Does anyone here work at, know anyone who works at, or know of anyone who formerly worked at Horizon Group USA Inc, located in Dayton, New Jersey? Horizon Group USA Inc. is a mid-size packaging and design firm. Recently they appropriated some obvious toy designs from a known Japanese-style toy maker and developed many products based on his designs that have been distributed across the USA, and possibly beyond. All without asking permission, getting licensing, etc. I am not now at liberty to say more, but if anyone has any connections there or knows someone who does, please post in this thread or shoot me a PM. I'd really like to speak to them. I promise to explain more later as things develop, provided I have permission. Thanks!
I think I can help, but they're in Warren, not Dayton. Send me a PM with the details, I'll see what I can do.
they were right next to what was the Motorola building on 287, I used to drive by there when I worked for Playmobil.
Mark Nagata's Capt. Maxx Products designed by Horizon Group USA, Inc. and sold through Michaels and where else? Look similar? Then for comparison: So that's why I asked about Horizon. If you would like to help Mark with this, please report to me if you see any of these products for sale with the location and the name and address of the store. So far these items have only been found, I believe, at Michaels on the East Coast of the USA, but I bet they are at other regional Michaels, and perhaps in Canada too. Horizon also serves Walmart and Target, according to their own reports. You can also send me pictures, if you see the products. I'm helping Mark try to remedy their infringement of his intellectual property copyright of Captain Maxx. Email me at jhhughey@yahoo.com, or PM me here. Thanks!
That's really sucks for Mark. I'm just shocked that there art department could come up with there own Ultramanish character. When designing a humanoid spaceman I'd think the possibilities would be endless. Plus...The spacemaze blows!
^^ yep, looks like an obvious rip-off to me . . . . a few slight changes here and there but its basically the same.
Well that is really unfortunate, and I feel really pissed off for Mark. Normally this thing wouldn't bother me that much, and I am all for bootlegs and KOs, especially of Ultraman, but this is beyond anything like that. First of all, even with the flurry of a million Ultraman and Capt Ultra and such hero copies out there (these things have been around for 40 years after all), this is a blatant copy of a specific pre-existing character, the trait similarities being pretty obvious. It would have been so easy to just make up their own 'original' Ultra character if they really wanted. But what makes even less sense and causes it to be that much more audacious of a copy, is WHY?! Why would you bother ripping of Mark's designs for something so stupid and trivial? Do they really think this 'vintage toy spaceman' character is going to play with any children these days, to the extent it would have any effect whatsoever with increasing sales, especially of such a lacklustre product? Shame on them. This shows such a lack of creativity, morals, thought process....just...everything. And all this for some stupid products that they aren't even building a brand on. I have to ask why? Stupidity. It is so unfortunate because I do love Ultra-themed stuff so much. I really hope Mark can nail them for this and get some serious action taken against the company. It is not even about loss of money or impact on him on a personal level. It is just plain infringement and stupidly executed at that. I would not be surprised though if this 'Horizon Group USA' is just a shelter branch for a larger company under the production group out of China. It is sad to say, but I think realistically the best that can be hoped for now is Michael's will be willing to pull all of these products from their shelves, but suspect that they will just turn up again gracing the walls of any one of the gajillion dollar stores dotting our pathetic consumer marketplace now. Approaching Michael's is the way to go for the immediate course of action. As a larger company, they will likely be very willing to listen to this type of complaint, probably even have experience with this type of thing in the past, and definitely won't want infringed products in their store shelves either, so will probably pull them off as soon as they can once it is brought to their attention. Unfortunately, of course, Horizon has already made all of their money off of these things, so it you have to turn to legal recourse against them, which is costly in and of itself. Maybe Michael's is in a better position to try and get financial compensation if they do have to destroy the merchandise (of course, none of this really helps Mark, but I am sure he would be happy to see it all gone for now). There is no Michael's near me, but I will try and check one out down island if I am down that way, to see if they made it to the west coast.
Good to know there is an attorney indie toy makers can turn to if needed, who has a personal interest in this industry. Good luck
Oh man, that really sucks. I live in the area, and work in that industry. The name of the company sounds really familiar, I feel like I may have been offered work from them via The Creative Group for them, but turned it down.
^^ As ultrakaiju mentions, it is always possible that the company itself is unaware of this infringement . . . it could just be a cheeky in-house or freelance designer taking a short-cut, thinking nobody would notice. A while ago, Tesco in the UK had to recall some of their stock because a photograph of woman's face had been lifted from her fashion blog and placed on the front of a Tesco girl’s sweater. It was obvious some designer had grabbed the photo from google images and used it without permission. The company probably had no idea it wasn't copyright free . . . . http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... ssion.html
