Sunbow Entertainment was an animation studio, founded in 1980 and owned until 1998 by Griffin-Bacal Advertising in New York City and in the United States. Griffin-Bacal's first animations were animated commercials for Hasbro's G.I. Joe toy line. The success of the animated commercials led partners Tom Griffin and Joe Bacal to form Sunbow Productions. Due to their close working relationship with Hasbro, Sunbow came to be recognized as the toy giant's unofficial television arm.
Company overview
Sunbow is noted for many cartoons aired during the 1980s. Most of their work was co-produced with Marvel Productions. Although it is not limited to Hasbro's various toy lines its reputation is linked to the cartoon series tied to them. Its animation was initially produced by the Japanese animation studioToei Animation, supplemented by the South Korean animation studio AKOM later on. By 1987, most of Hasbro's toy lines were losing money and internal struggles forced the company to end popular series such as ' and Transformers. Two of Sunbow's animated movies, ' and ', flopped at the box office, forcing a third project, ', to be released directly to video. Sunbow also worked with TMS Entertainment with Hasbro's '. In a bid to produce original material, Sunbow produced several cartoons through the early 1990s such as The Tick and Conan the Adventurer. Only The Tick managed to gain popularity and critical acclaim. On May 4, 1998, Sony Wonder, a division of Sony Music, bought Sunbow Productions and it was later bought by TV-Loonland on October 3, 2000, as well as Sony Wonder's television business assets, which then bought Metrodome Distribution, who had the European rights to the Sunbow catalogue. In 2004, Loonland shut down Sunbow. Previously, Rhino Entertainment owned the U.S. home video distribution rights to the Sunbow catalogue. The rights then changed hands to Sony Wonder with its acquisition of the catalogue. However, Sony Wonder was shut down in March 2007. On June 20, 2007, it was announced that Sony Wonder had been moved into Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which at the time owned the U.S. rights to the Sunbow catalogue. On May 14, 2008, Hasbro announced that it had obtained the rights to all the Sunbow Productions animated series based on Hasbro properties. This includes Transformers, ', My Little Pony, Jem and the Holograms, and many more. These titles are currently managed as part of the Allspark Animation library. TV-Loonland filed for bankruptcy in 2009; its catalogue was acquired by German distributor m4e AG in April 2011. In February 2017, a Belgian production companyStudio 100 purchased a majority stake in m4e.
