The Land Before Time Gabriel Damon, Candace Hutson, Judith Barsi Director: Don Bluth
In late 1988, when most members of Generation Y were still in preschool, a cinematic ratings war was raging among America's animation giants.
The parents taking their children to the local multiplex might not have known it, but Walt Disney was going head-to-head with director Don Bluth (who had co-producers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas on his side) for top-dog status in the cartoon world.
Oliver & Company, a Disney film inspired by Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, eventually lost out at the box office to Bluth's The Land Before Time, a children's adventure story set in the era overlapping the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
But it wasn't an easy victory, and there were dark shadows lurking in the corners. Bluth reportedly spent much of the production period in a frustrated state, while Judith Barsi, the child actress who voiced the most popular dinosaur, Ducky, was shot dead by her father a few months before the film's release.
Adhering to the tried-and-tested formula of an underdog battling against the odds, the film follows an orphaned apatosaurus named Littlefoot (voiced by Gabriel Damon) as he teams up with Cera the triceratops, Ducky the saurolophus, Petrie the pteranodon, and Spike the stegosaurus. Together they embark on a perilous journey through a dangerous land to reach the lush and fertile Great Valley. Their home has become barren and desolate, and time is running out.