In 1978, I had been introduced to Burt Ward in Hollywood and became a good friend. Jeff Cohen, also a good friend of mine, had become President of Photo-Lith after Jeff's father, Bob, died of cancer.

In my discussions with Jeff and Burt, we had come upon a merchandising idea that would definitely put a cramp in the Factors Etc. merchandising machine. Factors still had the reputation of being a disreputable licensee and with Stan Blum as Factors licensing arm in the Hollywood area, Jeff and I felt that Burt Ward would be a better match for this dastardly duo!

Burt had a personal charm and vibrant enthusiasm that exuded both an honest appearance and the ability to do everything that Burt claimed he would do.

We decided that we would start a company in which Burt, Photo-Lith and Pro Arts would each own one third of the corporation.

Burt Ward owned one third of the stock personally, Jeff Cohen and Denny Tugwell (Jeff's partner in Photo-Lith) would each own half of one third of the stock (about 16.66% each) and Mike, John and I would each own 1/3 of the last one-third portion of the corporation.

As the company was incorporated in California, Entertainment Licensing Corporation (ELC) would set up its offices in Hollywood and Burt Ward would run the company.

We each put in $25,000 for the 33 1/3 % ownership and the company was capitalized for $75,000.oo

Burt's responsibilities were to obtain licenses for Photo-Lith and Pro Arts plus any other rights that we could either use or lay-off in our merchandising of the licensed property.

I still maintained my relationship with Steve Adler from MCA/Universal Studios since both Jeff and I had been working with Steve long before our relationship with Burt.

By working with Burt, both Jeff and I would give Burt a list of individuals or properties that we felt had good marketing potential for both T-shirts and Posters.

Burt would then begin wining and dining the agent, manager or personality directly. Because Burt was a celebrity in his own right, Burt found it easy to get to the right person immediately. After all, who wouldn't want to meet Robin?

Burt started his own company in merchandising and became a tour merchandiser. He would travel on tour with ABBA and sell posters and T-shirts directly to ABBA's fans at the rock concerts.

Burt was able to secure several Rock acts that included REO Speedwagon, Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), ABBA and Rolling Stones. The beauty of this association was that Pro Arts only had to sign a Standard Agreement with Burt and the long protracted negotiations and big up front money was reduced considerably!

This was a great blow to Greg Happ! Since Happ no longer was discussing license contracts with the Hollywood element, he was reduced to "slugging it out in the trenches" on the existing lawsuits!

Happ became involved with Billie the Blue Bell Bear more than he should have and pushed me through his mother to try and get the project ready for marketing.

As I mentioned earlier, my brother had taken over sales of Pro Arts and in late 1978, I was extremely upset with the direction the company was heading.

I felt that Pro Arts was placing 100 permanent poster racks each week and there were no real assurances that the racks would be serviced.