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Did the Gobots ruin Hanna- Barbera studios?

Discussion in 'Hanna-Barbera' started by Dizzies, Feb 19, 2020.

  1. Dizzies

    Dizzies Newbie New Member

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    They were very successful with their cartoon lines, but when the series: Challenge of the Gobots came out , they seem to run into problems. Even more so with the movie, The Battle of the Rock Lords.
  2. oneuglybunny

    oneuglybunny Moderator Staff Member Forum Member

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    Yeah, normally this wouldn't have been a problem for Hanna-Barbera Studios. They'd been making cartoon derivatives of commercial franchises for years. Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels was Charlie's Angels with less jiggling and no gunplay. The problem with Gobots is that the Transformers franchise already had a cartoon series and toy merchandising, as well as established brand name recognition. Gobots was seen not as a cartoon parody, but as a cheapie copycat. Hanna-Barbera discovered the hard way that animated parodies play well, but blatant copycat series don't.
  3. MrCleveland

    MrCleveland Key Animator Forum Member New Member

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    I feel that after the end of The Smurfs, H-B nearly lost it.

    I think Yo Yogi! ruined the H-B productions as well as the Yogi Bear franchise.
  4. RascalsFan84

    RascalsFan84 Inbetweener Forum Member New Member

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    I think, for H-B to produce cartoon series based on sitcoms or prime-time dramas, or series based on video games, comic books, and toy fads, sounds more like a case tgat H-B was really going under before the 1980s. Jabberjaw was likely based on the film "Jaws", but minus the horror. And "Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch" was likely due to the popularity of the Volkswagen Beetle, or inspired by the Herbie movies produced by Walt Disney Productions.

    "Scooby-Doo" cartoons, still successful to this day, may likely be a parody of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", but with a Great Dane as the mascot, and teens solving mysteries which was not prevalent in "Dobie Gillis".

    It sounds like H-B was running out of original ideas before the launch of "Scooby-Doo Where Are You!", and by the 1980s, they started licensing properties and using character likenesses, many with consent, except for "The Little Rascals", in which Porky sued H-B for two million dollars. It could be inferred that the Little Rascals lawsuit was likely the beginning of the end of H-B as we knew it. I think H-B thought they could get away with using likenesses of characters assuming that all their real life actors/actresses were deceased, but little did they know that only Alfalfa, Darla and Buckwheat were deceased at that time (the latter two very recently at the time), and H-B really ended up in hot wster when Spanky, Butch and the Woim eventually joined in on the lawsuit. H-B's license didn't include the likeness rights to the actors, and the surviving Rascals received settlement. It wasn't as much due to the show's poor performance in the ratings, but it is known that those Rascals made more money on the settlement as adults, as opposed to when they were child actors. Of the characters used in the cartoon, only the actor who played the Woim is reportedly still alive.
  5. MrCleveland

    MrCleveland Key Animator Forum Member New Member

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    I wanna share this...

  6. oneuglybunny

    oneuglybunny Moderator Staff Member Forum Member

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    Good on you, Mister Cleveland, for fishing that Saberspark analysis video out of the YouTube pile. He's on the money in this case: a changing marketplace and viewership habits meant the old Hanna-Barbera formula had run its course, and was becoming decreasingly viable.
  7. MrCleveland

    MrCleveland Key Animator Forum Member New Member

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    I may post more SaberSpark vids on here...I think it'd be cool if he became a member on Big Cartoon Forums.
  8. Cannon12

    Cannon12 Newbie New Member

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    The Challenge of the Gobots was one of the stupidest cartoon shows on TV in the 80's.

    YourTexasBenefits

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