Disney gets sued by a toy company over Lotso Huggin' Bear

[mimitchi33]

http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/entry/view/id/37875
The reason why this is in this section is that the company who is suing Disney claimed that they knew about this technology because of a Bear In The Big Blue House toy they made for them. Here is a link to the toy in question,
(It's not for sale, but there are some reviews that tell you what the toy does on here):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000099ZD7/?tag=muppetcentral
Does anyone own this toy? It seems like it came out when I was into Dora, so I didn't have it as a kid.

 

[minor muppetz]

Was the toy made before or after Disney got the rights (beyond just broadcasting the show) to Bear in the Big Blue House?

 

[Drtooth]

Toy company sues Disney over something Disney owns...

Sounds legit.

 

[mimitchi33]

Was the toy made before or after Disney got the rights (beyond just broadcasting the show) to Bear in the Big Blue House?

The earliest review on Amazon was from 2003, so I'm guessing before Disney brought The Muppets.

Toy company sues Disney over something Disney owns...

Sounds legit.

I was thinking the same thing too.

 

[minor muppetz]

The earliest review on Amazon was from 2003, so I'm guessing before Disney brought The Muppets.

Then Disney wouldn't have been involved. I'm pretty sure that only Henson would have been involved with approving the merchandise.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Wait...I am very confused here.

Are they suing because the bear was in the movie and they think its going to give their toys a bad name, or are they suing because disney is going to produce a toy based on Lotso? It seems to me to be the former...and that the mention of the Bear toy really doesn't mean a whole lot in this case...

and if that's it, then it has nothing to do with merchandising, but more that the company is mad that a similar toy that they make was portrayed poorly in the movie?

But then again I could be misreading it. Someone please explain this to me.

 

[Drtooth]

I'll tell you this much. Trying to make it less confusing either makes it more confusing, or it makes the toy company CEO a greedy, vindictive, pathetic loser with a paper thin case trying to go after Disney's big bucks for sort of kind of stealing a name.

This has very little to do with a Bear in the Big Blue House Toy, supposedly. It comes down to a name. A company that supposedly filed the trademark for Lots OF Hugs sounds an awful lot like Lotso Huggin' Bear if you've got a banana in your ear. That's all it boils down to, imaginary confusion of the cartoon character and a completely different toy entirely that isn't even produced anymore.

And the lawsuit was brought fourth a good several years after the movie came out.

Yeah. Doesn't sound vindictive and petty at all.

 

[mimitchi33]

I'll tell you this much. Trying to make it less confusing either makes it more confusing, or it makes the toy company CEO a greedy, vindictive, pathetic loser with a paper thin case trying to go after Disney's big bucks for sort of kind of stealing a name.

This has very little to do with a Bear in the Big Blue House Toy, supposedly. It comes down to a name. A company that supposedly filed the trademark for Lots OF Hugs sounds an awful lot like Lotso Huggin' Bear if you've got a banana in your ear. That's all it boils down to, imaginary confusion of the cartoon character and a completely different toy entirely that isn't even produced anymore.

And the lawsuit was brought fourth a good several years after the movie came out.

Yeah. Doesn't sound vindictive and petty at all.

Agreed.

 

[Drtooth]

..and Honestly, if these guys think that a sadistic, borderline White Slave Trader of a cartoon bear will ruin their reputation, they haven't seen kids actually buy Lotso toys. Hopefully, they only felt guilt ridden. I was sure that Lotso would be the shelf warmer, being the darkest villain Pixar ever came up with. But kids actually liked him.

 

[minor muppetz]

One thing I've thought about: How much knowledge does the average person have on specific Bear in the Big Blue Merchandise? Has any Bear merchandise had the same level of fame as Tickle Me Elmo?

Besides Tickle Me Elmo, and possibly it's many knock-offs, I'd say casual Sesame Street fans are likely to know about Sleep 'n Snore Ernie (since that had the same insane amount of scarcity as Tickle me Elmo a year later, though it seems like it's not as popular anymore), the talking Big Bird from the 1980s (the one you could put read-long cassettes in so Big Bird would talk), and maybe Chicken Dance Elmo.

Though I guess a lot of Muppet/Henson properties don't have too many toys that casual fans would be aware of. For Muppets, I'd say fans would be aware of the Palisades action figures and maybe also the Fisher-Price ones, for Muppet Babies the McDonald's Happy Meals, and for Fraggle Rock, the McDonald's Happy Meals (and maybe the more recent Fraggle stuff from the last decade). I'd like to think that maybe the casual fan would be aware of all the Dinosaurs toys that came out (the PVCs, the Talking Baby, maybe the McDonald's happy meal) if only because there weren't many other Dinosaurs toys (were there any others?).

Then again, if I was a bigger fan of Bear, would I be aware of any speciffic Bear in the Big Blue House toys of the past?