Video Brinquedo
Video Brinquedo (translates as "Toy Video" or "Video Toy") is a 3D animation studio from Brazil that legally lasted from 1994 to 2012, although their Youtube channel still receives periodical uploads. They can probably best be described as the CGI movie equivalent of The Asylum. They are known in the United States as Toyland Video, and in the United Kingdom as Brightspark.
During their first decade of existence, they handled the distribution of home video releases of Sonic X, Kirby Right Back At Ya, The Super Mario Bros Super Show, and Little Lulu in Brazil. Around 2002 they began to produce their own in-house animations, encouraged by the success they had distributing local animated productions. At the beginning they did adaptations of fairy tales in traditional animation, before switching to CGI and Mockbusterism in 2006.
Trailers (along with "educative videos" and some of their films) can be seen here.
See also Spark Plug Entertainment for their American counterpart, and Dingo Pictures for their Limited Animation counterpart.
- The Frog Prince (ripping off Disney's take on The Princess and the Frog)
- Gladiformers (ripping off Transformers)
- Little & Big Monsters (ripping off Monsters, Inc.)
- Little Bee (ripping off Bee Movie)
- The Little Cars (ripping off Cars)
- The Little Panda Fighter (ripping off Kung Fu Panda)
- Little Princess School (ripping off the Disney Princess franchise)
- Ratatoing (ripping off Ratatouille)
- Tiny Robots (ripping off Robots)
- What's Up?: Balloon To The Rescue (ripping off Up)
- Mega Powers (A Power Rangers/Sentai rippoff that, for once, they only distributed - it was actually produced by Intervalo Produções)
- Chapeuzinho Vermelho e Sua Turma ("Little Red Riding Hood and her Band", an animated anthology of fairy tales that has come under fire for having the same artstyle of Peppa Pig - the main character looks exacly like Peppa, only without a snout and with a red hood over her head.)
- Artistic License Physics: In The Little Cars, a race car is stopped by a piece of gum stuck to the track. Furthermore, Wrangler (the car that spit the gum onto the track in the first place), is apparently able to spit gum several hundred feet given he was behind Cruise at the time and they were both going full speed down the track.
- Butt Monkey: Iria in Little Princess School. The other princesses are pretty mean to her when she gets turned into a toad. Hime even outs herself as a fantastic racist.
- Captain Ersatz: Of Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney characters.
- Catch Phrase: "Precisely!"
- Direct to Video
- Disproportionate Retribution: In Ratatoing (see that film's page for more details).
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Often.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": In The Little Cars, the five-time Great Race champion is called only 'Champion' throughout the whole movie. Lampshaded by the antagonist, who insists "That's not his name!"
- Five Princess Band
- The Hero - Cindy
- The Smart Guy - Bianca
- The Big Guy - Hime
- The Chick - Iría
- The Lancer - Zade
- Follow the Leader: Their production model.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Sometimes creating straight-up innuendo:
Female rat: Hey my handsome friend, are you ready for more food adventures tonight?
Marcel: I'm always ready because I know how to keep my equipment prepared.
- Idiot Ball: In an episode of Little Princess School, the princesses found the spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty. One by one, their reaction to it is "Hey what's this?" and poking themselves on the spindle, even after seeing the others fall asleep. One of the adults even pokes herself on the spindle just because. The only one who isn't carrying the Idiot Ball is, for some reason, Cindy.
- Inconsistent Dub: The characters in the English dub of the first Little Cars video were given localized names. After that, they simply stuck with the original Brazilian names.
- Informed Ability: Hime in Little Princess School is supposed to be a really good swordfighter, but we never see her fight.
- The Mockbuster: The company specializes in these.
- The Musical: They've turned The Little Cars into a musical live show.
- No Flow in CGI
- Palette Swap: Many examples in The Little Cars.
- Punny Name: Many.
- Real Song Theme Tune: "Window to Nowhere" by Angra is used as the theme for Gladiformers.
- Slasher Smile: Their 2-D animation is prone to making characters look malevolent when they should just look annoyed.
- Shout-Out/To Shakespeare: "My kingdom for a snack!" in one episode of Little Princess School.
- Video Brinquedo Physics: Unintentional.
- YouTube Poop: Not a major source, but Video Brinquedo movies have been making some YouTube Poop appearances in recent times. Walrus Guy, a major figure in YouTube Poop lore, seemed to enjoy using Ratatoing material and was eventually convinced by his fans to poop Little Cars and Little Bee.