The Gang of Five
The Land Before Time => General Land Before Time => Topic started by: landbeforetimelover on April 21, 2007, 04:04:26 PM
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Why is it that us LBT lovers are so few and far between? The closest LBT fan I know lives around 200 miles from me. Are we the only one's? If this is true, how do they keep making money off these movies?
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Most of the LBT fans are little kids and don't know how to use a computer.
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Land Before Time is also not as popular as it once was, unfortunately. My dad pointed this out when I told him about the TV series. He claims that Universal should have made a TV series when Land Before Time was at its peak in popularity, which was in the mid-90's.
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I don't think seven and eight year olds are going to be searching for LBT message boards. You'll find them at disney.com or cartoonnetwork.com for their cartoon fixes.
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Im lucky enough that i actually know some people who like LBT (they're not huge fans like me or anyone here) where i live so its not as bad for me.
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Now that the series is regularly being shown on Cartoon Network, it should receive more attention.
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Hmm rare maybe maybe not. When you tend to be drawn to one single animated franchise you wont see 1000s of fans with accounts on forums and such. When you look at animation in general (think deviant art and like sites) youll see a fairly large number of posters. Check out deviant art some time and search for "land before time" then view the various postings of art. Youll see theres a silid 50 diffrent posters for around 100 or so peices or art. If you look at cartoon charectors in general the pages are crazy packed. The more single topic a site is the fewer members it will tend to have and single topic fans are more rare because well there is a direct corolation between the number of fans of a given show and the number of shows in that catagory.
In other words theres probably 1000 diffrent animated films give or take. You have a few distinct populations of fans in that general catagory 1 is fans of animation in general then you have fans of a given film studio or director animator voice over actors/actresses then you have the franchise fans (like many of us here). The more specific the group the smaller the fan base.
Then theres media hype or lack of it that will effect the size of a given fan base. Lion king has a large number of derelict fan sites more so than lbt. Reason is simple the media hype was there but like all over hyped films those sites are flash in the pan sites supper bright for a short while then the number pluments just like a flash fire in a pan burns for a short period then goes out.
Theres a large number of unique posters on the imdb lbt boards and only 4 or 5 post here. Same is true for these boards a large number of active members and only 5 or 6 (that i know of) posts there.
So figure 20 unique members per board on imdb x 12 and another 30 to 50 active posters here thats a fairly large number 270 i beleive.
I would say that lbt fan sites exist in a largish number on the web its just they are hard to find. Im not even sure how i found this site. I was clicking on links opening each in a new tab and it was one of them. I could have even been a accidental middle click.
What makes these sites hard to find is net polution. Do this search in google "land before time"
Results
Results 1 - 10 of about 496,000 English pages for "land before time"
Results 1 - 10 of about 44,600 English pages for "land before time"gang
Results 1 - 10 of about 19,400 English pages for "land before time"gang of five
Results 1 - 10 of about 32 English pages for "land before time"gang of five "fan art"
BTW this site does not even show up on fan art qouted search even useing the specific search i put in.
Results 1 - 2 of 2 English pages for "land before time forums"
again no us
Your search - "land before time fan site" - did not match any documents.
only when useing
Results 1 - 9 of 9 English pages for "land before time" "gang of five".
do we show up on first page.
Even the mighty lion king only turns up 23 results
Results 1 - 10 of about 23 English pages for "lion king fan site".
But have a look at this
Results 1 - 10 of about 15,100 English pages for "animation forums".
Random clicking of apages almost all results are for animation fan forums or fan sites.
Results 1 - 10 of about 64 English pages for "animation forums" land before time.
hmm what do we have here
Results 1 - 10 of about 40 English pages for "animation forums" lion king
fewer results both legit and non than lbt.
What this shows pretty clearly to me at least is the more general you get when it comes to any film media the larger the fan base. In the very generalised animation forums search over 15k results of wich we will say 2/3 are legit the fewer the results the higher the legit results btw. Few search terms turn up this site ive tested it for fun.
It use to be fairly easy but time consuming to get listed on engines they all had submit site links that you would just fill out and submit then the engine would "crawl" your site in a couple days. A few good search engine submisions and good key words could drive your hits sky high.
At any rate i think were less rare than you think w are just scattered around the net. Do like i did on imdb. When you see some one craving more info on lbt send them a message on the forums let em know we are here. Got a msn list with a lbt fan or 3 send them the link. It will snow ball. I also tend to check previous posts of the person in question. Tis lets me say ok they are not a troll or they are a troll. On imdb i had one such bozo try to get the link. I checked his posting history and seen the cotnent of his posts through out imdb and told him sorry no i wont give some one who posts such things the url. Then i put him on ignore.
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I want to do that but I'm too afraid that I'll give the information to the wrong people and they will ruin the site. I for one would rather have this site be non-existant than for it to turn into yet another LBT "bashing site".
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There may be more LBT fans, or at least people who don't have any problem at all watching LBT, around us than many of us think. From what many of us write I expect 20 of us could be crowded in a room with a few other people and none of them would do or say anything to allow others to recognize him or her as an LBT fan. This gives us a certain security from banter, but I think the example also shows what might be missed because of this cautiousness.
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I want to do that but I'm too afraid that I'll give the information to the wrong people and they will ruin the site. I for one would rather have this site be non-existant than for it to turn into yet another LBT "bashing site".
Its not to hard to do really. Weve all seen internet trolling foul mouthed idiots game bashers movies bashers etc. When you go to a site and mention the existance of this site (stay with in the board rules IE they say no andvertising other sites dont do it) And get a message from another board poster click on their name bring up their profile show all posts by this user. Click on some random post links of theres find their posts in that topic and see if they are bashing the movie in question or posting to bring about a flame war or attacking another user etc. If not give them the url.
And if some troll does manage to slip by the admins here will eat em for lunch.
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There may be more LBT fans, or at least people who don't have any problem at all watching LBT, around us than many of us think. From what many of us write I expect 20 of us could be crowded in a room with a few other people and none of them would do or say anything to allow others to recognize him or her as an LBT fan. This gives us a certain security from banter, but I think the example also shows what might be missed because of this cautiousness.
You right on the money here malte. Not mentioning the fact we are fans limits our numbers more than any thing else while at the same time keeps us from beeing insulted or having our names dragged through the mud.
Online we dont have to worry as much though and with a little effort (very little) we can filter out these sorts of idiots we do not want. Now im not saying go on a masive land before time hunt lookign for every fanon the net. But one other boards etc we post n where they have a lbt section or where lbt may get a few posts. Give people on those sites a invite to come here. With luck they will know a few and invite those few as well. The forums here would grow some what faster than now but still slow enough to manage.
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well the site may not have the meta keywords for forums, i dunno...
however, the 'true fans' from what I even see on this forum watch it as almost a guilty pleasure, and you have to remember the primary demographic is rather young for LBT, so lots of true fans are probably too young to join forums ;) there's lots of us out there
The keywords are missing: forums (there's forum, but some search engines may not catch that,) fanart, fan art, fansite, fan site, and animation
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I concur about the guilty pleasure bit. It's easy to say to someone, (these are just examples, not mine) I am fan of Star Wars, or I am a fan of a television series, but say The Land Before Time, and generally the response will either be, "huh?" or laughter because they expect children to be viewers. I happen to adore the LBT franchise because of the characters, stories, adventures, silly vernacular "earth shake" and more. Too many memories to count, but trying to share them except for here, is almost impossible to do. :unsure:
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I've wondered this thing a bit myself. I mean, most people have little to no problem if someone is a Disney fan. Even some other animated "kids'" series like MLP or Lion king seem to have a wider appeal than LBT does. I can see why many people don't like LBT but even then, Pixar or Dreamworks are more "neutral" these days and they're widely considered to be making "kids'" films. As for MLP, it seems to have a wide following as well even if its target audience seems to be rather young and gender-specific. True, LBT is aging but still, I don't see why this franchise has such a small fanbase when compared to some other series.
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I've wondered this thing a bit myself. I mean, most people have little to no problem if someone is a Disney fan. Even some other animated "kids'" series like MLP or Lion king seem to have a wider appeal than LBT does. I can see why many people don't like LBT but even then, Pixar or Dreamworks are more "neutral" these days and they're widely considered to be making "kids'" films. As for MLP, it seems to have a wide following as well even if its target audience seems to be rather young and gender-specific. True, LBT is aging but still, I don't see why this franchise has such a small fanbase when compared to some other series.
You raise a good point Sovereign. Plenty pf people adore Micky Mouse, Simba, and Spongebob Sqaurepants who are adults. The target audience is kids, but lest we forget it was adults who made the House of Mouse and the Land Before Time franchise. There are plenty of adults who were passionate enough to bring Little Foot and his Gang to life, why then can't adults enjoy it as well? Sorry, I went Socrates all of a sudden :lol
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Well, I must admit it would be lovely to have more fans join this site (and more of them staying, more importantly...). The thing that I do notice is: A lot of people hold this franchise (especially the first movie of course) very dear, getting a very nostalgic feeling when being reminded of their great childhood with Littlefoot and his pals. Honestly, I'm getting these kind of messages about twice a month on DeviantArt and it always makes me smile to know I just made somebody remember the franchise through my art.
It seems to me that a lot of people still like LBT but very few become obsessed with it enough to join a forum about it and stay. At least that's my impression :unsure:
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lol
I wouldn't say LBT has a small fanbase... And now I'm only counting endless fanwork, Wiki and one forum...
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Peer pressure is most definitely the reason why there aren't that many LBT fans online. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who might like the movies, the characters, even the TV show, but never thought of them as anything more than silly distractions they're probably too old to enjoy. And we've got noone else, but Universal itself to blame: it's like they did everything they could to distance every new installment in the franchise from its roots and make it crystal clear that they were only targeting the youngest of audiences. You don't see Disney do that. Disney usually just makes a movie and whoever likes it likes it.
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I still believe the fans are still out there somewhere. But maybe a lot of them moved on to different things now.
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I'm 31 now and LBT will always have a place in my heart.
However even I will admit that as you get older, you start to lose interest in this kind of stuff. Peer pressure does have something to do with it, but sadly as we get farther from our childhoods, the more of it we leave behind, whether we want to or not.
I get teased for my love of animated movies by almost everyone in my life. It doesn't matter what they think, only what I think matters to me. I will continue to get super hyped for the next big animated movies that I want to see (How to Train Your Dragon 3! I am so going to bawl hard at that one.)
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I would dare not say it's dead, but still not huge. The fanart and fanfic numbers are pretty large, there's a lot of people I know here and other places that do that stuff.
And without the help of fans, the wiki wouldn't have over 1,300 pages of useful information :yes
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I would dare not say it's dead, but still not huge. The fanart and fanfic numbers are pretty large, there's a lot of people I know here and other places that do that stuff.
And without the help of fans, the wiki wouldn't have over 1,300 pages of useful information :yes
:sducky I didn't mean to to do that, sorry, if an admin reads, you can delete one of these.
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I wouldn't say that it's particularly rare. It's true that Star Trek, Doctor Who, Disney, My Little Pony, etc. have much bigger fandoms, but I don't know that the LBT fandom is THAT small. I happen to have two college friends who are pretty big fans, and pretty much everyone here seems to be at least a casual fan. I don't know if the fandom is bigger than people think, or if it was just by chance that three people from different parts of the country who happen to love LBT ended up going to the same school (it's a small liberal arts college in Colorado! :! :smile ). I don't know if anyone else here is as big of a fan as I am, but that's okay.
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The thing I often notice on DeviantArt: There are only a handful of people drawing TLBT art more or less regularly (you could call them fans and a good portion of them has joined this site) but the amount of people just drawing a tribute art to the show is huge!
Also, a lot of people who see my art for the first time leave comments like "oh this was my childhood" or "I still love these movies!" . Well, I think the problem with LBT is not that it's just not popular but, rather, it just doesn't have many hardcore fans but millions of people around the world still love it in their hearts - and in many cases this love is dormant until they somehow get their hands on LBT content, thus reviving their love for the films or (in many cases) the first movie at least. But they wouldn't join a discussion forum or go beyond drawing a few drawings in tribute or, maybe, write a short fanfiction :p
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We are a small comunity but a very tight one. I've met a few people throughout my life who have been TLBT fans, most of them only watched the original movie and maybe one or two sequels.
I guess the problem with this franchise is that it's targeted towards a very young audience, so most fans eventually grow out of it. Since, it's sort of a niche franchise, it doesn't attract a lot of fans in the first place, so the amount of people who keep on loving it throughout their adult life diminishes through time.
It also doesn't help that in the last ten years all we got was Journey of the Brave.
I am not really a fan of reboots, but if we want new people to join our fandom, maybe it would do The Land Before Time well to reboot the whole thing and update it to current audiences.
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I am not really a fan of reboots, but if we want new people to join our fandom, maybe it would do The Land Before Time well to reboot the whole thing and update it to current audiences.
little question: why reboot if we just can have a direct continuation with the same result - with a little bit (not so much) grown up characters and more serious atmosphere and problems?..
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I actually know an LBT fan who lives close by me. Actually, he lives in the same house as me.
It's my brother.
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I am not really a fan of reboots, but if we want new people to join our fandom, maybe it would do The Land Before Time well to reboot the whole thing and update it to current audiences.
little question: why reboot if we just can have a direct continuation with the same result - with a little bit (not so much) grown up characters and more serious atmosphere and problems?..
The reboot would be important to try and bring new fans into the franchise. As much as we love the original movie, it has its flaws, and today's audience just isn't going to fall for it as hard as we did. Some might, but not a lot of people.
Continuing the franchise into a different direction is my favourite option, however, it would be something done to please fans like us. It wouldn't generate enough revenue for Universal to support it as a long lasting franchise.
I fear that TLBT has had its moment and that, sadly, we won't be seeing anything new in the near future.
We will probably get something TLBT related in the future, it's inevitable. But this time, we might have to wait a bit more than 9 years.
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I am not really a fan of reboots, but if we want new people to join our fandom, maybe it would do The Land Before Time well to reboot the whole thing and update it to current audiences.
little question: why reboot if we just can have a direct continuation with the same result - with a little bit (not so much) grown up characters and more serious atmosphere and problems?..
The reboot would be important to try and bring new fans into the franchise. As much as we love the original movie, it has its flaws, and today's audience just isn't going to fall for it as hard as we did. Some might, but not a lot of people.
Continuing the franchise into a different direction is my favourite option, however, it would be something done to please fans like us. It wouldn't generate enough revenue for Universal to support it as a long lasting franchise.
I fear that TLBT has had its moment and that, sadly, we won't be seeing anything new in the near future.
We will probably get something TLBT related in the future, it's inevitable. But this time, we might have to wait a bit more than 9 years.
Exactly. This is why I've been so supportive of any and all remake/reboot options as of late. The remake/reboot thing may have become outdated and not creative, but even if something like that falls flat on its face with LBT, it'll at least raise awareness on the original.