Okay, I wanted to take some time to talk about a little theory of mine. Now remember that this is only a theory of mine and is only a little thing I've had in me that I wanted to get out.
Now, if you were to ask me, Land Before Time was doing quite well for itself up to the time the 12th movie came out. We all have our own opinions on them, of course, but the fact is that it was doing good enough to be considered profitable, but not loved. However, that all soon changed.
We then get news that someone else is in charge of Universal. Someone had paid the main head millions and had taken over. Worst of all, we find out that the new head is a LBT hater.
Now, be it far from me, but if I was in charge of a company that had a show that I really, really hated, (like "I didn't want it to EVER exist, hated") I would do everything legally possible to ensure it died, but no one caught on. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if he did this.
Now, it's probably going to be a little hard for some of you to follow from here, but try to keep up, okay?
Now, he then gives them the green light for the TV Series. Fair enough, but they only have 1 week to get each episode done, rather then others where they are given at least a few more days to finish. The series ends up having plot holes, which none of us really approved of. Yet, we give it a chance.
At the same time, he give the green light to LBT 13. Giving them 2 projects to work on at the same time, thus increasing their failure rate. Any idiot would know this quite easily. They would avoid it, unless they were up to something. He gave them two projects to ensure it would be bad enough for the fans to NOT watch it or buy it. We still watched and bought them though.
So what else does he do? Well, if you wanted to save money, you would put a TV Series onto your own channel, if you own one, which Universal does, NBC. Did they do cartoons at the time? Yes, Saturday Morning only. Perfect time and chance for anything to get popular. I believe he knew this.
So what does he really do? He gets Cartoon Network to air it. Fine, it still has a chance to be popular. However, it then gets a Weekday time slot where children would NOT be watching it. They'd be in school. On top of this, it was at a time when nostalgia fans would be at their job, considering they were old enough. Did he secretly pay for this time slot? Probably.
So now most of us have to record it and show it off on the net to get others to watch it. He knew we would do this out of desperation. We fell for his trap. Thus, them getting even less money from it.
Then to supposedly make up for it, he has only 4 Episodes for each DVD. Fine, he could probably make up for it. Two big problems. It is sold only at a few places, (ie Walmart) and the same price as when movies are sold brand new. In order for it to be big, you have to expand to as many places as possible and have stores reasonably lower it if it's not selling well. He didn't do this. He knew it would fail because of this. Worse off, he only gives the US, the one country to get the biggest potential profit from, 25 episodes (One of which was added into the 13th movie as Bonus Material.) and not the full 26, cheapening the US out. (While other smaller countries get them all. He got less profit for more episodes.)
He does the same trick of not spreading out for the 13th movie. It was set up from the start to ensure there wouldn't be enough, plus there was now a chance others would only get 24 episodes.
We then get word that LBT 13 wasn't profitable enough and the LBT office had to close. However, this was ONLY because it wasn't spread out. It was limited supply, so it was rigged from the start.
And if we check other Universal movies, what do we see? Spread out profitability and reasonably priced. Not to mention that it shows the movies are well thought out and given reasonable time to work on.
LBT was defeated by a hater legally. We all fell for the trap, and I saw it all. Yet, I did nothing in the end to prevent. Though who would believe me?
It's only a theory, right?
Not from what I've seen. -_-