Dingo Pictures

In the 1980s, Ludwig Ickert, who became known in the 1960s as the lead guitarist in the blues rock band Royal Teens (later renamed The Rangers, The Trembles, and Royal Oldies),^[3][4][5] founded the company Super-Sound-Video-Einzelhandels GmbH in Rosbach vor der Höhe. The company went bankrupt in March 1985,^[6] but reopened as LUI.TV on July 24, 1986.^[7]

In 1992, Ickert founded Media Concept together with his wife Roswitha Haas, who later wrote various children's books. The studio was located in Ickert and Haas' house in the Dillingen district of Friedrichsdorf.^[8][9] They produced their first animated films for LUI.TV,^[10] Griechische Sagen: Perseus and Die Nibelungen Sage: Siegfried;^[11] Haas wrote the films' scripts while Ickert did the character designs and animation.^[8] The studio also produced "storybook" films.^[12] The production of Media Concept's animated films involved recording the hand-painted backgrounds and syncing the animation (produced with Deluxe Paint for the Amiga) to the camera.^[13][14] Following lawsuits filed against Filmation^[15][16][17] and GoodTimes Entertainment by The Walt Disney Company for copyright infringement,^[18] the studio was inspired to produce and release their first mockbuster film, Aladin.^[19] Media Concept's films were based on fairy tales and concepts similar to those used for films by companies including Disney, Pixar, Don Bluth Productions and DreamWorks Animation.^[20][21] In addition to the low-budget animation, the films used small voice casts and stock music (from Killer Tracks and Bluevalley^[22]), and had character designs plagiarized from characters in Disney and Don Bluth Productions' films.^[23][21] The studio's crew mostly consisted of their family and friends, celebrities,^[11] and local theater actors working at Die Dramatische Bühne,^[24] including Simone Greiss,^[25] Armin Drogat, Raija Siikavirta, Thorsten Morawietz, Can Oral, Rainer Maria Ehrhardt, Georg Feils,^[11] and Viola Seiffe. In 1996, the company was officially registered as "Dingo Productions".^[8] Die kleine Hexe Arischa was the studio's final film before they closed in 2006,^[11] having more advanced digital effects and music tracks than in their earlier films.^[10]

The films were released direct-to-video in Germany by the companies Jünger in 1992–1999,^[26][27] Best Buy Movie in 2000–2001,^[28] and Best Entertainment in 2001–2005.^[29] They were also dubbed into other languages, notably Swedish and Italian.^[23] In the early 2000s, some of Dingo's films were released on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2^[11] by European game publishers Phoenix Games and Midas Games.^[30][31][23] These releases were developed by The Code Monkeys^[32] and included the film, as well as a small collection of minigames.^[23]

Since 2012, Dingo Pictures has gained popularity through reviews of their films on YouTube and Internet memes.^[23][33][34] An edited clip from the Italian dub of Abenteuer im Land der Dinosaurier became a meme called "Yee", due to a scene in which Oro, the dinosaur teacher, scolds Piek for mocking Tio, the protagonist, pronouncing his name in a way that sounds like Yee.^[23][35][34]

In 2017, Ipswich-based company Edutain4Kids released five ebook adaptations of Dingo Pictures' films.^[36] Following the deaths of Haas on December 8, 2015 and Ickert on November 14, 2019, their relatives inherited the studio and its equipment.^[11][37] On May 26, 2021, independent label Vier Sterne Deluxe Records announced that it was negotiating with the current owners of Dingo to release the films as radio plays. Musician Simon Bohnsack and the new CEO, Josef "Jimmy" Roederer, also had plans to make new films,^[12] and successfully raised funds for a documentary behind the studio, named YEE!: Behind the Meme of DINGO PICTURES.^[38][11][39] The radio plays were released between August 2021 and December 2022, beginning with Wabuu der freche Waschbär.^[40][41] In September 2024, the relatives donated the studio's equipment, backgrounds, storage devices and documents to the Deutsches Institut für Animationsfilm.^[37]

In 2021, Amelia Tait of The Guardian wrote an article about mockbusters, in which she called Dingo Pictures' films "the world's most infamous mockbusters", describing their animation as "childish".^[33] Nicolas Freund of the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that the films looked "as if they had been drawn listlessly with felt-tip pens". He also described the films as "short, confusing, full of logical errors, and [having] none of the magic of the elaborate cinema films".^[42]

• Pomeroy, Arthur J. (June 9, 2017). A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen, Hoboken: Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-74138-2.
• Berti, Irene; Morcillo, Marta García (December 31, 2008). Hellas on Screen: Cinematic Receptions of Ancient History, Literature and Myth, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 978-3-515-09223-4.
• Skog, Sofia (2023). The Afterlife of Mockbusters - Mottagandet av Dingo Pictures på YouTube, Sweden: Linnaeus University.