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I was wondering something, what influenced Universal Studios to make a movie like Balto when they were originally known as a horror movie studio. Was it possibly the releases of All Dogs Go To Heaven and Land Before Time that might have given them the idea? But then again ADGTH was not made by Universal and by MGM, while Land Before Time was. Maybe family movies were in demand then, i dont know. What do you guys think?

Universal makes every genre.

I've seen movies of all manner, from balto, to westerns to horror, with universal's mark

Sometimes I puzzle about where you get the information for your posts.

Just because Lon Chaney did some of his famous work for the old Universal Pictures is not any indication, whatsoever, that Universal Pictures was "originally known as a horror movie studio". That's like saying that you would be wondering why Columbia Pictures made a movie like Men In Black when they were known as the studio of the Three Stooges shorts (which would also be a silly assertion).

Universal Pictures, as a matter of fact, distributed the original Balto movie, which was made by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation (just as, interestingly, Men In Black was distributed by Columbia Pictures, while it was filmed by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment...another of Spielberg's properties).

However, the notion that Universal Pictures was known as a horror movie studio is fallacious. They did many different kinds of movies over the years (as Balto-the-WOlf-Dog indicated). To wit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Universal_Pictures_films

I guess they just thought his story was intresting and...well wanted to try and make money off of it?

Maybe they came across the story of Balto by coincidence and they found it interesting?

Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for doing a Balto animated movie after seeing Balto's statue in Central Park. He wanted to learn more about who Balto was, and at the time he had his Amblimation studio going and all the pieces came together from that. Universal put it out because Spielberg was attached to it.

I feel the exact same way...

And what Xaqtly said.

I forget the name but from the Balto documentary one of the Directors (the one aside from Spielberg himself? I'm not sure, someone) approached Spielberg with the idea of an animated movie based on Balto and it just happened to be something Spielberg himself liked the idea of doing, thus Balto the animated movie was born. xD

Precisely. THAT is how it happened.

Anything which happened afterwards, including location research (Spielberg and his production people going to New York City or to Nome or anywhere else in Alaska) happened afterwards...after the project was green-lighted. Though whether or not Spielberg ever was in New York City on his own, at some point in his life, and may have seen and been inspired by the musher/sled dog monument and Balto statue, is speculative. Possible. Maybe not. Though they certainly would have gone to the location to shoot it (and to look it over before that).