goddamn smirky eyebrow-raised badass poochie cartoons nowadays

Wait, are you saying that the pop cultural references in Family Guy are integral to the plot? Because that's the complete opposite argument most people make about FG.

family guy is so disconnected from modern society!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/business/media/11cartoons.html

Warner Brothers hopes to “reinvigorate and reimagine” Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo through a new virtual world on the Internet, where people will be able to dress up the characters pretty much any way they want. American Greetings is dusting off another of its lines, the Care Bears, which will return with a fresh look this fall (less belly fat, longer eyelashes).

And 4Kids Entertainment, which licenses the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will revive them next year in new video games, where they will have more muscles and less attitude.

Even Mickey Mouse is getting an update, although the Walt Disney Company is still mulling what tweaks to make.

“I love classic Mickey, but he needs to evolve to be relevant to new generations of kids,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said in an interview.

Reinventing these beloved characters without inflicting indelible damage is one of the entertainment industry’s trickiest maneuvers. Go too far, as Mattel did in 1993 when it gave Ken a purple mesh T-shirt, a pierced ear and the name “Earring Magic Ken,” and it can set off a brand crisis on a global scale.

Done correctly, it can be incredibly lucrative. Mickey Mouse produces an estimated $5 billion in merchandise sales every year. Strawberry Shortcake, even in her diminished state, has generated $2.5 billion in revenue since 2003, according to American Greetings.

If the classic characters look less stodgy, the companies hope, they will appeal not only to parents who remember them fondly, but also to children who might automatically be suspicious of toys their parents played with. For parents, nostalgia is considered a bigger sales hook than ever because of the increasingly violent and hyper-sexualized media landscape.

“It’s a terrible world, and modern parents are trying to cocoon their kids as much as possible,” said Alfred R. Kahn, chairman of 4Kids Entertainment, which also manages franchises like Pokémon and the Cabbage Patch Kids. “What better way to protect them than wrapping them in nostalgic brands?”

Mr. Iger talks about the need to balance “heritage and innovation.” For Mickey and other Disney characters, one method is to keep the core attributes of the characters the same, but to update the world in which they live. For instance, Disney is updating Toontown, the section of Disneyland that Mickey calls home. One plan features an old-fashioned trolley, but Mr. Iger is not sure that is a smart idea. Will modern children know what an old-fashioned trolley is?

Warner Brothers, by contrast, is leaving the styling decisions up to the customers, some of whom were weaned on virtual worlds like Disney’s Club Penguin (where they can, say, dress a virtual penguin in a pirate costume and make it dance). At KidsWB.com, which is rolling out a revised site over the summer, the studio will let people customize Looney Tunes characters as they see fit.

“You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird? Have at it,” said Lisa Gregorian, executive vice president for worldwide marketing at Warner Brothers Television.

“You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird?"

No thanks

“What better way to protect them than wrapping them in nostalgic brands?”

WHAT BETTER WAY, INDEED

i forgot about some of the monsters stuff..i haven't seen that in a minute

but i think everyone knows the point i was trying to make wrt pixar's style vs. the shrek style which is a constant barrage of winky referential b.s.

One plan features an old-fashioned trolley, but Mr. Iger is not sure that is a smart idea. Will modern children know what an old-fashioned trolley is?

unbelievable.

Go too far, as Mattel did in 1993 when it gave Ken a purple mesh T-shirt, a pierced ear and the name “Earring Magic Ken,” and it can set off a brand crisis on a global scale.

ahahaha

http://www.manbehindthedoll.com/images/earringmagic.jpg

yeah matt i know toy story (which i think is the only pixar ive seen) didnt have nearly as much of that stuff; still i felt like a huge amount of its appeal was its cgi novelty, which is obviously done with

somebody needs to go back in time and kill the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

somebody needs to go back in time and kill the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:42 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

F.U. man wtf

btw while we're on the subject, what do you guys make of this WALL-E flick? I feel like the trailers have been too vague for me to really have any idea whether it's more likely to be great or garbage.

somebody needs to go back in time and kill the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

-- Tracer Hand,

FU MAN WTF

I think Wall-E looks fantastic.

Also, Gay Ken is astonishing.

somebody needs to go back in time and kill teenage mutant ninja turtles bugs bunny

also, destroy Sgt. Peppers' so prog doesn't happen

this Gayken?

http://www.usmagazine.com/files/clay_blog.jpg

Bolt is a computer animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and will be Disney's 47th animated feature. The story is about Bolt, a white German Shepherd who has lived all his life on the set of a TV show in which he portrays a superhero dog, and as a result thinks that his superpowers are real. Later, he gets accidentally separated from the studio. He then meets a female cat named Mittens and a hamster who never leaves his exercise ball, and eventually he discovers that all of his powers are fake.

do we need rintintin meets toy story?

oh and
It stars the voices of John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Malcolm McDowell, Diedrich Bader, Nick Swardson, Greg Germann and Susie Essman.

hahaha i had no idea anyone was invested in memories of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, sorry d00dz!

or should i say "donatello and raphael"

has someone already killed off two of them?

no, those are my new nicknames for deej and deeznuts

Michaelangelo was way more smirky than Donatello

no, those are my new nicknames for deej and deeznuts

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 17:54 (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Why would you give two seperate nicknames to the same poster?

i hate almost all new animated features not made by pixar and even those can occasionally have a little bullshit here and there. but for the most part they're pretty awesome. but i think every single other animated feature just has a formula of loud colorful junk for the kids, innuendo for the adults, and shit jokes for everyone. i mean maybe pixar traffics in that as well to some degree but it happens like once per movie and the rest tends to keep pretty close to the disney formula. but i was watching alice in wonderland once and i was thinking how much was lost when randy newman took over the music factory with his cookie cutter "do you want to be my friend" academy songbait.

http://beehivestudios.koojisites.com/auctionpages/stickers/chibidonatello_finishedstickersample.jpg

Why would you give two seperate nicknames to the same poster?

-- The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics, Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:55 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ban

uh oh is and what gonna have to fite to defend Randy Newman's honor again?

you've got a capn-save-a-ho in he

i guess that doesnt really work

it's ok, deejnuts, i thought it was funny

i like randy newman but his disney stuff, not so much.

not gonna defend the time i got drunk & cried watching joan cusacks song from toy story 2 on youtube at 2 in the morning

That was a big scene.

Tracer is OTM, the only reason ppl don't hate equally on TMNT is that WE WERE KIDS THEN, IF IT HAPPENED WHEN WE WERE KIDS IT'S PURE

i hate on tmnt equally

cartoons are some bullshit

Over the Hedge was awesome, but in general I hate this bullshit too

xpost however: cartoons are some bullshit DISAGREE

did this all start with Tom and Jerry? namely Jerry? I agree that the modern shit is hella grating and lazy, but you can't knock T&J.

This actually wasn't too bad:

http://www.thewebpen.net/movies/505173~Monster-House-Posters.jpg

This was marginally OK:

http://z.about.com/d/movies/1/0/r/h/O/meettherobinsonsposter.jpg

solid proof that tmnt is in no way comparable to this bullshit - adults & adult film critics alike both despised & didnt get it

ie if tmnt pandered it actually pandered to the right audience

http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/73340/kirby_gets_tough_qjpreviewth.jpg

haha that is seriously depressing, Kirby's one of my favorite 'tude-free modern animated/vid game protagonists.

my heroes

http://kungfurodeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/chowder1.jpg

American Kirby has angry eyebrows. Japanese Kirby does not. This says something about our two cultures.

and i do love squirrel boy

http://kjzz.org/news/arizona/archives/200607/squirrelboy/squirrelboy.gif