feature films

Film distribution

Besides producing its own animated movies, Vídeo Brinquedo has also distributed DVDs of foreign cartoons, including ''Sonic X'', ''The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3'', ''Little Lulu'', '' Batfink'', and fairy tale films made by Video Treasures, now Anchor Bay Entertainment. One of its most controversial distributions is ''Mega Powers!'', a Brazilian production of Intervalo Produções that is similar to the series ''Power Rangers'' and ''Super Sentai''.

Reception

Vídeo Brinquedo's animated films have been criticized for copying other mainstream animated films, as well as for their poor animation, voice acting, and writing, with scenes that merely exist as "filler" so the films' runtime can qualify as "feature length". Erik Henriksen, a reporter from ''The Portland Mercury'', criticized Vídeo Brinquedo as being "the laziest/cheapest movie studio of all time," due to similarities between its releases and the films of other animation studios, such as Pixar.

Marco Aurélio Canônico of ''Folha de S. Paulo'', who criticized the ''Little Cars'' series as a copy of the Pixar film ''Cars'', and likewise ''Ratatoing'' and ''Ratatouille'', discussed whether lawsuits from Pixar would appear. The Brazilian Ministry of Culture posted Marco Aurélio Canônico's article on its website.Vídeo Brinquedo faz sucesso com desenhos como “A Vida De Um Carro” e “Ratatoing”
." ''Folha de S. Paulo'' at Ministry of Culture (Brazil). 2 September 2007. Retrieved on 16 April 2011. Virgin Media also stated, "even by the ocean-floor-scraping standards of Vídeo Brinquedo, it's a shameless knock-off". Disney's legal department was contacted by a reporter through a spokesperson about a potential lawsuit, but did not comment.

Vídeo Brinquedo's 2009 film ''What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue!'', a mockbuster based on Pixar's '' Up'', was voted the worst animated movie of the 2000s by users on Letterboxd. The film has been criticised for its inclusion of racial stereotypes, most notably a Chinese character. In 2011, it was removed from Toronto Public Library due to complaints about being "offensive and racist".

In other media

''The Little Panda Fighter'' and ''Ratatoing'' were parodied in an episode of ''The Amazing World of Gumball'' called " The Treasure", in which Gumball picks up a mockbuster DVD called ''How to Ratatwang Your Panda'', a poorly rendered CGI film where a panda farts in front of several rats.

See also

* Mockbuster
* The Asylum, another studio notable for mockbusters
* Jetlag Productions

References

External links

*

Blogspot page
(in Portuguese)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Video Brinquedo
1995 establishments in Brazil
Brazilian animation studios
Companies based in São Paulo
Film production companies of Brazil
Mass media companies established in 1995