During a recent trip to Target to purchase food and clothing for deserving Disney-loving orphans, we came upon this particular abomination:
Intense scrutiny of the packaging (using a number of commercially available magnifying and decrypting devices) revealed not so much as a hint of a copyright or trademark statement crediting Disney for the obvious “hidden Mickey” nature of this particular kitchen contrivance.
Even so, it is not the copyright violation that infuriates us to the point of spewing forth tears of flame, but the fact that a Disney-owned, child-friendly design was obviously used to trick innocent young ones into cajoling their parents to purchase what we can only imagine is a horrifically dangerous baking device.
Despite what instructions or warnings were on the package that we couldn’t be bothered to read, this device is clearly intended to be used as follows:
- Put a can of beer in the large “Mickey’s head” circle.
- Force a disgusting raw chicken over the can in such a way that it looks like the beer can is a Lincoln-esque man with a tall, cylindrical head wearing a fowl meat hat.
- Put the entire contraption above the roaring fire of a home grill.
- Run to a safe distance and hope to God in Heaven above that nobody is within range when the beer can overheats and explodes.
Even if we ignore the physical danger, what of the mental anguish of a child who sees a bird detonated in this way? What if — perish the thought — one of Donald Duck’s nephews or some other avian American saw such a thing? Can we even begin to imagine the trauma?
Truly, this is one product too horrific to be allowed to exist. Mickey’s silhouette should never be used to create meat-based home munitions. Not even once.
Check out the September 22, 2011 edition of the Lio comic strip:
Now, we’re all for comic strips making social commentary, and there definitely is a “fair use” clause in copyright law, but we can’t figure out what the heck the point of this strip is, therefore it’s not fair use because it’s not fair that we have to sit around wondering what it means!
Seriously, Mr. Comic Strip Artist, if you’re going to make ambiguous works of social satire, at least stick to public domain subjects. This comic would have been just as funny with Little Nemo, the Yellow Kid, Obadiah Oldbuck, or Gertie the Dinosaur!
An August 2011 episode of the animated television show Ugly Americans titled “Wail Street” included the following images:
This is obviously, definitely an attempt to depict Disneyland as a place to which demons go on vacation, and certainly it must have been created without Disney review and permission! How do we know this? Because of all the errors — things that certainly wouldn’t get past Disney’s crack legal review team!
For example (just to name a few):
- Mickey Mouse in the first picture is definitely off model. He looks like some kind of bizarre teleportation-device-failure mixture of our beloved Mickey and Richard Nixon.
- Doombuggies without rear shells? Please!
- The Mad Tea Party color scheme, seating arrangements, landscaping, and (judging from the arc of the spew) spin pattern are entirely wrong.
They may disdain valid copyrights, but have they also no respect for the truth? Particularly since this is a show targeted at children (it is a cartoon after all), that is just inexcusable!
Take a look at this!
Someone with tons of time, massive talent, and a complete disregard for the letter, spirit, intent, precedent, propriety, and protection of copyright created this (obviously counterfeit) WALL-E monstrosity. It wasn’t even made entirely from scratch, since we’re pretty sure we can see parts of old Star Tours robots and Number 5 from Short Circuit in there.
It’s not clear whether or not this is a functional replica of WALL-E or just a thumb-your-nose-at-Disney’s-legal-team statue, but even if it is functional, we’re certain there’s no way it can clean, stack, burrow, and love like the real WALL-E!
Plus, they left it out in the snow, which is not good for robots.
When we saw this image online, we couldn’t help but wonder what the artist thought s/he was getting away with.
Disney owns the rights to Marvel characters and their images, and these pieces of artwork clearly infringe on the intellectual property of the “Marvel Babies” line of toys, books, and organic educational manipulatives. It’s even possible — though we can think of no way to verify it — that the works of Dr. Seuss (if that’s even his real name) have some sort of copyright or trademark protection, but who knows?
By the way, why is the artist picking on Marvel characters and not on characters from rival company D.C.? Is it because they know that Marvel is an awesome juggernaut at the box office? Or that Marvel characters are so globally recognizable? Or perhaps it’s that they have a not-so-secret pro-D.C. bias or are on D.C.’s payroll? Or that the pictures of Superman and Batman aren’t there because we cropped them out to make our point? Again, who can say?
All we know is that Disney is again being slandered. Pardon while we shed yet another tear.
Someone needs to tell this artist that princes don’t let princesses do drugs (or violate Disney copyrights).
This image of the cover of Miami New Times magazine was sent in by one of our army of Disney Copyright Violation news hounds back in December. We would have posted it sooner, but since Disney now owns Marvel, we had to do some research to make sure that this was a potential violation. And, sure enough, Buzz Lightyear has never, ever, not even once moonlighted as Iron Man, not on Halloween, not as a stunt double or stand-in, not even for a supermarket opening. This image is entirely, completely, 100% not an actual photograph of Buzz Lightyear in an Iron Man suit!
What? Buzz’s awesome green-and-white suit not good enough for you, New Times? Can’t deal with a hero who uses wings to fly? What’s next — Spider Woody? Thor the Yodeling Cowgirl? Where will this madness end???
These are pairs of panels from two separate instances of the (normally quite entertaining) comic Ink Pen, both from last week. Notice anything? Yes! Flagrant “funny” toon abuse!
These instances of “hilarious” crushing of Disney characters are not only deeply disturbing — and potentially as child-scarring as seeing a costumed character with its head off (assuming, of course, that characters in Disney parks are just people in costumes, which they aren’t because they’re real) — but they’re also massive violations of Disney’s global copyrights.
Remember, you don’t have to actually draw, quote, represent, re-image, or depict a Disney character for it to be a violation — just implying that a character exists in the same space as the world you are depicting is more than enough to get you sued back to the dinosaur segment of Fantasia!
We found this painting on a web site and were very disappointed — has the internet still not learned that you just can’t mess with copyright law? Apparently not!
This derivative work steps on the intellectual property of two parties — Vincent Van Gogh and The Walt Disney Company. The re-use of Van Gogh’s work isn’t problematic — he’s old, dead, and not a Disney character, and his work has been neither licensed nor purchased by Disney — but the misuse of congenitally disfigured iconic Mickey Mouse hat certainly is.
We need to nip this type of massively disallowable artistic mashup in the bud. If we don’t, what will come next? Starry Night over Sleeping Beauty Castle? Endless funky-looking Walt Disney self portraits? The horror!
We’re going to need some assistance with this one. We assume that this is a violation because it looks like it’s live action, and Mickey didn’t make any black-and-white live-action-and-cartoon films (he wasn’t in Walt’s Alice comedies, for example). Also, we’re extremely confident that Mickey never would perform in a film in which a woman was taking an actual naked shower, unless this was when he was very young and perhaps needed the money for college.
In any case, we’re pretty sure this is a violation, but will hold back our usual frothing ranting until someone can tell us for sure. Anyone?