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Hey, they were great characters. The movie would be more boring without them, as they provided the comic relief.

To make the movie more successful in the box office, I would have definitely pushed for an earlier release date. Maybe November.

I would have also struck a deal with Hasbro, and distributed reels to IMAX everywhere.

Annnd, I would have passed a bill through Congress to make it illegal to produce sequels to the movie.

Yet, I think the movie is much better off as a cult flick anyway.

Perhaps, but cult films have the curse of having crappy or no sequels.

Lets see... I am Steven Spielberg, the executive producer of Balto and I have to hire people to make the movie, and make it good.

Point #1: The writing staff for Balto was a joke. They were young and inexperienced. None of them had hardly any experience for theater movies. They were all TV show writers. I don't have issues with unexperienced writers, but you need a decorated veteran who's been around the block when it comes to writing, to guide the young ones.

Point #2: Hiring Simon Wells for a director equaled fail. This guy does not have a good resume. He was the director for Fievel Goes West, which was okay but it still flopped. He was the director for We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story which needs to be casted into the 9th circle of Hell. And he was the director of The Time Machine in 2002. The only decent movies this guy directed was Prince of Egypt and Balto. The only thing that saved Prince of Egypt was that it had much more talent in voices and music. Balto was surprisingly good despite Wells's bad reputation, but directors with bad reputations don't bring in the money at the box office. A better director would've made that movie better two-fold and bring in more cash.

Point #3: The production would have saved money if they didn't hire Kevin Bacon. I bet all of you are thinking, "WHAT?! You're against Kevin Bacon?!". I agree he's a great actor, matches Balto pretty well but it wasn't anything exciting. Kevin Bacon has a very average-joe sound and the studio paid huge bucks for that average-joe sound because Kevin Bacon is an Oscar winning actor. Not good judgment. I also think hiring Phil Collins wasn't the best of ideas because you hired a world-renown music artist to do what in your movie? Talk? Say lines for a minor character? Production dropped the ball on that one. Jim Cummings, the voice to Steele, is an excellent example on how a budget voice actor can still payoff big.

Of course I would do more advertising. People have to get hyped for the movie and look forward to seeing it. There needs to be merchandise included as well. Also I would've chose a different release date. Going up against Toy Story was not smart.

Wow, that's news to me!
Why must crappy movies like The Day After Tomorrow (no offence anyone I just really hate that film) get the royal treatment whilst wonderful sweet little gems like Balto are hardly even given any thought? I mean, TDAT would be better off in the 'new releases' area of the video store than see its poster outside cinemas.

I sometimes wonder that myself. And they're giving crappy sequels like cinderella special edition dvds while they give the Balto dvd a regular dvd with no special features.

Going against the first full-length 3D animated movie is any 2D movie's absolute worst nightmare.

Okay, so I would have made it a bit more actiony. Maybe better voice actors. Kevin Bacon's voice suited Balto, but he didn't do such a great job at emotions. Bridget Fonda, Jim Cummings, great choices.

I would have pressed for an earlier release. Maybe a few weeks earlier or instead work a bit on post-production and make it a December 96 release. It was clear Universal wanted Balto to do good, look at the merchandise. They expected it to be a big thing. Because of Toy Story, it wasn't.

Also I would have made less crappy sequels. Because those two sucked.

Same here, I would advertise it BEFORE Toy Story came out.

I don't recall seeing any advertisements of Balto. If they had only released it at a different time than Toy Story, it might have been more successful. More advertising would have also helped.