Zombie;136606
I just remembered that Sam Hain appeared in the intro. Did the carrot nose make him different enough to avoid any legal problems with DIC?
I'm curious to see whether Peter's face will be blurred or not if this series ever makes it onto DVD.

Don't know why I missed this one.

I don't think the nose would've been enough to avoid paying the licence fees, but as the tophat ghost also appeared I'm inclined to believe they also bought the licences for Samhain and tophat. Especially as Samhain, sans carrot, appeared in toy form with that name

Kingpin;136627
I think maybe you're taking the comment Fritz quoted too much to heart, and I have to say I really don't buy that argument that any licences that weren't given to the Extreme Ghostbusters production was down to Columbia/DiC not being “generous enough”, I find it much more believable that either the XGB production team didn't see the need to get all the designs, or the XGB legal team being sloppy to be much more likely.

I'm not passing judgement on the I.P. profession as a whole, but as we all know with all walks of life there are those who do their job well and then there are those who do the bare minimum.

If the XGB production team didn't see the need to get all the designs, it is unlikely that they would have created art for a Venkman statue only to blur its face out; they would have just used the XGB version of Venkman or made the statue a featureless manikin.

And it's true that every profession has good people and bad, but I find it hard to believe that the intellectual property lawyers behind the XGB production team dropped the ball. As I've seen these scenarios play out time and time again, the most probable scenario is that an agreement wasn't reached because Columbia/DiC wanted more money than the XGB team was willing/able to part with, hence Columbia/DiC not being “generous enough.”

Doc Fritz
Timothy and Kevin Burke's Saturday Morning Fever; the book made the statement when talking about the Columbia/Filmation dust-up over the Ghostbuster name.

*Off-subject, but I've heard so many different stories concerning this very matter, and it would be interesting to hear the book author's take on it…

*Cheers.

Ectofiend;136662
*Off-subject, but I've heard so many different stories concerning this very matter, and it would be interesting to hear the book author's take on it…

*Cheers.

I unfortunately don't actually own the book (I checked it out of the local public library ten years ago) but this is some of the stuff about it I have in my notes:

One source that did NOT make it into this chronology was a Seventies live-action show produced by Filmation, The Ghost Busters; I don't think I can do any better that to quote Saturday Morning Fever, which describes the show thusly:

Starring Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker–a pair of actors who make Bob Denver and Alan Hale look like Laurence Olivier and Robert De Niro–and a guy named Bob Burns dressed in a really, really bad ape costume with a beanie on top, the show featured the adventures (if we can generously call them that) of a team of ghost eradicators

It goes on to refer to it's “repetitious idiocy” and that Tracey the Gorilla was hired because the actor had his own ape costume already. But because of this show, Columbia Pictures was slapped with a lawsuit after the release of the GHOSTBUSTERS movie in 1984; the suit was eventually settled, but as part of the deal when the movie characters were developed into an animated property, they had to do so under the more cumbersome title THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS; also as part of the deal, and to capitalize on the name Murray and Akyroyd made famous, Filmation did their own cartoon, The Ghostbusters, which debuted in syndication around the same time RGB premiered (As the Burkes say, “intellectual properties lawyers are a low species of life”)

(To digress even more for just a second, Columbia was also sued by Harvey Comics, who felt that the Ghostbusters logo infringed on the trademark of Fatso from Casper the Friendly Ghost. Harvey ended up losing that suit)

THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS couldn't help but get some licks in. The very first episode, “Ghosts R Us”, features a rival team of ghosthunters who are frauds. “Robo-Buster” may have been thinking of the “Ghostbusters”'s disintigrators when creating and discrediting the title robot's weapondry. But the best dig was in NOW's REAL GHOSTBUSTERS#9, in an exchange shortly after rescuing Shannon Phillips…

Shannon: You're the Ghostbusters, aren't you

Venkman: I didn't think you'd recognize us unless we had an ape along.

Winston: That's how he knew us, Peter. You're here.

Well, dammit, now I may have to see if the library still has that book. And/or see if Amazon still has it and buy it for myself now.

Er….anyway…back to the topic…

RE: The Harvey Comics lawsuit

The No-Ghost always looked more like Stinkie to me.

Concerning the Harvey Comics Lawsuit, I seem to remember hearing story that could be totally antidotal in nature that involved the judge throwing the case out saying “there is only so many ways you can draw cartoon a ghost”

I have this book. I'll post what it says when I find it tonight.