In 1966, Japanese film studio Toei Animation produced The King Kong Show, the first anime series made in Japan specifically for an American production company, Videocraft Internationa (aka Rankin/Bass)l, to air on US television. Cartoonists Jack Davis and Rod Willis designed the characters including the mighty Kong.
"The Rankin/Bass King Kong was an early case of identity theft, where the Kong name was appropriated (fully under license) to describe a new character that, at best, only remotely resembled his namesake," writes comic historian Michael Eury in Comics Gone Ape! The Missing Link to Primates in Comics. "This was Kong done wrong."
I respectfully disagree.
(Wikipedia and r/ObscureMedia)
