Disney loses bid to toss Muppet Babies copyright lawsuit - The A.V. Club

The original ‘80s Muppet Babies cartoon is a licensing nightmare these days thanks to its regular use of clips from popular movies (and it’s not like we’d ever see a world where one massive company owns the Muppets and Star Wars and Indiana Jones), but the appeal of seeing the Muppets as babies was simply too good for Disney to resist.

So, in 2018, it released a brand new Muppet Babies CG-animated series with the same basic premise—Muppets as babies—but without the “what if the Muppets just watch Star Wars in every episode?” hook and with a more explicitly baby-targeting tone.

According to original Muppet Babies writer Jeffrey Scott, though, it was still a little too close to his show for Disney to get away with it without paying him.