Way back when I was 13 years old (1999) I was very much into animation. So much, that at one point I decided to start making my own using Adobe Flash!
From that, came the following animations and a website garnering me as many as 500 visitors per day.
After several months of running this website I had my friends running around the school marketing the website by putting up posters and it was hugely popular. Then, one night I got an email from Dick Bruna’s legal team requesting me to take down the website or face legal ramifications.
Back in 1999, copyright could still be enforced on satirical works, so I was forced to take down the website. Since 2004 the law has changed and it is now explicitly stated that copyrighted works can in fact be used, but that’s a little too late now. Dick Bruna is still actively pursuing legal suits against Nijntje parodies, but as proven by a recent court case they no longer have the law on their side.