From The Makers of Ratatoing...

If it was against the law for you to sue someone from making a ripoff of your product with a different name, I'm pretty sure they'd have probably been sued dozens of times by now - or at least as many times as it would take to put them out of buisness.

Sadly, at least to my knowledge, what they are doing is perfectly legal, just not scrupulous. :shrug:
 
The Frog Prince ripoff is up on Youtube if you go searching for it. Very choppy/stilted Flash animation.

The weird thing about these ripoffs is that the English versions seem to use New York area actors that you see in stuff from 4Kids and Central Park Media. Mike Pollock was very recognizable when I watched a Ratatoing clip a while back.
 
I work at Wal-Mart, and they set up a TV/DVD player next to their Princess and the Frog merchandise...that plays The Frog Prince on an endless loop. To me, it seems more than a little awkward to be promoting a Disney movie with its crappy 44-minute Flash-animated knockoff, but hey, I'm not the boss.

However, I did have this enlightening conversation with a coworker a few weeks ago...

Me: I dunno, it doesn't seem right to have that DVD playing next to all the Princess and the Frog stuff.
Her: What are you talking about? That is The Princess and the Frog.
Me: ...No, it isn't.
Her: Yes it is! The princess is black, isn't she?
Me: (getting incredulous now) Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's the same movie, it's just a--
Her: Yes it is! They did that so the coloreds wouldn't feel left out!

At this point, my brain short-circuited and I had to walk away.
 
I don't know which is worse: not realizing that the DVD you're playing is the cheap knockoff version, refusing to believe that it is the cheap knockoff version when blatantly told, or the fact that people still call blacks "colored."
 
*headdesk*

See, in that situation, I would at least have called her an idiot THEN walked away. Then again, anyone who says 'coloreds' as a full grown adult obviously isn't going to get a clue any time soon.
 
What is that supposed to mean? They put it on DVD at the same time as the theater because black people can't afford to go to the movies? I guess there's a reason that bigot twerp works at Wal-Mart and not anywhere better.
 
My Walmart appears to be staffed a little more smartly. They had the Princess and the Frog knockoff, but no Princess and the Frog merch rack, and their TVs were showing something from NBC and G-Force (which, of course, was stuck at the DVD menu because no one could be arsed to change it).

GoodTimes appears to be a little more shrewd than Brinquedo and all the others if they can get so many copies of their wannabe at Target and Walmart. I've never seen the Brinquedo titles outside the late, not-lamented Circuit City, although What's Up? Balloon to the Rescue showed up at Kmart. Once. (At least they weren't playing it. I haven't seen them play anything on their TVs in months.)

JB, I'm serious. Tell the manager of your Walmart about this ignorant, bigoted worker ASAP. Anyone who still calls black people "colored" deserves to be kicked out on her tail.
 
Add the fact that the store itself was advertising it alongside merchandise from the real McCoy. That's just stupid, why would you advertise a knock off in front of the real deal?

But If TenPoundHammer's words are accurate, I guess it might be a few stores doing it. Haven't checked my Wal-Mart, but I rarely go there anyway so I'm not making a special trip because of that. Also, I rarely bump into this Video Brinquedo videos, but it's not like I'm hunting them down or anything.
 
No, I think she was under the assumption that they made Tiana black in an effort to make other non-white races feel more equally represented in the Disney animated canon. Of course, that's not true, but I'm pretty certain she didn't mean what you think she meant.

It seems to be another case of people thinking that movies come out in theaters and on DVD at the same time - in other words, the exact same people that the makers of The Frog Prince are trying to dupe into buying their product, thinking that it's the genuine article. (Some people I've met are so stupid, they don't even know the difference between a DVD and a video game, so when they see a Wii or PS3 game based on a movie, they think it's the movie itself.)
 
Reminds me of my old job. I worked electronics as well, and people actually thought the movie tie-in games were the same thing as the movie in theaters. Sure, it has a $60 price tag, comes in a green box, has the Xbox 360 logo on it, and isn't out on the salefloor with every other DVD we sell. Makes perfect sense to me.:shrug:
 
There's a reason for that. Sears and Kmart are on death's door right now, and the corporate bigshots have instructed their stores to save as much electricity as they possibly can. I bet the lights were dimmed slightly, huh?
 
Even though Disney may not be able to sue Video Brinquendo in Brazil, wouldn't they atleast be able to go after the company that localizes and distributes them in the US?
 
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