Vídeo Brinquedo

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Vídeo Brinquedo is a Brazilian animation studio, distributor and toy manufatcturer located in São Paulo, that produced direct-to-video animated films widely viewed as mockbusters of comparable films from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation SKG. The company was founded around 2004 to distribute animation with the intention of distribution in its home market of Brazil.

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Early years

Vídeo Brinquedo's origins are not very clear, but the earliest use of their name was 2004. They began distributing foreign shows on DVD in collaboration with a US-based company called Spot Films. But eventually they started to make their own animated movies, starting out with adaptations of public domain stories such as Pinocchio.

In 2006 they made their first mockbuster film, Os Carrinhos, a loose rip-off of Pixar's Cars. It sold pretty well, eventually spawning a video game tie in, merchandise and a series of shorts. After the success of this film, Vídeo Brinquedo spent the following 3 years making animation of the same caliber.

Their films were often only just over 40 minutes in length, the minimum required to qualify as a feature film and awards qualification.

Rebranding

Contrary to popular belief, Vídeo Brinquedo did not go bankrupt in 2012, as they were still distributing DVDs up until 2014. Since DVDs started to lose popularity, Vídeo Brinquedo moved to YouTube and began making new content there. They also had a Blogspot page that went on until 2017.

Around the late 2010s, they rebranded to Crianças Inteligentes and became an educational company, probably in an attempt to change their image. It's unknown if the same people who worked on Vídeo Brinquedo are still working in the company or if they left.

Filmography

NOTE: We're only counting their animated films. Shows like Little Princess School are not allowed.

  • Ratatoing (2007) (Slight resemblance to Pixar's Ratatouille)
  • Gladiformers (2007) (Slight resemblance to the 2007 Transformers movie)
  • Little Bee (2007) (Slight resemblance to DreamWorks' Bee Movie)
  • Tiny Robots (2008) (Slight resemblance to Blue Sky's Robots and Pixar's WALL-E)
  • Gladiformers 2 (2008) (Slight resemblance to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
  • The Frog Prince (2009) (Slight resemblance to Walt Disney's The Princess and the Frog)


Criticism

Vídeo Brinquedo's films have been heavily criticised for their very poor animation, voice acting, and questionable writing alongside scenes which merely exist to fill the running time so the film in question can qualify as 'feature length'. Erik Henriksen, a reporter from The Portland Mercury, criticized Vídeo Brinquedo as being "the laziest/cheapest movie studio of all time," due to similarities between its releases and the films of other animation studios, such as Pixar.

In his review of Ratatoing, a reviewer on ToonZone said: "If you ate a copy of the worst cartoon you could think of, you'd still probably crap something better than Ratatoing", and went on to bemoan the animation quality, calling the movie as a whole "a senseless waste of raw materials" and "a waste of time, energy and effort for all parties concerned".

In other media

Two of Vídeo Brinquedo's productions were parodied in an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball called "The Treasure", in which Gumball picks up a mockbuster DVD called How to Ratatwang Your Panda. The film is a cross between The Little Panda Fighter and Ratatoing.

External links