Vídeo Brinquedo (translates as "Toy Video" or "Video Toy" formerly known as Spot Films) is a 3D animation studio from Brazil that can probably best be described as the CGI movie equivalent of The Asylum: their claim to fame is creating movies that are suspiciously similar to big name box office busters. They are known in the United States as Toyland Video, and in the United Kingdom as Brightspark.
Their first business was distributing DVDs of series like Sonic X, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, and Little Lulu in Brazil. They first picked up their mockbuster business when a series they distributed called Kingdom Under the Sea (or Reino Submarino in Portuguese) suddenly became popular after the release of Finding Nemo.
They have an official
YouTube channel to showcase their mockbuster cartoons. The company ceased animating films in 2010, but since have uploaded original educational online videos for children.
See also Spark Plug Entertainment and Wow Now Entertainment for their American counterparts, Dingo Pictures for their German 2D Limited Animation counterpart, and Mondo TV for their Italian counterpart.
Notable Movies (and the films they are allegedly based on)
- The Frog Prince (The Princess and the Frog)
- Gladiformers (Transformers)
- Little & Big Monsters (Monsters vs. Aliens)
- Little Bee (Bee Movie)
- The Little Cars in the Great Race (Cars)
- The Little Panda Fighter (Kung Fu Panda)
- Little Princess School (Disney Princess franchise)
- Ratatoing (Ratatouille)
- Tiny Robots (WALL•E and Robots)
- What's Up?: Balloon To The Rescue (Up)
- Mega Powers (Power Rangers, Super Sentai)
- Brazilian Football Passion (Notably their only original film to not be a mockbuster)
Tropes in these movies include:
- Artistic License: In Little & Big Monsters, Dr. Crumb's robot assistant is infected with a virus from a Chinese newsletter, even though that would only be possible if whoever wrote the virus had knowledge of the robot's hardware and targeted it specifically.
- Artistic License – Physics: In The Little Cars, a race car is stopped by a piece of gum stuck to the track. Furthermore, Wrangler (the car that spit the gum onto the track in the first place), is apparently able to spit gum several hundred feet given he was behind Cruise at the time and they were both going full speed down the track.
- Batman Gambit: At the end of Little Panda Fighter, Polaris bet all of his money on Pancada losing to Teddy Thunder, and was able to hand the Bear Bar Box over to Pancada, who turns it into a dance club, while Polaris retires to somewhere nice and cold.
- Behind the Black: Twice in Tiny Robots. The first instance involves Trank telling his grandfather about a dream he had, only for the camera to pan out revealing that he's gone. The second instance is when Trank sees the ghost of his creator, then the camera angle changes, revealing he's right behind them.Taylor Wyatt: They couldn't tell because the camera was facing the other direction!
- Bilingual Bonus: Hime's name is Japanese for... princess.
- Bring My Brown Pants: In What's Up, Guto intentionally shits his pants in one scene, while pretending to be brainwashed.
- Captain Ersatz:
- Of Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney characters.
- In Tiny Robots, the leader looks suspiciously like Darth Vader.
- Catchphrase: Greg from Ratatoing has "Precisely!"
- Clark Kenting: In Little Panda Fighter, Polaris the polar bear manages to hide his identity by putting on a leotard and a bandit mask while fighting the current boxing champion Teddy Thunders, and when his disguise shrinks instead of being exposed everyone thinks he's Pancada the panda, even though they look completely different.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In Ratatoing (see that film's page for more details).
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": In The Little Cars, the five-time Great Race champion is called only 'Champion' throughout the whole movie. Lampshaded by the antagonist, who insists "That's not his name!"'
- In Tiny Robots, the leader is only ever referred to as "Leader".
- Inconsistent Dub: The characters in the English dub of the first Little Cars video were given localized names. After that, they simply stuck with the original Brazilian names.
- Informed Attractiveness: Any character claimed to be attractive in-universe, mainly due to poor character design.
- The Mockbuster: The company specialized in films heavily based off Disney and Dreamworks Animation films.
- The Musical: They've turned The Little Cars into a musical live show. No, seriously.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In Little Panda Fighter a bunch of people come up to Pancada and commend him on what they thought were his fighting skills and he thinks they're talking about his dancing audition, even though they were clearly not there watching. This is soon followed by another one between Pancada and Polaris, which is even more poorly constructed.
- Palette Swap: Many examples in The Little Cars.
- Real Song Theme Tune: "Window to Nowhere" by Angra is used as the theme for Gladiformers.
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: "My kingdom for a snack!" in one episode of Little Princess School.
- Slasher Smile: Their 2-D animation is prone to making characters look malevolent when they should just look annoyed.
- Straw Misogynist: The minister in The Frog Prince. He insists that women should know how to cook and clean and tells the king that Iria will have to let go of her dreams, citing that "It's a man's world and don't you forget it!"
- Tearing Through the Movie Screen: In Little & Big Monsters, the real monster tears through the screen while the scientists are watching a monster movie.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: What's Up starts with a news report on Dr. Crumb, which quickly switches focus to his niece Amanda and her personal life.
