Human Synapse Firings Gone Wild

When you go buy an animated movie, how much attention do you pay to what movie you're buying? Like, when you go out intending to buy, say, Cars, are you making sure that that's the movie you're actually buying?

Don't laugh. This is an actual question. And apparently, for some of you out there, the answer is "no".

Meet Video Brinquedo, an animation company out of Brazil. Their website may be in Portuguese, but you don't need to speak Portuguese in order to immediately see what these guys do for a living: cheap ripoff movies that are only barely legally distinct from the original properties. Hey, look, there's anthropomorphic cars at a racetrack! There's a silly panda with a headband in a Chinese kung fu setting! There's Snow White and Cinderella and Princess Jasmine and Tiana and I don't even know what the hell they're doing to even try to make those four distinct aside from an art style vastly inferior to Disney's!

Here (in link form as embedding is disabled) is the English trailer for a movie by Brinquedo called "Ratatoing". Yes. Ratatoing. Why do I provide the trailer? Because I hate you.

Other Video Brinquedo samplings are available through that, and going through the rest of their catalog, you will see other offerings such as "Little Cars", "Little Bee", "The Little Panda Fighter", "Tangled Up", and "What's Up: Balloon To The Rescue". They even turned "Little Cars" into a play.

Yes, folks. This happened.



They aren't the only place that exists primarily to try and take money that was intended to go to someone that actually put in an effort. TV Tropes has an entire category dedicated to the genre- there's enough examples to qualify as a genre- calling them 'Mockbusters'. They're awful, they know they're awful, the actual product they put out is only vaguely resemblant of the source material they're ripping off... except for the box cover. The box cover is made to look as similar to the source material's box cover as possible. Again, this is a ripoff we're talking about. The only way they're going to make any money is by fooling you long enough to get you through the checkout line. By the time you get home and see something that is decidedly not what you thought you were buying, it's too late.

Pretty much the only reason they don't get the bejeezus sued out of them is that they're not even worth it. They don't steal enough sales or gain enough attention to justify the legal fees it would take to shut them down.

It's not hard to thwart these guys. It takes, like, two seconds to make sure you've got the right product. They stake their existence on you not doing so. Or you being the guy that buys their stuff so others don't have to. Or you being the guy that brings them up just to say how bad they are so that they get free publicity.

...oops.