Disney
The Walt Disney Company, or simply Disney for short, is a U.S. entertainment megacorporation, wielding extensive influence over the industry in many countries, such as changing copyright law in their favor. Mickey Mouse is their iconic mascot.
With their vast reach over media franchises known across the globe, Disney has been peripherally involved with the Transformers brand many times over the years, notably via their acquisitions of Marvel Comics and Star Wars in the early 2010s. More directly, Disney collaborated with TakaraTomy to create the small Transformers Disney Label toyline.
In 2001, Disney purchased Saban Entertainment and the rights to all its programming, including the English dub of Transformers: Robots in Disguise. While the later Saban Brands company would eventually reacquire the rights to most of these programs, Robots in Disguise was seemingly not among them, meaning Hasbro didn't get the rights to it when they acquired Saban Brands' catalog in 2018. As a result, as far as anyone knows, the Robots in Disguise rights are still locked up in the Disney vault, and it's become the one Transformers TV series that remains completely unavailable in the modern day, without any sort of North American physical release or availability on any streaming platform.
Notes
- Disney's 1989-onward The Little Mermaid franchise is likely the reason why the 2023 Legacy: Evolution figure of the 1985 character Ariel had to be trademarked as "Erial". Presumably, this is also why Transformers One Elita-1 was not called "Ariel".
External links
- Official website
- The Walt Disney Company at Wikipedia
