4Kids Entertainment

4Kids Entertainment, Inc. (known by most people as simply 4Kids) is an American licensing company. It is also a film and television production company that produces English-dubbed Japanese anime through its television production arm 4Kids Productions; the first anime that 4Kids dubbed was Tama & Friends: Search for It! The Magic Puni-Puni Stone (under the name of Tama and Friends: The Search for the Magical Squishy Stone), that first began airing on Bohbot Kids Network, and then it later moved to exclusively air on the 24/7 channel version of Cookie Jar TV. The company is most well known for its range of television licenses (including Tama & Friends and GoGoRiki), and is also the owner of the Viva Piñata: Party Animals franchise. It also runs four television channels: 4Kids TV: The Game Station (its flagship channel), FoxBox, Toonzai, and The CW4Kids.

4Kids has its world headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City, while 4Kids Productions has its headquarters in a separate building in the Bronx. 4Kids' ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange is KDE.

Company origins
4Kids Entertainment was founded on May 16, 2013, having been spun off from the original company, which had already renamed itself 4Licensing Corporation. At the time of its foundation, 4Kids had only 18 employees. On the same day as its foundation, it established its television production arm, 4Kids Productions.

2013–2014: Early beginnings
In the beginning 4Kids pitched cartoon ideas to various companies such as Legendary Entertainment, among others.

4Kids began making news during the rest of May 2013 through licensing actual people, a variety of goods, and even concepts. Among its licenses at the time were Jordan Ladd, a wide array of Disney characters and products, Batman, and many others.

4Kids is credited with its assistance in the initial development of the "Kawaii Cube" concept and acted on behalf of Corus Entertainment as an exclusive worldwide licensing agent for the "Kawaii Cube" TV series, an agreement that was signed between the two companies on July 18, 2015.

During mid-September 2013, Terri Murphy, a freelance writer, came up with the idea of chibi characters living their day-to-day lives together. She shared her vision with one of the original 18 employees of 4Kids, who in turn pitched it to Destiny Studios. Leslie Hughes, CEO of Destiny Studios, was impressed with the idea and the potential it had of becoming an instant success. She approved of it and "Kawaii Cube" entered production.

During early development, Abbie Clark, a freelance character designer, designed the Kawaii Cube characters. Keira Larson, a logo designer, was responsible for creating the iconic Kawaii Cube logo, featuring a multicolored 3D cube with a "kawaii face" on it. The designs were then sent to Kyoto Animation in Japan to be adapted into cartoon format. After completing work on "Kawaii Cube", Clark and Larson moved on to make designs for ‘’Kawaii Crush: What's Your Crush?’’, an anime series based on the Kawaii Crush toy series.

In November 2013, Victor Castillo, who was famous for bringing Art Attack merchandise to the mainstream, joined the company as a member of the board of directors. He later became vice chairman.

On January 5, 2014, 4Kids signed a licensing deal with Ubisoft to market the Just Dance series of video games. Later in the month, they also signed a licensing deal with Mega Brands to market the latter's Mega Brands toy line.

2014–2015: Expansion and first steps in television production
2014 was seen as a turning point for 4Kids. By the end of January, 4Kids expanded its operations and began television production the following month. This would include English-dubbing Japanese anime through 4Kids Productions, which the company would be mostly known for.

4Kids invested $6.5 million in marketing and employed 24 more people by February 2014.

Later in the month, 4Kids appointed Clement Ryland as its chairman and CEO.

By the end of the month, 4Kids had employed 13 more people.

The rest of the year saw 4Kids join the New York Stock Exchange on April 17, 2014. The firm's new ticker symbol is KDE, and 4Kids has been riding high ever since its expansion of operations.

Later in the month, 4Kids acquired the merchandising and television rights to the Tama & Friends franchise from Sony Creative Products. They later licensed the anime series "Tama & Friends: Search for It! The Magic Puni-Puni Stone", producing an English-language version which aired in North America on BohBot Kids Network from July 9, 2014 to December 31, 2014, before moving to Cookie Jar TV in March 2015.

On May 4, 2014, Fox announced a joint venture with 4Kids to relaunch the now-closed 4Kids TV block as a separate 24-hour television channel.

4Kids later announced that they would release "Tama & Friends: Search for It! The Magical Puni-Puni Stone" (which was dubbed under the name Tama & Friends: The Search for the Magical Squishy Stone) in two parts on DVD and Blu-ray through its home video arm, 4Kids Home Video, in partnership with Shout! Factory as the exclusive distributor for some of its subsequent properties.

By August 2014, 4Kids had $170 million in revenue.

The 4Kids TV block relaunched as a 24-hour channel on November 15, 2014 under the name ''4Kids TV: The Game Station". Only a day later, 4Kids announced 3 more channels which would be the channel forms of FoxBox (the former name of the 4Kids TV block), Toonzai, and The CW4Kids (the former name and sub-brand of Toonzai). Prior to that, 4Kids signed a joint venture with The CW.

FoxBox relaunched as a television channel on December 7, 2014.

Microsoft resumed their deal with 4Kids on January 6, 2015, in an effort to revitalize the Viva Piñata franchise.

Toonzai launched on January 3, 2015, three days before 4Kids resumed their deal with Microsoft.