Since there has been a lot of gloom around the Sailor Moon fandom lately, I decided to have a little fun and see if any of the fans had noticed that there is a connection to Sailor Moon amongst the fallout of the recent scandal involving the “Terminated” Arnold Schwarzennegger. Yes, we all know now he kept his love child a secret for 13 years, but our connection has nothing to do with any of his legitimate or illegitimate family. I gave the fans a few hints via our Facebook page:

1. Staff on English dub of Sailor Moon
2+3. Has something to do with Arnold’s other announcement made during the fallout of this week’s scandal. Nothing to do with the kid or the maid.
4. (Because I am feeling nice). This staff member has a tag on Moon Chase. Said staff member was written about within the last year (as of this date).

Lots of you tried to search for Arnold’s name on our blog and turned up nothing! I was actually a little surprised that no one got this. Without further delay, here is your answer.

Andy Heyward

Who is Andy Heyward? Before his current venture of A Squared Entertainment, he was the former CEO and founder of DiC Entertainment. DiC Entertainment was the production company responsible for the first two seasons. Andy Heyward also served as Executive Producer for Sailor Moon. How does this all connect, you ask? Easy.

This is how I came to know about it. I just happened to have CNN on when the news broke that Arnold was putting a halt to his acting career, but then I got distracted by a phone call from a friend. I had missed the news, so I went to CNN’s site to read the rest of the story. To my surprise, I read the name “A Squared”, and a lightbulb went off in my head. Oh yeah, thats’ Andy Heyward’s new production company devoted to making cheezy and tacky cartoons based on prominent celebrities. For those of you that haven’t seen trailer for The Governator, here’s your link. Aren’t you glad this is being shelved? We sure are. And here’s hoping it never gets taken off that shelf again because if we were kids, we wouldn’t have watched this crap. And is it us or does Arnie look a little too square/boxy? Would you have watched this toon as a kid?

Hope this brought a smile to your faces – and if you want me to share more random obscure connections to Sailor Moon as I encounter them, let me know and I shall post!

When possible, we here at Moon Chase try to keep fans updated with where the staff behind Sailor Moon is today. This update focuses on Andy Heyward, the former CEO and founder of DiC Entertainment, which was the production company responsible for the first two seasons. Back in the 80s and 90s, DiC was the name in hit cartoons for children, with big shows like Inspector Gadget, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, The Real Ghostbusters, the Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers Super Show, and countless others. So, with such a legend in children’s broadcasting, to studios back during the time that Sailor Moon first came along it looked like if DiC had a show, it would be a hit. Of course though, poor Sailor Moon did not have such a smooth run the first time – and fans can check out our first survey results which show how much the fans appreciated the work Andy did for the series. He only got 15% of the fans’ votes! In 2008, the company was folded into Canada’s Cookie Jar Entertainment, and Andy Heyward was left with (supposedly) nothing to do (as the article suggests).

Last year, a press release we came across during the early stages of our campaign told us that Andy was back in action with a brand new company creating webtoons cetnered around celebrities for kids. A few of our staff members questioned some of the ideas that were being tossed around (Gisele Bundchen will never come close to Captain Planet, and we would have gone crazy watching perfect Martha Stewart and her perfect crafts in cartoon form). In this weekend’s USA Today, he is featured once again now that some of his cartoons have come to life. The article has the bit of an air of a “puff piece” to it, and we find it interesting that it drops the name Sailor Moon twice, without really mentioning how and why DiC didn’t produce the movies or the 3rd & 4th seasons of the show. The video has a tiny glimpse of Sailor Moon as well – can you spot it in our shot above? We’re pretty sure that while it was one of DiC’s biggest successes, it was also one of it’s biggest failures due to mismanagement. In the video on the USA Today site, he talks about how there is an opportunity for a strong girl’s property in the wake of the imminent “death” of Barbie and Bratz. How many Moonies are with me that Sailor Moon could kick Gisele’s butt any day? Who would you rather watch?

His new cartoons are cross-platform making apperances on the web, TV (on The Hub) as well as comics. While we admire Andy for choosing to start fresh, it’s our opinion that the shows he’s workin’ on today don’t have the same kind of appeal as the shows he worked on for DiC. Yes, we are in a recession but do kids really need to be learning lessons from Warren Buffet at an early age, or should we let their imaginations run through a world of fantasy for a few years while they still can?

(So the article sort of sanitized something with regards to the sale of DiC: there are many rumors swirling around Hollywood that his divorce to Evelyn Heyward as a result of an extramarital affair had something to do with it. One doesn’t have to look too far on the web to learn about it. We also don’t buy the comment about him never having worked so hard in his life – the cartoons he is working on now are only a fraction of what he did 20 years ago. We’ve known about this for a few years now but kept it in our Moon Chase files for pondering…Oh Sailor Moon, so many scandals behind your scenes…)