Cloudco Entertainment


Those Characters from Cleveland, LLC, officially trading as Cloudco Entertainment and formerly AG Properties and American Greetings Entertainment, is an American company which formerly traded as American Greetings' former character brand division. Properties owned by the company includes Care Bears, Holly Hobbie, Madballs, Buddy Thunderstruck, Tinpo and Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese.

History

premiered in 1967 as a line of greeting cards by American Greetings. Knickerbocker Toy Co. manufactured stuffed Holly Hobbie dolls from 1968 to 1983. The character's public appeal lead to the formation of Those Characters From Cleveland, Inc. In 1972, the company introduced Ziggy, created by Tom Wilson, which soon had a newspaper cartoon strip generating significant additional income. Universal Press later purchased the creative rights. By 1977, Holly Hobbie became one of the top female licensed character in the world.
Those Characters From Cleveland was started up by Tom Wilson on behalf of American Greetings in 1981 to handle its licensing business. The first property out of Those Characters was Strawberry Shortcake, which generated in 1981 $500 million in retail sales, followed by the Care Bears with $2 billion in sales over its first two year. The Care Bears were announced in 1982 with M.A.D., Marketing and Design Service of the toy group of General Mills, and launched in Spring 1983 with toys with a syndicated TV special.
With Topps' 1985 Garbage Pail Kids trading card series release, Ralph Shaffer, senior vice-president and creative head at From Cleveland, created the Madballs, balls with disfigured faces. Amtoys, another American Greetings subsidiary, released them as toys in 1986 and reached the #4 on toy best-seller list by September of that year.
With Mattel, Those Characters From Cleveland had launched the Popples in 1986. in 1986. In 1987, Those Characters came out with four plush variants that do more than just be huggable but playable to be introduced in 1988 through three toy companies.
AG Properties in 2001 named DIC Entertainment the licensing agent for Strawberry Shortcake. With DIC merging with Cookie Jar thus transfers the rights, the company sued. In the settlement, AG agreed to sell Shortcake, the Care Bears and the Sushi Pack crime-fighting characters to Cookie Jar for $195 million with payment due September 30, 2008. Cookie Jar could not come up with the financing, but continued to claim to have Shortcake licensing rights. AG found a new buyer of Shortcake and the Bears in MoonScoop, while settling with Cookie Jar with AG to buy out its rights to Shortcake. MoonScoop was to pay part of the purchases price to allow AG to pay Cookie Jar for its rights. Missing that deadline, AG back out of the deal as MoonScoop attempt to complete the deal by the full payment deadline of June 7, 2009. MoonScoop sued with American Greetings winning the case in November 2012. In February 2015, Iconix Brand Group acquired the rights to Strawberry Shortcake from American Greetings for $105 million. DHX Media would eventually acquire the franchise in 2017 as part of their buyout of Iconix's entertainment assets, which also included an 80% majority stake in Peanuts owner Peanuts Worldwide.
AG Properties by September 19, 2012 became global licensing agent for Pukeko Pictures’ The WotWots as they sublicensed the property to EXIM Licensing Group in the Latin America region, Segal Licensing in Canada, Stella Projects in the Australian and New Zealand region.
Sean Gorman was promoted to president of AG Properties in June 2013 with the mandate to add boy franchises. Gorman was hired in 2007 as vice president, entertainment production and development.
In 2006, senior designer Jeff Harter pitched Packages from Planet X to AG Properties. Planet X eventually was licensed and produced for Disney XD by DHX Media in Vancouver and Disney and premiered on July 13, 2013. In January 2012, American Greetings Properties and Exim Licensing Group international licensing agent signed a Holly Hobbie publishing deal with V & R Editoras for most of Latin America and the Caribbean.
AG Properties had licensed Lion Forge Comics the Care Bears, Madball and Packages from Planet X for titles under their Roar Comics all-ages imprint for release in late 2014.
On October 6, 2015, American Greetings changed the unit's name to American Greetings Entertainment as an indication of a shift in focus to the Care Bears and additional multi-character and entertainment properties like the recently co-created Buddy Thunderstruck stop motion animation show for Netflix. AGP pick up worldwide distribution of Claude, Sixteen South's TV Adaptation of Sixteen South's adaptation of Alex T. Smith's bestselling picture book series, in May 2016.
American Greetings Entertainment was spun off from American Greetings as a stand-alone company in August 2018 as Cloudco Entertainment. Management and Weiss family ownership was retained in the spin off with Sean Gorman as president.
In April 2018, Hulu agreed to take a Holly Hobbie live action TV series by Aircraft Pictures. Boomerang order a Care Bear series for its streaming service in September 2018. On June 24, 2019, Warner Music Group's Arts Music division launched the licensed Cloudco Entertainment label with the release of the current Holly Hobbie TV show theme song as a part of a multi-season deal.

Properties

; Sold

As Those Characters from Cleveland