Cookie Jar Entertainment was a Canadian entertainment company that was founded in 1976 by married couple Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg under the name Cinar (stylized as CINAR). They started out as a film and television distribution company in New York, but in 1984, the studio moved to Montreal and switched focus to producing children's shows, particularly animated ones.
During the 80s and 90s, the studio, under the name Cinar, enjoyed great prestige as one of the top dogs of the Canadian animation industry, competing with Nelvana for the spotlight. They created many animated series during this era for Canadian and international television (such as Animal Crackers and Mona the Vampire), with many of their works also being co-productions with European studios. Among their most famous animated creations however were Arthur and Caillou. However, they also dabbled quite regularly in live-action fare, most famously producing Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Zoboomafoo, as well as puppet shows like Wimzie's House. They even dubbed a few foreign shows in both English and French, such as Adventures of the Little Koala, Samurai Pizza Cats, Ultraseven, Doraemon, and The World of David the Gnome. They were also one of the main companies involved in the establishment of Teletoon in 1997.
However, in 2000, Cinar's golden age came to an abrupt end when the now-infamous Cinar Scandal
came to light. In 1995, a Montreal animator named Claude Robinson had sued the studio for stealing the concept for their Robinson Sucroe series from him (with the lead even being based off his own bearded likeness). Charest and Weinberg insisted this was not the case, but court investigations into the Robinson Sucroe case uncovered something much bigger.
It turned out that Cinar had been cheating around Canadian Content laws to illegitimately acquire federal grants and tax credits from the Canadian and Quebec governments by paying American writers to produce the scripts for their TV shows (Canadian Content laws state a Canadian TV show must use Canadian screenwriters to receive funding). Furthermore, Weinberg, Charest, and several other top executives had transferred over $120 million of Cinar's CanCon funding to offshore bank accounts without the knowledge or approval of the rest of the studio. Cinar lost millions as a result of the scandal, and in 2001, the studio collapsed; Weinberg and Charest were fired from the studio's board of directors. And to top it off, the court found in 2009 that Cinar had indeed stolen Claude Robinson's Robinson Sucroe cartoon idea, as he had originally pitched it to the studio unsuccessfully in 1986. Robinson was awarded $5.2 million in damages, and in 2016, Weinberg was sentenced to 8 years 11 months in prison for his misdeeds (Charest unfortunately died in 2004 following a botched cosmetic surgery); he was paroled in 2019. The Cinar Scandal has gone down as one of the most shocking accounting scandals in Canadian business history, resulting in the country's longest-ever criminal trial before a jury and leaving the once-beloved Canadian children's TV and animation studio's legacy in tatters.
However, the story does not end there. In 2004, former Nelvana co-founder Michael Hirsch (who had departed from Nelvana following its 2000 acquisition by Corus Entertainment) purchased the smoldering wreckage of Cinar and re-established the Montreal-based studio in Toronto under the name Cookie Jar Entertainment. The reborn Cinar, still holding ownership of most of its old properties, continued work on Arthur and Caillou while also adding new shows under their belt, such as Johnny Test, World of Quest, and Debra!. They also did numerous co-productions with Asian studios, resulting in shows like Spider Riders, Meta Jets, and Magi-Nation. A few of their shows were however released under the brand name of Coliseum Entertainment, which was their division for series focused more on action or intended for older audiences.
Outside of making cartoons and other TV shows, Cookie Jar also ran Saturday-Morning Cartoon blocks, such as Cookie Jar TV on CBS and Cookie Jar Toons on This TV. In 2008, Cookie Jar acquired DiC Entertainment, gaining ownership of such series as Inspector Gadget, as well as their syndicated DiC Kids Network block (renamed Cookie Jar Kids Network). In the early 2010s, they ran a now-defunct website called "Jaroo" (described as "Hulu for kids" at the time), which hosted a catalog of shows they owned.
In 2012, Cookie Jar Entertainment was acquired by the rising WildBrain studio (then known as DHX Media), becoming one of the many acquisitions that transformed it into the world's largest independent owner of children's television programming. As a result, most of Cookie Jar (and Cinar)'s shows, as well as those of DiC, are now owned by WildBrain. Their final production was Johnny Test's 6th season, produced under the DHX Media label after the acquisition. Once production on the show finished, Cookie Jar officially closed down, bringing its story to a close.
List of shows that Cinar/Cookie Jar has made:
- The Adventures of Paddington Bear (as Cinar; co-produced by Protecrea)
- The English and French dubs of Adventures of the Little Koala (as Cinar)
- Albert the Fifth Musketeer (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation and BBC)
- Animal Crackers (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim)
- Are You Afraid of the Dark? (as Cinar; co-production with Nickelodeon, Campfire Productions and YTV)
- Arthur (seasons 1-8 as Cinar; seasons 9-15 as Cookie Jar; seasons 16-19 were produced by 9 Story Entertainment, and seasons 20-25 were produced by Oasis Animation), and its spin-off, Postcards from Buster
- The Babaloos (as Cinar)
- The Baskervilles (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim and Carlton Television)
- Bizby (as Cinar)
- Bonjour Timothy Bronco Teddy (as Cinar)
- A Bunch of Munsch (as Cinar; a series of cartoons based on the works of Canadian children's book author Robert Munsch)
- The Busy World of Richard Scarry and Busytown Mysteries (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation and Paramount)
- Caillou (Seasons 1-3 as Cinar; Seasons 4-5 as Cookie Jar)
- Chip and Charlie (as Cinar)
- C.L.Y.D.E. (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation)
- The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation)
- Creep School (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim; final series before reestablishment as Cookie Jar)
- Dark Oracle (under Coliseum name)
- Debra!
- The Doodlebops
- The 80s English dub of the 1979 Doraemon anime (as Cinar; retitled The Adventures of Albert and Sidney)
- Dr. Xargle (as Cinar)
- Emily Of New Moon (as Cinar; co-production with WIC Entertainment and Salter Street Films)
- Favorite Songs (as Cinar)
- Flight Squad (as Cinar)
- Gerald McBoing-Boing (the 2005 reboot; co-produced by Classic Media; first series as Cookie Jar)
- Happy Castle (as Cinar)
- The Intrepids (as Cinar)
- Ivanhoe: The King's Knight (as Cinar)
- Johnny Test (seasons 2-5 (6 was under the DHX Media label); co-produced by Warner Bros. Animation; season 2 went under Coliseum name)
- The English dub of Journey to the West: Legends of the Monkey King (as Cinar; co-produced by China Central Television)
- Kung Fu Dino Posse (co-produced by Sunwoo Entertainment and Optix Entertainment)
- Lassie (as Cinar; the 1997 relaunch)
- The Legend of White Fang (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation)
- The Little Lulu Show (as Cinar; 1995-99, with HBO, Family Channel and for season 3 TV-Loonland)
- Lucha Libre USA
- Madeline (as Cinar; the 1988-1992 specials, co-produced by DiC Entertainment)
- Magi-Nation
- Metajets (co-produced by Sunwoo Entertainment)
- A Miss Mallard Mystery (as Cinar; co-produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio)
- Million Dollar Babies (as Cinar; TV mini-series, co-produced by CBS and the CBC)
- The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo (as Cinar; co-produced by Nickelodeon)
- Mona the Vampire (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim)
- Mudpit
- Mumble Bumble (as Cinar)
- The New Adventures of Nanoboy (co-produced by Agogo Media and Scrawl Studios Pte. Ltd.)
- Night Hood (as Cinar)
- Noonbory and the Super 7 (Season 1 only; co-produced by Dai Won)
- Papa Beaver's Storytime (as Cinar)
- Patrol 03 (as Cinar; co-produced by France Animation)
- Potatoes and Dragons (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim)
- The Real Story of... (as Cinar; A series of stories loosely based on famous children's songs in the Public Domain.)
- The Real Story of O Christmas Tree (as Cinar)
- Ripley's Believe It or Not! (as Cinar; co-produced by Alphanim)
- Robinson Sucroe (as Cinar; co-produced by BBC and France Animation. Best known for being plagiarized from a proposed series called The Adventures of Robinson Curiosity by Claude Robinson, leading to the scandal that ultimately brought Cinar down.)
- Rumble and Growl (as Cinar)
- Sci Squad (as Cinar)
- The English dub of Samurai Pizza Cats (as Cinar)
- Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (2002) (as Cinar)
- Space Cases (as Cinar)
- The Small Giant (co-produced by Alphanim and Jiang Toon Animation)
- The Smoggies (as Cinar)
- Spider Riders (co-produced by Bee Train; under Coliseum name)
- Treasure (as Cinar; co-produced by BBC)
- The Twins (2000) (as Cinar)
- The TNT English dub of Ultraseven (as Cinar; co-produced by Turner Program Services)
- Upstairs Downstairs Bears (as Cinar; co-produced by Egmont Imagination)
- Wimzie's House (as Cinar)
- Who Gets the House? (as Cinar)
- The Whole of the Moon (as Cinar)
- Wisdom of the Gnomes (as Cinar; co-produced by BRB International and Miramax)
- Will and Dewitt
- The Wombles (as Cinar)
- The English dub of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz anime adaptation (as Cinar)
- The English dub of The World of David the Gnome (as Cinar; co-produced by BRB Internacional and Miramax)
- World of Quest
- Young Robin Hood (as Cinar; co-produced by Hanna-Barbera)
- Zoboomafoo (as Cinar; co-produced by Maryland Public Television and Earth Creatures.)
