>"S-shows made to sell toys are bad."
>"Why?"
>"T-they just are okay?!"
I've never seen a more massive cope in my life.
These shows were absolutely creator driven. If you're trying to claim that writers aren't creators, then you've lost the plot.
These shows weren't written, drawn, or produced by corporate executives. Merch pays for the shows: this is even true NOW.
Since you deleted the last thread I'll just repost it again.
Transformers and the 1987 TMNT cartoon were made to sell toys and are indeed bad, don't try to use them as some kind of example of quality cartoons. Not sure about most of the other ones but I know Flintstones and Jetsons were like proto-Adult animation, so not meant to sell toys.
If you want reasons for why cartoons made to sell toys tend to be bad, I'll give you some right now.
No, having a toyline does not inherently mean a show is bad, that is true. However, this does mean the show will have to give over some if not most of the control over to the toy company and this can have disastrous consequences. First off, the toy company considers the show advertisement for their product and primarily receives returns in form of toy sales, if they are the sole investors the budget could get too thin.
Secondly, in order to maximize the number of people who see it (and thus increase toy sales), a show may try to get a syndication deal ASAP. Usually this means pumping out 65 episodes or more as quickly as possible and on the already low budget, this will essentially remove quality control and rewrites.
Thirdly, because the toys can be quite numerous and are quickly replaced on shelves, shows created to sell toys can employ weird creative decisions like having having way too many characters run around at the same time or have major characters be written out of the show for no clear reason.
Bump
Everyne wants to sell something. Netflix sells subscriptions. Artist their labour. As long it is good or entertaining, why not? At this point you can give them money, because they create smething that is well done.
>As long as it's good or entertaining
Most of the time they aren't.
>No, having a toyline does not inherently mean a show is bad, that is true. However, this does mean the show will have to give over some if not most of the control over to the toy company and this can have disastrous consequences. First off, the toy company considers the show advertisement for their product and primarily receives returns in form of toy sales, if they are the sole investors the budget could get too thin.
Secondly, in order to maximize the number of people who see it (and thus increase toy sales), a show may try to get a syndication deal ASAP. Usually this means pumping out 65 episodes or more as quickly as possible and on the already low budget, this will essentially remove quality control and rewrites.
Thirdly, because the toys can be quite numerous and are quickly replaced on shelves, shows created to sell toys can employ weird creative decisions like having having way too many characters run around at the same time or have major characters be written out of the show for no clear reason.
Tmnt or Transformers are not bad. You could say they are not literature. But still normal stories created to infuse the toys with lore or characters.
>Flintstones and Jetsons
Basically just to sell tv to family and create places for advertisment to reach the perfect targetgroup.
>Screeching autist having argument in his own head
>Most of the time they aren't.
Examples? Otherwise, there are bad and good ones. Or even entertaining ones.
There's a difference between a creator driven show that artists actually want to work on and a toy company commissioning a cartoon to sell toys that no animator wants to work on. This is why nicktoons was such a big deal back in the day.
decider.com
Transformers, 1980s TMNT, He-man, Thundercats. All of them had terrible animation and horrible writing.
Here's your toy driven animation bro.
They are indeed terrible. Awful animation and terrible writing. It was a shit show for cartoonists back then. No one was allowed to even have room to breathe. Thankfully the 90s cartoon Renaissance gave them more freedom.
No amount of soul arguments will change that these works don't stand up to any kind of scrutiny and that most of the animators hated them.
They were bad because they were shitty cartoons. Good luck actually rewatching that shit, as opposed to DCAU and whatnot. Tokusatsu is a common example of good toy commercials.
Even Tokatsu, I dislike. Creators shouldn't be held down by toy company demands.
Bump
I loved Turtles as a kid. And Visionaries. That was a fucking amazing and underated toy advert.
>but they don't hold up if you rewatch them!!!
They're children's entertainment. If they entertained me as a child then they're good at their job, by definition..
No its not always bad. Sometimes its great because we get to see many new designs which is a treat in itself and visuals are just as important.
One of the greatest comic book writers ever, on par with legit writing such as in novels, etc. Comes from Larry Hama of GI Joe. Other than giving him some designs to put in his comic, they let him do anything he wanted, complete free reign other than that requirement. He didnt even watch a single episode of the TV series.
In many ways also a plus to have toys because he had so many characters to pick and choose and tell anything he wanted.
Hama is a legit amazing writer, that goes beyond comics. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Geoff Johns, Scott Snyder, etc all look very goofy and silly and childish in front of his writing.
And ironically he's the one with the source primarily made to sell toys.
>These shows were absolutely creator driven
Without googling, name the creators.
Larry is mediocre. GI Joe fans going nuts for their small fish from their very very dry pond is autistic.
That's not really true. He was mandated to use the new characters that the toy company wanted to push.
I said that.
A 155 issue original run, and not counting the countless other comics he's done in almost 40 years isnt small fish.
only Japan knows how to make toy commercials disguised as shows
>They're children's entertainment. If they entertained me as a child then they're good at their job, by definition..
Media should be good regardless of if you're an adult or not. That's a retarded way of thinking. "You're outside of the intended age demo so of course you'll find it bad" is not an argument.
>They're children's entertainment. If they entertained me as a child then they're good at their job
A lot of shows "for children" were and still are enjoyed by adults, making a show that aims only at children is mindless garbage that will age like milk
fpbp - I love dumb 80s cartoons, but I'm not going to pretend they weren't dumb or that they weren't toy commercials. Too many people have to defend their hobbies and get mad about shit, when the point of a hobby is that you have something you ENJOY.
>That's not really true. He was mandated to use the new characters that the toy company wanted to push.
They weren't even characters. They were literally just designs they told him to put in. It was HIM who came up with the characters stories and the info they put on the package on the toys.
One guy designed the toys, then they just gave him the drawings of it and he came up with the name and everything else.
That gimmick you see on toys with bios on the back of a package with character info came from when a guy walked by Larrys desk and saw the bios he wrote up for the designs. The guy in charge thought it was cool and they included them on the toys.
Source for any of this?
Honestly I never saw what was so incredibly wrong about a toy based show. Kids like it, kids like the merch, it makes memories for them, what's the issue?
I don't know if it was always true that they toy companies flexed control over the studios. TMNT and Thundercats seemed to just do their own thing without much of a care in the world. They occasionally spent an episode featuring some new figure or two but that was about it.
he-man has gotten several reboots and no one bats an eye. she-ra gets one and suddenly a few people are pissed off about a shitty toy commercial from the 80s
not to mention that toy companies automatically don't want to try to sell to girls. Young Justice got cancelled when it was a good show just because it was assumed toys wouldn't sell, the marketing for the she-ra reboot was more or less sabotage when the companies refuse to sell things in comic stores because the people who run companies are actual fucking morons and/or bigots
forgot a link
youtube.com
Same, if anything it's not that bad of a concept for there to be the occasional merch driven series that is not creator driven. since that makes for a lot of handy early careers and a good stepping stone for fresh out of school animators to get to know things like the production pipeline and spend a year on a major series that a lot of employers have heard of before. And can then step into the creator driven field and make their passion projects now they have the knowhow, connections and experience.
basically this:
>marketing for girls isn't in our marketing plan, we can't have it
>abortion isn't in the constitution so we can't have it
>*the thing* doesn't have a plan for females because *the thing* wasn't written for females*
Corporate does still seem to think that there is no such thing as a girl nerd. that all girls stop buying tie-in merch and move over to hair and fashion the second they turn 13. so any level of a figure or toy based series is an automatic failure when it's for girls.
It's insincere. It's corporate branding and brainrot that defines their childhoods. Nothing of any intellectual merit. Consumerism is not for a healthy childhood.
A lot of that is also advertising based. Toy companies alone do not pay for a series, and they will make some bigger contracts with other companies making apparel, shoes, fastfood etc. And those are all totally demographic based advertisement that spend millions making damn sure they are focusing on, grabbing, and maintaining specific advertisements.
ESPECIALLY when it was on-air channels. Those channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon needed to dedicate specific timeslots to age and sex demographics to pace the target demographic related commercials. So a show in the boys 6-11 timeslot but attracting girls 12-15 was going to be a miserable failure for the advertisers who will see a sharp loss in sales and pull their advertising bucks. So the channel made damn sure that timeslots remained static since they sold those timeslots to companies with the promise that X age X gender demographic is going to be watching at X time.
That's not a thing with streaming so there shouldn't be as big of a problem about the wrong people watching the wrong show today.
BEYBLADE BEYBLADE LET IT RIP
How is that not true when people wrap their teen core personality around a genre of music or a movie? Books are also made to be sold to a consumer. Did you think Harry Potter was made specifically to be literature? This is a stupid argument, if you don't like it, quit watching. But do not try to ruin the party for everyone that does enjoy something simply because it does not mix with your imagined perception of what an intellectual pursuit and what people you never met before may or may not be liking in their own time with their own money.
Consumerism doesn't make for a healthy childhood. Kids should have works defined by their quality, and very often, toy based shows don't have quality. They aren't creator driven, they aren't passionate, they're capitalism and corporatism given an animated form.
>How is that not true when people wrap their teen core personality around a genre of music or a movie?
And that's bad. They shouldn't do that. Comfort branding is bad.
>Books are also made to be sold to a consumer.
And?
>But do not try to ruin the party for everyone that does enjoy something simply because it does not mix with your imagined perception of what an intellectual pursuit and what people you never met before may or may not be liking in their own time with their own money.
>"NOOO YOU CAN'T TELL PEOPLE TO STOP WORSHIPPING CORPORATIONS NOOO!"
Cry me a river.
Majority of that is said in the omnibus of GI Joe reprints vol. 1
He also spoke about it in this vid
m.youtube.com
Larrys pretty awesome. Had a complex system and put a lot of thought into making his characters and stories. He's also worked with films, is a musician, a war vet, and editor.
Shows should be creator driven. Nothing should be forced on the creator.
I have no idea what your point is.
EVERY PIECE OF MEDIA IS CAPITALIST SHIT
There's a difference between a creator driven show that artists actually want to work on, getting a merch deal and a toy driven show that no animator likes getting commissioned by a toy company.
Not a god damned thing has intellectual merit according to this overly romanticized concept.
Shakespeare wrote political intrigue entertainment to get paid and get laid
Mozart wrote sex scandal stories to get paid, live the high life and party a rock star
Mark Twain wrote low class entertainment and kids books for the paycheck after quitting his job
Steven Foster write ad jingles and theme songs for sporting events
Jules Verne wrote cheap ($.10) entertainment that could be picked up at a grocery store
and all of it was used to sell movies, albums, tv series, and built further upon for even more corporate branded profits. Yet those are
>"Soulful culture!"
So what should they be doing? What intellectual pursuits should people be forced to do instead?
There's a difference between creator driven projects and toy company driven projects.
They should be working for the betterment of humanity, not indulging in lowest common denominator drivel manufactured to be consumed by the brainless minions and followers like yourself.
>animator
Yikes. There are no animators in western TV animation and not a single 'creator' in any of these 'creator' (writer) driven shows has done keyframes for their shows
Actually get a feel for what interests them the most in life, form their own beliefs, learn history, philosophy, science, learn what interests them. Do anything else.
I don't get what you're saying in regards to his situation.
Fun Fact
98% of humanity ARE brainless minions that will continue to be brainless minions that follow the leader no matter how much you enforce "Soulful culture" pursuits onto them.
Selling toys and vidya is the bread and butter of anime.
I don't get it, why is it okay when Japan does it? People love their mountains of Gundam, Pokemon, Dragonball, and Beyblade merch. And no one makes lengthy essays about the souless corporations and how terrible it is that video games and toy have animated tie-in series that are only made to sell the toys and games.
Yet when Hasbro tries to make another Transformers or Mattel makes another MOTU we get everyone coming out of the woodwork to complain about capitalism as much as humanly possible. Half the time it's a 10+ minute video essay from a guy with shelves of Star Wars and Sonic the Hedgehog statues behind them.
I don't make excuses for Japan either. They're equally soulless.
These Anons said it the best , the Japs have condensed the entire process of making commercials disguised as shows into an art form of both unabashed commercialism and limited creativity.
Who are you quoting?
Star Wars never gets this type of corporatism complaining. When people post videos screeching about Star Wars, it comes in the form of people complaining about how politics are being injected into the movies, or whining about a character just being a demographic caricature for Twitter good boy points.
They are totally cool with each and every character ever seen in the far wide angle background shots of Jabba's Palace or the Cantina having their own book, comic miniseries, and a dozen different variant figures with repaints and sometimes their own spinoff side cast. No one complains about that, and somehow it's not consumerism.
There’s a lot of that going on lately
OP pic makes Masters of the Universe look like the Brady Bunch.
America still does it, they just lowered the age demographic they target. Now all shows made to sell whole aisles worth of toys are preschool Playhouse Disney, PBS, and Nick Jr stuff.
There is just hardly any show made to sell action figures to 10 year olds any more. But things like Shimmer & Shine, Doc McStuffins, PJ Masks, overwhelming majority of the toy sections of Target or Wal-Mart are going to be the toylines of these preschool age shows. As well as the entirety of the kids bedding area.
And this was not done in response to a law or any channel but toy companies not willing to compete with video game companies. Most kids stop wanting toys for birthdays and Christmas and start wanting video games instead starting around age 10. Age 6-11 toylines like MOTU and TMNT suffered as a result of not wanting to share a market with Nintendo.
a minor inconvenience. a good chunk of you were still inside your parents' developing gonads
>Consumerism doesn't make for a healthy childhood. Kids should have works defined by their quality, and very often, toy based shows don't have quality. They aren't creator driven, they aren't passionate, they're capitalism and corporatism given an animated form.
...The fucks your point?
As a kid I grew up on the Spawn movie, BTAS, Ninja Turtles Movies, STAS, X-Men, Gundam, Transformers... so many things. I enjoyed it all and really took a liking to art.
I got scholarships to one of the best art collages that is always in the ~5 art collages in the USA. By mid teens I was already running a art-program in my local youth center. By late teens I was already on a professional level. I was often the only one in afterschool programs and I actually know the level of my IQ from tests.
All of those things I enjoyed have their purpose. None of that is on any level of technicality to great artists in classical history, but they have their own merits and energy and you can say they contributed to anything I did. And your disregarding real artists putting in work and skill making figures.
You seem to mistake self awareness for anything else. You also think that cramming "High quality intellectual" media is going to make people smarter or achievers.
You also seem to think kids are going to want to analyze a classical painting and enjoy it. And you're also mistaking the fact that children's media is all done brainlessly with zero thought and dont have their own merits and can be enjoyable. And you also don't even factor the general mental state or intillegence of the average person and what they can enjoy.
Maybe try rethinking things. Here's a Street Shark.