Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Character Cakes

Every kid has their favorite character, whether its a Ninja Turtle, Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, Jimmy Neutron, Spongebob or even Pooh Bear. Inevitably, at birthday time, kids will want their favorite character at the time (because we all know that it changes weekly, if not daily!) on their birthday cake.

While we love to help make a birthday party special, we do have some limitations when it comes to characters.

You see, almost every character that your child loves is a copyrighted work of art. What that means is that the person who created that character holds the exclusive right to make money off of that character. Now, this sounds harsh when we are thinking about beloved childhood friends, but it is true.

What we cannot do is make any of the cakes in the character shaped pans. Next time you are in the store, take a look at the pan. It will say on the top that it is for "Home Use Only". We are also unable to draw the character on the cake for you. This method does not provide for any sort of royalty to the copyright owner. Unfortunately, the penalties for infringing on someone's copyright are pretty steep, tens of thousands of dollars. That is a fine that we simply cannot afford.

However, this doesn't mean that we cannot create a cake that will incorporate your childs favorite princess or superhero. We can use pieces that were specifically designed for cakes (thereby providing the copyright owner with their fair share of $$$). We can also create a cake that fits with the theme, while not infringing on any copyrights. For example, below is a cake we did for a little girl who loves Minnie Mouse. You can see that we incorporated a Minnie Mouse theme, while not making Minnie Mouse. The decorative ornament was added by the customer.

If your child has his/her heart set on a character cake, just give us a call or send us an email and we can provide you with the available options.

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