(OT) Might Orbots
Travoltron
of The Transformers' rivals during the robot toy craze of the
mid-1980's. Orbots was one of the first casualties of the '80s Robot
Wars, felled by a lawsuit from Tonka's Gobots.
The high-quality animation was done by TMS, the same Japanese studio
that did the TF episode "Call of the Primitives".
Travoltron
ahsan.sa...@gmail.com
> Corrected header
I'll have to check it out when I get home.
How long did they last before they got smashed?
Evil King Macrocranios
Onslaught Six
> Someone has posted the first episode of Might Orbots on BitTorrent, one
> of The Transformers' rivals during the robot toy craze of the
> mid-1980's. Orbots was one of the first casualties of the '80s Robot
> Wars, felled by a lawsuit from Tonka's Gobots.
What kind of case did Tonka have against Orbots, exactly?
Zobovor
<ahsan.salahud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How long did they last before they got smashed?
Only one season, unfortunately. It really was a fun little show,
though.
Zob
ahsan.sa...@gmail.com
Yeah, veoh won't open in Pakistan. Either they have a problem with us
or (more likely) somebody posted a video that makes fun of our
politicians or army people.
I'll look for a torrent.
Blaster Master
--
Blaster Master
a.k.a.
Brad S. Russell
"Travoltron" <travo...@defender.uni> wrote in message
news:hkqn1o$lpf$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
Evil King Macrocranios
> Tonka caused their downfall??? Interesting tidbit of news. Do we know why?
Although I know very little about the lawsuit I think the part it
played in Mattel's decision not to go forward with the line is waaay
overstated on the internet. I don't even think it was their decision
to make. I see the claim on a lot of websites that Mattel was sued by
Tonka over Orbots and that's what killed the show and toys but after
the research I've done I'm pretty sure that's not true. I used to know
more about it but looking through my hard drive a lot of the websites
that had information on it are gone. Here's what can be corroborated.
The first I had read of the suit was at ArkNorth's Orbots page (scroll
down about halfways):
ArkNorth reveals that it was a suit filed in Minnesota by Tonka in
1985 against TMS Entertainment concerning trademark infringement.
(It's notable that they didn't go after Mattel.) Trademarks are
usually names and logos so the beef here seemed to be that "Mighty
Orbots" was too similar to Tonka's "Mighty Robots, Mighty Vehicles-
GoBots" tagline. ArkNorth ends by stating the case was transferred by
the Minnesota court but gives no further details. Then I found an old
law website mentioning that it was sent to California where TMS was
located. (Ctrl+F for "Tonka" when you go here):
At Arioch's Mighty Orbots page a source named Vinnie Bartilucci states
that the Mattel toy was canceled before Toyfair but after the '85
Toyfair catalogs were printed. If that's true then Mattel decided to
pull the line very late in '84 or very early in '85 since Toyfair was
that February. The specific date the Tonka litigation was filed would
sure be good to know but my hunch is that it was never pursued in
court and it can be proven the cartoon ended for an entirely different
reason anyways. In an old Comics Interview article reprinted at the
Quick Kick's Theater website [ http://tinyurl.com/ykw3jdy ], series
writer Buzz Dixon stated:
"It was a very peculiar situation. What happened, we usually came in
second place up against SMURFS and the first season of MUPPET BABIES.
We were never more than six or eight points out of first place - the
most successful new show that NBC had. Unfortunately, NBC made some
not very wise decisions. They bought a lot of shows sight unseen. They
were committed to a lot of shows that had pay-or-play options where
they had to run ‘em. ORBOTS just got squeezed out." (Technically it
was an ABC show.)
So although it was doing great in the ratings, ABC had other
commitments and pulled it to make room, not because Tonka was suing
TMS. TMS was then in a position where their show fell victim to
network politics and on top of that they're getting sued. It's hard to
figure out who to feel worse for-the studio or Mattel who went through
all the trouble to protoype the toy. This was a property where the
cartoon was created first and then licensed to Mattel, which was
working backwards from the way the toy properties of the day operated.
I'm kind of tripped out that Mattel would even agree to such a
situation but I guess He-Man's popularity was waning and they were
looking for their next big hit. The decision to kill the line after
licensing it to Mattel had to have come from TMS-I don't think Mattel
could have just said, Nah, we're not gonna make this after becoming
the master licensee.
Most likely TMS abandoned the project because they lost the show's
network time slot and didn't want to take it to syndication where the
number of episodes needed for a full season was way larger than 13-
they were spending a lot of money on that show. The first episode's
budget was $400,000, twice as much as it took to make regular cartoons
at the time. Despite looking great and doing good in the ratings
Mighty Orbots probably ended up a victim of circumstances beyond its
control, the least of which was a lawsuit bouncing from state to state
looking for a judge. I don't know for sure though and I want to make
it clear I'm just speculating.