owner-of-wendys:

It’s a problem unique to animation that drives me insane. Studios think the characters are the star, but it’s really the people who made the characters. It’s their sense of humor, their timing their artistic sense that people fall in love with.

No one would ever dream of forming a band and calling it “the Beatles.” You might own the name, you can put them in mop top wigs, but without the original people everyone knows it just won’t be the same.