The studio's first work, the TV series Granny Mischief (Ijiwaru Baasan), based on a manga by Sazae-san creator Machiko Hasegawa), premiered in 1970.
In the late 1980s the company moved away from TV production and into OVA, finding success in the growing market for soft-core direct-to-video pornography anime.
Despite the number of anime-industry notables who worked with Knack over the years (including Go Nagai, Ken Ishikawa, Kazuyuki Okasako, Masayuki Kojima, Tetsuro Amino, Shun'ichi Yukimuro, Yoshikata Nitta, and Fumio Ikeno), the studio developed a dubious reputation for the low quality of its productions, particularly in regard to animation quality and to copying the premises of other, more popular shows, even when compared to their contemporaries in both Japan and America.
[1] Nevertheless, a number of the studio's productions did become internationally successful, including the children's anthropomorphic cartoon series Don Chuck Monogatari; The Adventures of the Little Prince; and Attacker You!, a volleyball drama which achieved a staggering level of popularity when exported to Italy and France.
The studio's children's comedies Manga Sarutobi Sasuke and Cybot Robotchi were also released in the U.S. as direct-to-video feature-length edits titled Ninja the Wonder Boy and Robby the Rascal, respectively.