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

[Little Robin]

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.

According to the article provided in the first post, If I understand correctly the similar sounding name by itself is not the issue.

Diece-Lisa Industries of New Jersey who trademarked 'Lots of Hugs' stuffed bears in 1995 felt the Lots-O Huggin' Bear character with it's evil story line slandered the image of their product. They claim to fear marketing their own slogan now due to possible association with the Lotso character.

The Bear in the Blue House connection is simply because DLI licensed their 'hugging technology', whatever that means, to Disney for that show. Due to this, DLI claims Disney understood their image and thus defied it deliberately

So yes, it basically comes down to the name. Quite ridiculous if you ask me. Not only would you have to have cotten in your ears to mix up the names but as far as I can tell their 'Lots of Hugs' toy bears not resemblance to the Lotso character in appearance or function.

 

[Drtooth]

Lotso's character and motives didn't exactly stop kids from wanting Lotso toys. I don't see why they feel a similar name "tarnished" a toy that hasn't been made for quite some time. And if they still are, I sure as heck have never heard of them until now.

No matter what their logic is, it's a frivolous suit, and if this is one of the bizarre times Disney actually loses a copyright battle (like that whole King Louie business), then I'd be shocked.

 

[Little Robin]

Agreed, until I read this article I had never heard of a 'Lots of Hugs' bear...or else I've never recognized one as such. So it doesn't seem like they had a lot of popularity even prior to the film.

 

[JJandJanice]

Yeah, these guys really don't have much of a case against Disney.

 

[Drtooth]

What makes this even more...uh... ironic, obnoxious, whatever you want to call it... why isn't Disney going after this toy company? Second one on the bottom...

Yeah... that looks a little too close to Animal, if you ask me (without the eyebrows or teeth). or at least Grover, so SW needs to call their lawyers at least.

 

[Luke kun]

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?

I put Guns 'n Roses tapes in that Big Bird lol

 

[mimitchi33]

What makes this even more...uh... ironic, obnoxious, whatever you want to call it... why isn't Disney going after this toy company? Second one on the bottom...

Yeah... that looks a little too close to Animal, if you ask me (without the eyebrows or teeth). or at least Grover, so SW needs to call their lawyers at least.

It does look like an orange Grover!

 

[Drtooth]

You know... I haven't seen the Beast ballz commercial in some time. Either they were an abject failure, or Disney (or SW) caught wind of this and sent them cease and desists for Orange Grover/Eyebrowless, fangless Animal.

 

[Little Robin]

What makes this even more...uh... ironic, obnoxious, whatever you want to call it... why isn't Disney going after this toy company? Second one on the bottom...

Yeah... that looks a little too close to Animal, if you ask me (without the eyebrows or teeth). or at least Grover, so SW needs to call their lawyers at least.

I don't see the resemblance to Animal and just slight to Grover.
Until you specified I had no idea what you were pointing out.