Peter Pan Records
Encyclopedia
Peter Pan Records is a record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 specializing in children's music
Children's music
Children's music is used here to refer to music composed and performed for children by adults. In European influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Children's music has historically held both entertainment...

. It was created in the late 1940s. The label was owned by the Synthetic Plastics Company
Synthetic Plastics Company
Synthetics Plastics Company or SPC of Newark, New Jersey was a plastics manufacturing company that made various items made of plastic including children's records and budget music albums.-History:...

 of Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

 until the 1970s.

The label became one of the largest and most successful children's specialty record labels in America, manufacturing unique, quality releases that often contrasted those of their competitors (Wonderland Records, Kid Stuff Records
Kid Stuff Records
Kid Stuff Records was a record label of the 1980s devoted to children's music. The label's albums were mostly tie-ins for franchises such as Care Bears, The Pink Panther Show, Strawberry Shortcake, Fat Albert, Garfield, E.T...

, Mr. Pickwick
Pickwick Records
Pickwick Records was an American record label and distributor known for its budget album releases of sound-alike recordings, bargain bin reissues and repackagings under the brands Design, Bravo , Hurrah, Grand Prix, and children's records on the Cricket and Happy Time labels.The label is also...

). Peter Pan enjoyed their greatest success during the 1970s.

The label was notable for its series of book-and-record set
Book-and-Record set
Book-and-Record sets are a form of edutainment for children, consisting of a picture storybook and an accompanying recording to be played while following along with the book...

s, combining an illustrated storybook with a vinyl record that contained music and narration by "your Peter Pan Storyteller" (who, memorably, would prompt the listener to "turn the page" at the sound of a bell). Cartoon characters were often subjects, or stars of stories.

One of their most successful and most memorable releases was "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", an original production by Peter Pan's studio collective (known as the Peppermint Kandy Kids), that featured splendid remakes of classic Christmas holiday songs, featuring original songs for the album as well as convincing character portrayals of "Santa Claus" and "Mrs. Claus".

Peter Pan Records was spun off into its own entity, Peter Pan Industries, from the 1970s to 2000. In the early 1990s, while keeping its primary asset alive (even though the children's label market had declined), Peter Pan Industries branched into music releases, not aimed at the children's market.

The company changed its name to PPI Entertainment of Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

, and established new label divisions and imprints, including Rohit International Records, a "budget" label from the 1990s that specialized in reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

.

PPI Entertainment Group changed its name yet again in the year 2000 to Inspired Corporation, and is now based in Roseland, New Jersey
Roseland, New Jersey
Roseland is a borough in western Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 5,819...

, and run by longtime President/CEO Donald Kasen, son of company co-founder Daniel Kasen. The company continues to release children's music both on CD and online formats. Inspired is currently in the process of converting the music from the vaults of Synthetic Plastics
Synthetic Plastics Company
Synthetics Plastics Company or SPC of Newark, New Jersey was a plastics manufacturing company that made various items made of plastic including children's records and budget music albums.-History:...

 (to the present) into digital media.

Power Records

Power Records was a related label, featuring characters licensed from DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 and Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

, and contemporary television series (such as Space: 1999
Space: 1999
Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television series that ran for two seasons and originally aired from 1975 to 1977. In the opening episode, nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side explodes in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, knocking the Moon out of orbit and...

, Kojak
Kojak
Kojak is an American television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, bald New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. It aired from October 24, 1973, to March 18, 1978, on CBS. It took the time slot of the popular Cannon series, which was moved one hour earlier...

, Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...

and The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a former astronaut with bionic implants working for the OSI...

), in stories geared toward older children. (Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes (1968 film)
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison...

was also adapted, both from the movies and the short-lived TV series
Planet of the Apes (TV series)
Planet of the Apes was a short-lived American science fiction television series that aired on Friday evenings at 8:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Central on CBS in 1974. The series starred Roddy McDowall, Ron Harper, and James Naughton, Mark Lenard and Booth Colman...

.) The book-and-record sets frequently featured original comic books along with an extended-play 7" record of the story. There were also other 7" single releases. Besides book-and-record sets, LPs
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

 were produced, featuring the recorded stories without illustrations.

See also


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK