Jon Kinyon

Oddjobs Cartoon Show & Collectible Toys

Starting in early 2012, I concentrated all of my efforts into animation properties and related toys for children. I came up with Oddjobs in the summer, pitched it to Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, & informally to Dreamworks. After a close call at being pickup by Nick Jr., everyone ended up passing on it. In December, I flew to Hong Kong and had some toy prototypes made.

When I returned to the U.S., I had a friend help me make 3-D models of the characters and prepped them for animation. I then wrote a bunch of scripts for shorts, storyboarded an episode, and pitched the show around town again. No luck. So, I gave up on making a show and slowly kept working on making toys and figuring out how to line up distribution.

One day, my brother called me and told me to turn on the Disney Channel, “Your show is on the air, someone ripped you off!” I turned on the TV and sure enough, there were my Oddjobs characters, on Disney! They looked slightly different but the similarities were undeniable. The show “Oddbods” started as an app in Hong Kong in early 2013, shortly after my visit there and has now become one of the most popular shows in Asia and parts of Europe. It can also be seen on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Netflix in the U.S. 

My lawyer was ready to put up $100,000 of his firm’s money to take this to court, but after doing a ton of research I didn’t think it was worth the risk of him losing his money. Trademarks and copyrights are stolen in China and parts of Asia every day and just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re going to win over there where intellectual property laws are extremely weak and rarely enforced.

 

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