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Disney's 'Phineas And Ferb' To Get The Full Marketing Treatment

If you haven't met Phineas and Ferb yet, you soon will. The offbeat Disney Channel characters are about to get "full marketing treatment" from the organization, including a merchandise line with more than 200 items from boxer shorts to boxes of macaroni, as well as a full-length TV film. "Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension," will be out next summer.

Dawn C. Chmielewski reports that discussions to round the edges of the angular characters' features so that they'd be more in line with traditional Disney 'toons were quelled by decisive top management. "I said, 'No,' " says Disney Channel Entertainment president Gary Marsh. "This is what I love about this show. It is different, and driven by someone's unique vision -- as opposed to compacted by a committee."

The show was created by two veterans of shows like "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy," Brooks Barnes reports in the New York Times and took 16 years to make it onto television because executives also were worried that the format -- two 11-minute shorts that each have three story lines that intersect at the conclusion -- was too confusing for kids. Then too, there are jokes like the one about Existentialist Wacky Pack trading cards. "I'll trade you two Nietzsche for a Sartre," says one character to the other, Chmielewski reports

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