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Cloudco Entertainment

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Cloudco Entertainment

Those Characters From Cleveland, LLC, officially doing business as Cloudco Entertainment and formerly known as AG Properties and American Greetings Entertainment, is an American company and animation studio which formerly traded as American Greetings' former character brand division. Properties owned by the company include Care Bears, Holly Hobbie, Madballs, Buddy Thunderstruck, Tinpo, The Get Along Gang and Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese.

Holly Hobbie was created 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 led 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 characters in the world.

Those Characters From Cleveland, Inc. 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, in 1981, generated $500 million in retail sales, followed by the Care Bears with $2 billion in sales over its first two years. The Care Bears characters 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 and a syndicated TV special.

Ralph Shaffer, senior vice-president and creative head at From Cleveland, oversaw the creation of Madballs, foam balls with disfigured faces. AmToy, another American Greetings subsidiary, released them as toys in 1986 and reached the #4 on the toy best-seller list by September of that year.

With Mattel, Those Characters From Cleveland launched Popples in 1986. In 1987, Those Characters came out with four different plush toys that do more than just be huggable, but playable, introduced in 1988 through three toy companies.

In 2001, AG Properties named DIC Entertainment as the licensing agent for Strawberry Shortcake.

With DIC merging with Cookie Jar, thus transferring the rights, the company sued. In the settlement, AG agreed to sell the Strawberry Shortcake franchise (along with Care Bears and Sushi Pack) 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 licensing rights to Strawberry Shortcake. AG found a new buyer in the form of French company MoonScoop, while settling with Cookie Jar with AG to buy out its rights to Strawberry Shortcake. MoonScoop was to pay part of the purchases price to allow AG to pay Cookie Jar for its rights. Missing that deadline, AG backed out of the deal as MoonScoop attempted to complete the deal by the full payment deadline of June 7, 2009. MoonScoop sued with American Greetings winning the case in November 2012.

By September 19, 2012, AG Properties became the global licensing agent for Pūkeko PicturesThe WotWots as they sub-licensed the property to EXIM Licensing Group in the Latin America region, Segal Licensing in Canada and Stella Projects in Australian and New Zealand.

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