Goodtimes Entertainment
| Industry | Home video company |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Successor | Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Defunct | July 2005 |
| Headquarters | Midtown Manhattan, New York City |
|
Key people
|
Kenneth Cayre Joseph Cayre Stanley Cayre |
| Products | Now-public domain works and anime |
GoodTimes Entertainment, Ltd. was an American home video company that originated in 1984 under the name of GoodTimes Home Video. Though it produced its own titles, the company was well-known due to its distribution of media from third parties and classics. The founders for the company were the brothers Kenneth, Joseph and Stanley Cayre (often referred to and credited simply as the "Cayre Brothers") of Salsoul Records. Its headquarters were in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company had a distribution facility in Jersey City, New Jersey and a duplication facility in Bayonne, New Jersey.
GoodTimes began with the distribution of copies of public domain titles. Though the company also produced and distributed many low-priced fitness videos, its most recognized line of products were the series of low-budget traditionally animated films from companies such as Jetlag Productions, Golden Films, and Blye Migicovsky Productions, as well a selection of the now-public domain works of Burbank Films Australia.
Many of its home-video titles — such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio, Sinbad, The Little Mermaid, The Three Musketeers and Thumbelina — were named similarly or identically to big-budget animated films from other studios (though their plots were sometimes very different), and GoodTimes would often release these films close to the theatrical/home-video releases of other studios. This was largely legal, as the stories on which the big-budget movies were based were folk tales that had long been in the public domain and the major studios had little room to claim exclusive rights to the stories or the main characters. The Walt Disney Company sued GoodTimes because the videotape packaging closely resembled Disney's, allegedly creating the potential of confusing consumers into unintentionally purchasing a GoodTimes title, when they instead meant to purchase a film from Disney that was otherwise nearly identical in appearance.
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