4Kids

4Kids Entertainment

Company type	Public (NYSE: KDE)
Industry	TV production, licensing
Founded	1970 (as Leisure Concepts, Inc.)
Defunct	2012
Headquarters	New York City
Key people	T.C. Ross, Alfred R. Kahn
Products	4Sight Licensing Solutions, Inc 4Kids TV/FoxBox 4Kids Productions
Revenue	$7.9 million USD (2006)
Number of employees	325 (2007)
Website	www.4kidsentertainment.com (defunct)

4Kids Entertainment (commonly known as 4Kids) was an American movie and television production company. They specialized in the creation and distribution of children's entertainment around the world. The company is most well known for the large number of Anime and animated television series it has provided to television stations. These series included Yu-Gi-Oh! and Sonic the Hedgehog. 4Kids Entertainment dubbed Pokémon until 2006. The company was first created in 1970 as Leisure Concepts, Inc.

4Kids Entertainment has provided a number of series for the Fox television network. These series have been shown on the network using the name 4Kids TV.

4Kids Entertainment filed for bankruptcy twice. They first filed for bankruptcy in 2011,^[1] and again in 2016.^[2]

In 1970, the company was originally called Leisure Concepts, Inc. It was created by Mike Germakian and Stan Weston. It was later called 4Licensing Corporation

During the mid-1980s, Ted Wolf came up with the idea of catlike humanoid superheroes. He told his friend Stan Weston, who pitched it to Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment. Both Arthur Rankin Jr and Jules Bass were impressed with the idea. They approved of it and "ThunderCats" started.

During the early development stage, Mike Germakian designed much of the ThunderCats' characters, vehicles and locations. He was also responsible for creating the now iconic ThunderCats logo, featuring a stylized black panther head on a red circle.^[3]

4Kids Entertainment gets most of its Anime series from Japan. Before showing the series in the United States and United Kingdom, the series are edited. This editing includes changing the words from Japanese to English. It may also include changing other things which could be thought to be bad. For example, cigarette smoking is often removed before being shown in the United States. Changing the names of items from Japanese items to American items is also often done. This is done so the person watching can understand the show more easily.

Many times the story of an episode is changed completely to make it better for children. Some people believe all the changes to the Anime is a bad thing. They say that the series should be shown exactly the same as it was originally created. They feel 4Kids made "Americanized kiddy version" of the original series and that it is not right to do this.

• 4Kids Corporate Archived 2012-07-20 at Archive.today
• 4Kids Home Video Archived 2008-01-03 at the Wayback Machine
• Defunct website