Save A Dollar Disappoint A Kid

December 31, 2007 10:05 AM

Did you know that the distributor of Bill Plympton classics such as The Tune, Guard Dog and Guide Dog, and Plymptoons also do full-length CGI animations? Presenting Branscome International, LLC, your source for unique animations

...such as:

· Ratatoing (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· The Little Cars (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· Gladiformers (Trailer: WMV · YouTube)

· Little Bee (Trailer: WMV

Available at fine online retailers and your local supermarket.

posted by c0nsumer (17 comments total)

Seriously?
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:17 AM on December 31, 2007

Some of those seem oddly familiar. What, no "Game Story" or "The Awesomes"?
posted by ColdChef at 10:22 AM on December 31, 2007

Wow. These are just tremendously bad. If these were less bad, I'd be inclined to complain, but, no: these are sufficiently awful.
posted by cortex at 10:24 AM on December 31, 2007

Wow. I was afraid you were posting some PlymptonBlue, but that's some spectacularly terrible knocking-off highlighted here. Well done, Branscome International! Spot on title, too: how awfully sad would it be to unwrap a copy of Ratatoing on Christmas morning?
posted by mumkin at 10:24 AM on December 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

Is that Borat doing the voiceover for The Little Cars?
posted by maryh at 10:28 AM on December 31, 2007

W.T.F. How does something like Ratatoing make them money? Who buys that? Granted, it probably cost less than $300 to produce.
posted by itchylick at 10:39 AM on December 31, 2007

God those are horrid. The trailer for "Ratatoing" looked like a student art project. Are they really trying to fool people into buying these things, thinking their getting pixar stuff?
posted by delmoi at 10:51 AM on December 31, 2007

I smell a tax write-off.
posted by not_on_display at 10:52 AM on December 31, 2007

I imagine they sell to the old and bewildered buying 'that rat movie' for their grand-kids.

I like how the rats suddenly start adventuring in 'white-out' and the Little Cars world outside of the race track is basically flat-green to the horizon.

But Plympton is like this semi-genius. May be it's all some sort of meta-joke. Or not.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:53 AM on December 31, 2007

It's good to see that the Carmageddon II engine is still getting work.

But these guys have a long way to go before they can match live-action "Mockbuster" specialists The Asylum.
posted by dansdata at 11:46 AM on December 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

See, I knew there was this whole after-market cash-in of direct-to-DVD imitations of currently released movies (see "Snakes on a Train"), but I really hadn't seen trailers for them, much less the animated variety.

Aren't these just the most crappy, artless and pathetic productions imaginable? Yet these studios keep making them, because I guess there are enough senior citizens with cataracts in Walgreens to buy them.
posted by Down10 at 11:52 AM on December 31, 2007

My local Kroger had about 100 copies of "Ratatoing" on one of those wire shelves the week that "Ratatouie" came out. I seriously considered dropping the necessary $5 on one, just for the humor value. But thought better of it.
posted by jbickers at 4:39 PM on December 31, 2007

jbickers writes "My local Kroger had about 100 copies of 'Ratatoing' on one of those wire shelves the week that 'Ratatouie' came out. I seriously considered dropping the necessary $5 on one, just for the humor value. But thought better of it."

That brings up an interesting point. There are always knock offs whenever there's a successful film, especially in kids genres. But I seldom see any this blatant and questionable. The titles are meant to confuse people, not remind them of some other successful version of the idea, which is what most legitimate knock offs try to do. This is more akin to dealing in counterfeit knock-offs of brand names, like you see in the fashion world. As a fan and sometimes collector of b-movies, I'd be very tempted to try and pick up a few of these, just because it's such a strange sort of market they're trying to work here. It's not just crap or second rate entertainment. It's deceitful to begin with.

But, yeah, Plympton. Is this a Kaufman-esque stunt? Well, if they're selling them at the bargain bin at Kroger's in time to compete directly with the release of the movie they're trying to rip off, there's probably not anything that clever behind it.

Surprisingly enough, over the last year I've found Dr. Strangelove, Shaun of the Dead, SLC Punk, a couple old Pink Panther movies and The Iron Giant at the Smith's impulse movie display. Over time, I picked them all up at $10 each. None of them were knockoffs, but they weren't in the dollar bin, either.
posted by krinklyfig at 7:03 PM on December 31, 2007

I think you guys are misunderstanding the Plympton link. The distributor who... err... distributes Plympton's cartoons also distributes this other junk. Plympton himself has nothing to do with them.

I'm going to go get a thesaurus now.
posted by Dr-Baa at 2:13 PM on January 2

In other news HOLY CRAP GATCHAMAN BATTLE OF THE PLANETS
posted by Dr-Baa at 2:18 PM on January 2

Hah-- the 'gladmorphers' trailer avoids showing any transformation sequences. Presumably because they'd, you know, actually take effort.

The anime star wars-knockoff did not seem spectacularly awful... There, I said it.
posted by alexei at 3:36 AM on January 3

Wow! Actual film that uses Hash Animator!
posted by zoogleplex at 1:29 PM on January 4