History
The name BRB comes after its three founders: Títo Basto, José Rodriguez and Claudio Biern Boyd, who founded BRB Internacional SAU in 1972 as a merchandising agency in Spain where the company was headquartered in Alcobendas, Madrid. At first, BRB bought distribution rights in Spain to some of popular characters of foreign studios such as Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros., short film and television series as The Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, The Muppets and Charlie's Angels.[7] In 1975, thanks to an agreement with the German company Merchandising München,[8] BRB began licensing and distributing animation series both domestically and worldwide, including The Wood of Tallac, Banner and Flappy and Tom Sawyer, all anime series made by Nippon Animation Co., Ltd. in Japan, to start beginning BRB's long relationship with the Japanese animation studio.
After seeing a steady growth in this sector, BRB decided to start producing their own cartoon series, but delegating the whole animation process to other companies, starting with Nippon Animation with Ruy, the Little Cid, premiering in 1980 on Televisión Española (in Japan in 1984). Other series co-produced with Nippon Animation were Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (MBS and TBS 1981, TVE 1982), Around the World with Willy Fog and Football in Action (with Naranjito, the official mascot of 1982 FIFA World Cup). In 1985, after the increase of the Japanese yen due to the price asset bubble,[8] BRB contracted Wang Films Productions in Taiwan their first international hit: The World of David the Gnome, which aired in the United States on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. block two years later. The company continued to produce new cartoon series, including Iron Kid ("Eon Kid" in the United States), Suckers and Canimals.
After that, they continued licensing successful foreign properties' rights in Spain including Pokémon, Pepsi, and The Pink Panther. Their most recent project by Screen 21 SA was Super Bernard, a theatrical film based on their short-form series Bernard, but it fell to bankruptcy during the mid-2010s. BRB had a film division called Apolo Films. The studio's only film was a reboot of their Dogtanian series which was released in 2021.[9][10]
In 2023, the company's catalog was acquired by DeAPlaneta Entertainment.
