No, it is not pronounced "dick".
DiC Entertainment was a production company that started as a subsidiary of Radio-Television Luxembourg in 1971, that would go on to produce many kids' cartoons, especially in the 1980s. Its name is an acronym for
Diffusion, Information et Communication.
The company is mostly remembered for its
closing logos that appeared at the very end of its shows. Its most notable was the "Kid in Bed" logo, in which a camera zoomed in above a boy who was sleeping in his bed and through his bedroom window, where the DIC logo formed outside. A child's voiceover then says the company's name. This closing logo, first used in 1987, went through various variations before being replaced altogether in the early 2000s. More information on this and the other closing logos for DIC can be found
here
.
As of 2008, the company has been acquired and become part of
Cookie Jar Entertainment, which was acquired by DHX Media in 2012.
Although the
official pronunciation for the company's name is
"deek", it has become easy for one to joke about the fact that the name is one letter away from
sounding like "dick". DIC has come to be described as an acronym for
"Do It Cheap", though in the early days, they worked with
Tokyo Movie Shinsha (they weren't nearly as cheap as
Filmation as TMS was very
Expensive), only switching to studios like
KK C&D Asia,
Saerom and
Sei Young later on as
Disney and later
Warner Bros. were giving TMS more money for their shows. As a result, the higher-quality shows of company's heyday in
The Eighties (including
Inspector Gadget,
Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors,
MASK,
Heathcliff And The Catillac Cats,
Dinosaucers, and so on) would eventually give way to their unfortunately arguably better-remembered
Dork Age, particularly its cartoons based on the
Super Mario Bros and
Sonic The Hedgehog video games, which are also a frequent source in
YouTube Poop. It is also rather infamous among the anime community for its
dub of
Sailor Moon (although in that case it is often a subject of
misblame since the voices, dub script, and most of the editing was done by Optimum Productions).
They have also released
EasyPlay DVDs in the late '90s distributed by
Lionsgate, in which you can hear Inspector Gadget deliver an extremely long and
detailed lecture on how to use it. This is
somewhat justified since DVDs were still new at the time, though because you have to "move the glow" to the DiC logo and click on it,
you already know how to use it anyway.
Notable shows produced by the company include:- Action Man
- Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic Sat AM and Sonic Underground
- The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin (co production with Alchemy II and Atkinson Film-Arts)
- ALF: The Animated Series (co production with Alien Productions and Saban Entertainment)
- ALF Tales (co production with Alien Productions and Saban Entertainment)
- Alienators Evolution Continues (2001-2002) (co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and Dreamworks Television)
- Later episodes of Alvin And The Chipmunks
- Archies Weird Mysteries
- Battletoads (pilot only)
- Beverly Hills Teens
- Bill And Teds Excellent Adventures (when Hanna Barbera lost the rights after the first season)
- Bump In The Night
- Captain N The Game Master
- Captain Planet And The Planeteers (The first three seasons only; Co-produced with Turner Program Services)
- Captain Zed And The Zee Zone (co-produced with Scottish Television and HIT Entertainment)
- Care Bears
- Care Bears1980s (only two TV specials and the first season, before losing the rights to Nelvana)
- (DiC later won the rights back, and made the Oopsy Does It movie and Adventures in Care-a-Lot series and specials, before losing the rights again, this time to MoonScoop Entertainment.)
- Darkstalkers
- Dennis The Menace
- Dino Babies
- Dinosaucers (co-produced by Columbia Pictures Television)
- Dino Squad
- The Double Dragon animated series
- Extreme Dinosaurs
- Gadget And The Gadgetinis
- Gadget Boy & Heather
- The Get Along Gang
- G.I. Joe (the third and fourth seasons of the animated series)
- Hammerman
- Heathcliff And The Catillac Cats
- Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater (Co-produced with MGM)
- Hey Vern, It's Ernest!
- Horseland
- Hulk Hogans Rock N Wrestling (co-produced with WWF)
- Hurricanes (Co-produced with Siriol Productions and Scottish Television)
- Inspector Gadget
- Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors
- Lady Lovely Locks
- The Legend Of Zelda
- Libertys Kids
- The Littles
- MASK
- Madeline (Co-Producers with CINAR for the 1988-1992 specials, Producers of the TV series and subsequent specials)
- Mary Kate And Ashley In Action
- Maxies World
- Mummies Alive
- The Mysterious Cities of Gold
- New Kids on the Block (starring the boy band of the same name)
- Pole Position
- Popples
- Pro Stars
- Rainbow Brite
- The Real Ghostbusters (co-produced by Columbia Pictures Television)
- Sabrina The Animated Series, and it's spin-off, Sabrina's Secret Life
- The original English dub of Sailor Moon
- Sherlock Holmes In The Twenty Second Century
- Stargate Infinity
- Strawberry Shortcake (the 2003 relaunch, The Sweet Dreams Movie, and the 2007 redesign episodes, before losing the rights to MoonScoop Entertainment).
- The Knights of the Zodiac dub of Saint Seiya
- Street Sharks
- Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad (A Power Rangers-style Importation Expansion of the Toku series Denkou Choujin Gridman)
- The Super Mario Bros Super Show (and its sequels)
- Sylvanian Families
- Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills
- Trollz
- Ulysses 31
- What A Mess (the American version produced for ABC in 1995, adapted from the original UK series created by Frank Muir)
- Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego
- Where's Waldo?
- Wish Kid (starring Macaulay Culkin)
- The Wizard Of Oz (co-produced by Turner Program Services)
- Zoobilee Zoo
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