Forum - View topicRibbon-chan a ripoff?
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treadwell
Posts: 8 |
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Some of you may be familiar with "Ribbon-chan", a mascot for Sapporo Beverage's Ribbon Juice. She was introduced in 1957 in a series of commercials, and is still in use today.
There was even an anime back in 2012-2013. Here's the original announcement. What many doesn't know is that it's a ripoff of an American (or British. Read below) character. There's a British drink called Kia-Ora, manufactured by Coca-Cola's UK facilities. In 1955 they introduced a character named Aurora in commercials. Despite being a British product they commissioned UPA studios in New York to do the commercials. Gene Deitch directed them. See them here. Around 1957, Deitch, who was now working at Terrytoons, was asked to be given a tour by a group of Japanese animators. It became obvious that they were sent there because they wanted to copy how American studios made cartoons, taking pictures of their equipments and exposure sheets. Apparently along the way they took back film prints. Here's the UPA spots from 1955 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrrDpm1xxck Here's the Japanese spots from 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5HXpxTRUIY Not only is the character designs exactly the same, they flat out re-traced the animation! Watch the first video, then on the second, skip to the 1 minute mark. Here's a screenshot. The left is the original Gene Deitch/UPA spot; the right is the Japanese "Ribbon Chan" 
So yeah, Ribbon-chan, who is still used today, is a rip-off. But they got away with it because, well, internet didn't exist in the 1950s. That, and Kia-Ora (which is still around) dropped Aurora fairly quickly, so there wasn't anything at stake for them, basically. Still, it's a fascinating discovery. |
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Sohma_Curse
 Posts: 512 Location: New York |
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It's entirely possible, then, that since they weren't using those characters in advertisements anymore, they allowed secondary use of them for a small fee/royalty (or even free of charge). Copyright law was shaky back then and EVERYthing animation was basically being copied (in one way or another) by everyone trying to capitalize on how Disney and Warner and the like had completely revolutionized the industry. As far as advertising is concerned, ad agencies had just begun to find their niche as well, and were churning out ideas upon ideas without necessarily thinking to trademark/copyright every single one for fear that Japanese spies were going to infiltrate and steal some random, short-running animations. So even if they were taken and used without permission, it doesn't surprise me that some throwaway ad drawings made their way to a different continent and nothing came of it legally. |
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Bango
 Posts: 1122 |
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It makes me wonder if they ever knew. You could send your findings to the original company. If they're to do anything about it then it's up to them, or they might not care. Though if it's Coke then they'll likely rain fiery hell down on them if they can.
There was a skateboarding company in the US called Hook-Ups which used pretty much all of Capcom's major characters at the time, as well as several anime characters while changing the names to... weird things (apparently Belldandy in a t-shirt is "psych ward girl"). I shot all the relevant US companies (since I couldn't contact the japanese rights holders) an e-mail about it and the response from all of them was basically a "we don't care". If if you're concerned then just let them know. It takes seconds and lets you flex for justice. |
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