The story
For its first nine years, Vídeo Brinquedo distributed Portuguese-dubbed home video releases of shows such as Sonic X and The Little Lulu Show in the Brazilian market.
One of the studio's early distributions was the obscure religious-themed cartoon Kingdom Under the Sea (Portuguese: Reino submarino), which experienced an increase of sales following the release of the 2003 Pixar film Finding Nemo. Kingdom Under the Sea and Finding Nemo shared several similarities, such as the presence of a clownfish and a story centered on a parent-child relationship. As a result of its sales, Brinquedo wanted to start not only distributing cartoons, but also create their own.
Vídeo Brinquedo's first animations were traditional 2D animations, based on public domain fairy tales such as Pinocchio and The Three Little Pigs, but with scripts that modernized the characters. They later expanded to 3D animation, their first 3D animated film being The Little Cars (Portuguese: Os Carrinhos), loosely based on the 2006 Pixar animated film Cars. The film sold over a million copies in its first month in Brazil, as well as over 5,000 copies per week in the United States at stores like Walmart.
The original idea of the company was to jump on trends raised by the major studios and start production of animation two to three years in advance. With the company borrowing ideas established in Hollywood, company director Mauricio Milani stated, "we tried to imagine what it will be in advance". The films are often only just over 40 minutes in length, the minimum required to qualify as a feature film and awards qualification. Their films' English-dubbed casts, such as The Little Panda Fighter, featured voice actors from 4Kids Entertainment.
Originally released with a Portuguese-language soundtrack, many of Vídeo Brinquedo's titles were co-produced with Rexmore Company in Brazil, and distributed in North America by Branscome International, MorningStar Entertainment with English and Spanish soundtracks, Brightspark Productions in the United Kingdom, and Janson Media on Amazon Prime Video.
From Wikipedia’s article on Vídeo Brinquedo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4