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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 8641526" data-attributes="member: 6669048">Technically, this is not the characters from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. They are not named anywhere in the marketing material as such. I mean they very clearly and obviously are them, but they're not named and the cartoon itself isn't mentioned. Why they're doing it this way, I can only speculate. So I will.My guess (and again, just a guess based on the information, I have no idea if this is actually what's happening) is that Wizards of the Coast wants to tap into the nostalgia for the 1980s cartoon but there are licensing issues involved. The show was produced by Marvel Productions and distributed by New World Television (yes, Roger Corman's company) and because of various bankruptcies and acquisitions in the almost 40 years since its release, the rights have gotten...complicated. All of the Hasbro properties made by Marvel Productions (GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony, etc.) in the 1980s are now owned by Disney...except for Dungeons & Dragons. Disney had the rights to distribute it for a while (which they farmed out to Mill Creek for the most recent DVD release in 2009), but it was a co-production with TSR, so the rights should have been jointly owned with Disney and Hasbro thanks to the various acquisitions over the years, but that depends on the rights New World had for distribution and what happened to them when New World was purchased by Fox who spun all the Marvel Productions animated products to Saban which was purchased by Disney before Disney purchased the rest of Fox in a deal that did not include the Power Rangers (which went to Hasbro).So the rights are likely held by Disney and/or Hasbro...but in a tangle of different subsidiaries with different terms on the licenses. Trying to figure it out is almost as much of a headache than trying to figure out who owns the rights to the BattleTech cartoon from the 1990s. Either way, my guess based on how they're releasing stuff is that they have the rights to the character designs but not to the characters. So they can have a paladin that looks exactly like Eric but can't call him "Eric the Cavalier". Or something else even more complicated, like if they used the names they would have to pay Disney since they own rights to the show.Another possible explanation is that they're working on a deal for some sort of 40th anniversary relaunch or reboot or just a deluxe re-release or maybe a spinoff with the characters as adults but that's not getting announced until this summer (when all these products are expected to launch). Physical products like a starter set or miniature line has a lead-up time to release so, in order to time it properly so the products would hit store shelves at the same time as the announcement, the products would need to go into production earlier. And if it is a contract for an new series, there may be clauses in the contract with whoever is making it that prevents announcing it early. But they have to announce it early because they have to get distributors and stores to place orders for them.Either way, my guess is we'll probably hear something next month about the cartoon one way or another. Either just a new bluray release or something more.</blockquote>

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