GoodTimes Entertainment

GoodTimes Entertainment, Ltd. was a home video company that originated in 1984 under the name of GoodTimes Home Video. Though it produced its own titles, the company was well-known due to its distribution of media from third parties. The founders for the company were Kenneth Cayre, Joseph Cayre, and Stanley Cayre, often referred to and credited simply as the "Cayre Brothers".

GoodTimes Entertainment begun with the distribution of public domain titles, purchasing the masters and then selling copies made from them. Though the company also produced and distributed many low-priced fitness videos, its most recognized line of products were the series of low-budget traditionally animated films from companies such as Jetlag Productions (founded also by the Cayre Brothers), Golden Films (a separate company founded by Diane Eskenazi) and Blye Migicovsky Productions among others, as well a selection of the now-public domain works of Burbank Films Australia.

Because of the similarities some of these films had to some from Walt Disney Pictures, GoodTimes Entertainment was sued by that company. Eventually, GoodTimes Entertainment was forced to put their name atop their VHS covers, but was still allowed to continue its production of animated films.

It must be noted that the Walt Disney Company has often sued over copyrights they don't possess; in this case, the company took no notice that the films Jetlag Productions and Golden Films produced were based on public domain stories and fairy tales, including some that had not been adapted into animation at that time by Walt Disney Pictures, including "Thumbelina" (1993), "Sinbad" (1993) and "The Three Musketeers" (1993).

Instead, Disney sued GoodTimes mantaining that the latter infriged over its "trade dress", in other words, its VHS cover design. Expanding from home video distribution, GoodTimes Entertainment founded its spin-off, GT Interactive as a way to distribute video games.

GoodTimes also had a contract with Columbia Pictures to release inexpensive tapes of many of their films for retail sale. To keep the price down, these were recorded in the EP mode with mono sound, while Columbia's in-house label provided higher quality, SP mode cassettes for rental outlets. Among the titles licensed out was Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". By the mid-1990s, this arrangement came to an end, with Columbia producing SP (and stereo, where applicable) sell-throughs themselves. However, GoodTimes quickly struck a similar deal with Universal Studios, counting the original "Airport" among its releases.

They also released several ostensibly original productions, which actually assembled clips from public domain films, movie trailers, old television programs and newsreels. Many did not claim to be any more than that, such as the Lucille Ball-based "Lucy's Lost Episodes" (clips from kinescopes of non-copyrighted live 1950s TV shows with the comedienne). Most of these were credited to Film Shows, Inc.

In 2005, GoodTimes Entertainment filed for bankruptcy and its assets were then sold to Gaiam.

See also

* Jetlag Productions
* Golden Films