According to licensing.biz, TF1 Enterprises has been selected as the new merchandising broker for the various Dragon Ball properties:

TF1 Licences will handle France, French speaking Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Monaco and will have merchandising rights for the brand with the exception of toy, video games, publishing and Lamincards categories.

“TF1 Licences ranks among one of the international market’s most prolific licensing organisations and brings to its representation of Dragon Ball an outstanding track record of licensing success and a deep commitment to our brands,” said Kanji Kazahaya, director of the international department at Toei.

Did you guys ‘n gals have any cool merchandise previously, or was it all import stuff?

Our buddy Tanooki Kuribo picked up Viz’s recent “Collector’s Edition” releases of both Dragon Ball & Dragon Ball Z volume 1. These hardcover editions seem to be part of a trend Viz is going with where they release just the first volume of a series in this special format with some color pages and updated cover art. Unfortunately, any editing from previous releases still remains, in addition to the early, exaggerated adaptation of Piccolo’s dialog (“What say you?! Know you not the one to whom you show such insolence?!”).

Viz will be releasing the entirety of the Dragon Ball portion of their manga 03 February 2009 (DB volumes 1-16):

Viz will also be releasing the entirety of the Dragon Ball Z portion of their manga on the same day (DB volumes 17-42):

A while back we told you about a funny story from Texas where a guy tried to steal some Dragon Ball Z DVDs from his local Wal-Mart. This new story comes to us from Japan, where a 21-year-old man and two teenage cohorts totally one-uped the American hick by stealing an entire gashapon machine. From Anime News Network:

The Mamoyama police station in the central Japanese prefecture of Shiga has arrested a man and two teenagers on October 22 on suspicion of stealing Dragon Ball anime figures — and the vending machine holding the figures. According to the police investigation, Tatsuya Chiyo, a 21-year-old concrete construction worker from Shiga’s Rittō City, and two 16-year-old high school boys from the same city took a vending machine from outside a used bookstore in Mamoyama on July 7. Inside the machine were about 20 figures that sold for 200 yen (about US$2) each. The vending machine itself is worth about 14,000 yen (US$140).

Even though the bookstore had more than ten vending machines stacked side-by-side, the suspects reportedly took just the machine with the Dragon Ball figures “because they sell for high prices.” The police say that they identified Chiyo from the fingerprints that were found on the machine after it had been abandoned in a nearby park.

Gotta love it.

While it is unfortunately not a new console game, the 40th anniversary of “Shonen Jump” brings us more crossover goodness in the form of Bandai’s new Let’s!TV Play game, “Dragon Ball Z x One Piece: Batoru Taikan Gomu-Gomu no Kamehameha ~omee no koe de ora wo yobu~” (“DragonBall Z & One Piece: Battle Sensation Gum-Gum Kamehameha ~With your voice you can call me up~”). Think of it as something like a standalone Wii game, except that you also get to call your partner for help and unleash dual super attacks.

Bandai has a commercial for it on their website which includes some actual gameplay footage:

Looks pretty neat! It is pretty difficult to find these online for order from anywhere that will ship internationally, so if you happen to find a reliable place, let us know!

FUNimation will finally be breaking their shockingly accurate chronological consistency for the first time in the next “remastered” series of releases by packing DBZ movies 7 and 9 together:

Skipping the eighth movie makes sense if they plan to release the Broli movies (perhaps all three) together in one package. This double feature set (with an odd shot of Vegeta from the TV series as opposed to either of the movies within the set) will be dropping 10 February 2009, along with the second “season” (really just the second half) of the Dragon Ball GT TV series:

Early reports are noting that the DBGT TV special (retitled by FUNimation as “A Hero’s Legacy”) will also be included on this set.

In somewhat-related news, there was a cute little marketing blunder on FUNimation’s website recently in their promotion of the DBZ movies 5 & 6 “Double Feature” set:

The HD-DVD listing is obviously a mistake, and would take visitors to the standard DVD page.

Anime News Network reports that FUNimation has finally decided to go after DiscountAnimeDVD.com and its associated persons and businesses for bootleg DVDs:

Funimation’s legal representative filed the lawsuit in August. The suit is still active, pending a scheduling conference between all parties that is set for November 17 in a Los Angeles courtroom. The lawsuit is requesting the seizure or destruction of all DVD copies, as well as “all plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles” used in the copying under the United States copyright law. The suit further asserts damages in the range of US$23.7 million, not including US$80,000 in legal fees. FUNimation is also requesting that the defendants “notify all customers who purchased [an infringing] DVD” … “that said DVD is an unlawful copy, and may be returned for a full refund, including shipping” to be paid by the defendants. FUNimation is asking for an additional US$5,005,000, and compensation for more legal fees, for the infringement of TV Tokyo, Square Enix, and Shueisha’s trademarks.

There is nothing of huge interest this time around for Navarre, FUNimation’s parent company. The only slight bit of news was the following note regarding the “publishing segment” of Navarre, which includes FUNimation:

Net sales for the publishing segment were $27.4 million (before inter-company eliminations) for the first quarter fiscal 2009 compared to $29.6 million (before inter-company eliminations) for the first quarter fiscal 2008. The 7.4% decrease in net sales over the prior year quarter was primarily due to a lack of new releases in the software category and stronger anime releases in the prior year. The Company believes sales results in the future will be dependent upon its ability to continue to add new, appealing content and upon the strength of the retail environment.

All this really says is that the economy is kinda crappy at the moment, and better releases came out last year.

We have confirmation from the Jumpland website that the new Jump Super Anime Tour special (“Heya! Son Goku and Friends Return!!”) will be streamed online absolutely FREE following the tour’s conclusion in November. Anime News Network reports:

This year’s 49th issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine has announced on Saturday that the Jumpland website will stream three of the anime specials – Dragon Ball, Tegami Bachi, and Romance Dawn – that have been screened at this fall’s Jump Super Anime Tour events. The free streaming will begin on November 24, the day after the last stop on the tour. There are no indications on whether viewers outside Japan will be blocked by their Internet protocol (IP) addresses.

Be sure to be around or near a computer on Monday, November 24th!