 Its 165-man animation production studio was based in Los Angeles from 1998–2001.It won the 2000 Web Award for the best Entertainment Portal on the World Wide Web, but the company failed in the same year and the corporate shell has been involved in numerous lawsuits in the years since.The company has been characterized as "a sleazy Internet start-up that could function as the poster child for the excesses of the turn-of-the-century era."