Dr. Toon: When Reagan Met Optimus Prime
Licensed characters like My Little Pony (1986, developed in conjunction with Hasbro) charmed prepubescent female audiences. The American Greeting Card Company, through its "Those Characters from Cleveland" division, managed to develop an entire series based on their licensed characters: Kideo TV (1986) marketed The Get-Along Gang, The Popples, and Rainbow Brite to young girls. That same greeting card company had long since cornered that market for grade school girls with its saccharine production of The Care Bears series in 1985. For those in their tween years, Hasbro helped to develop a show called Jem in which pre-teens could watch a female rock-star fantasy and then go out and purchase the products accordingly.
Another casualty of placing product over story, according to Lamb, was that continuity suffered, at least partly because writers had limited power over their stories.
In short, many of the toy-based series birthed by deregulation tended to be cookie-cutter affairs, with clearly defined good-vs.-evil storylines, recurrent plots, and few attempts to establish backstory or give much depth to characters. Another limiting factor was the fact that one successful formula or toy spawned imitators, and originality was the prime casualty in such cartoons. For example, Hasbro's Transformers (Marvel/Sunbow) and Tonka/ Hanna Barbera's Challenge of the Gobots both aired in 1984 and seemed to share the same storyline: Battling cadres of robots end up taking their centuries-long battles to Earth and find human allies. It is probably no surprise that as late as 1987 the Lightyear/KK&D/Coca Cola production Dinosaucers recycled those exact same elements using alien dinosaurs in the place of robots.
The demands of a 65-episode "season" meant that the animation was farmed out to many sources, and at times it is amazing that some of them look as good as they do. Others, such as Thundercats (Rankin-Bass/LJN, 1985) were marred by stiff and inconsistent animation even when it featured interesting plots. That did not keep Thundercats from becoming America's most popular syndicated cartoon show within a year of its debut, but few would claim that animation reached new heights in shows like Bravestarr, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Silverhawks or Dragon Flyz.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Golden Age of Deregulation (roughly 1983-1989) was that it dominated the memories of a generation. Many college-age Americans spent their formative years during the Fowler era, and He-Man, She-Ra, and the Transformers are now cherished relics of their childhoods. It was they who collected nearly one billion plastic figures, strained their thumbs on Atari games, wore out batteries by the truckload, and spent dreamy afternoons by the TV watching Voltron and Legend of Zelda.
Deregulation, in the final analysis, did not make American animation any better, did little to further the art, and negated creativity and originality as benchmarks for animated TV fare. It can be argued that the decade prior to deregulation produced few outstanding programs, but at least they engaged some level of the imagination. In the age of Ronald Reagan and Optimus Prime, this claim was harder to prove. Cartoon shows of the deregulation era were too often nothing more than soulless vehicles for product promotion, brightly colored symbols of corporate capitalism's ascendancy over children's entertainment.
This column completes my 11th year as a freelance commentator for AWN. I cannot thank the site enough for giving me the opportunity to share my views on animation, history, and popular culture with you. Everyone seems to have a blog these days, but I hope to bring you, my esteemed readership, something unique and thoughtful every month. Without your hits, comments and support, the column never would have made it this far. Thanks to all!
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Legislation was introducted in 1990 called the Children's Television Act. It established guidelines for children's television programming.
I'm curious to know what happened in 1989? Was regulation reintroduced?
Nice article.
Pac-man isn't owned by Nintendo, though. Pac-man is owned by Namco. Nintendo did license video games for cartoons at the time, though. I remember watching Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. on TV as a kid.
Good read, I really enjoyed it. As a cartoon lover in my early thirties, I grew up on a steady diet of television and still cherish many memories of those shows and their respective products. It's rather sad to grow up and realize that some of the things I once cherished were the product of a calculated sales pitch and although I've come across this topic before, your article explained it far better to me than others.
I often visit sites like Youtube and find a collective of like-minded nostalgia types who love to revisit this era of cartooning. I find a lot of the comments that people post tend to lean toward the "cartoons today suck" and "these poor kids should have been around in the 80's". Although I do miss those times and the sheer volume of programming that was available, in particular the unfortunate demise of Saturday morning cartoons, I find that there has been a sort of re-balancing of quality. For every GI Joe and Transformers that I miss, there is a plethora of fresh ideas like The Misadventures of Flapjack, Chowder, Adventure Time, Mighty B, etc. I suppose since these shows don't hover around the idea of pushing a product, they are less likely to be hindered creatively.
Interesting post. I have to agree that a lot of these shows were advertisements for toys and not much more, and it saddens me to learn about all the toy company regulations imposed on the creators during such a "free and unregulated" time in American history. However, as a viewer of many of them (and another one of those college-aged viewers mentioned in the article), I feel like they all did a decent job of hiding the advertising. I remember being a big fan of the Super Mario shows, as well as The Real Ghostbusters, and although the stories certainly weren't in depth, I don't remember them coming off as product placement in the least.
If anything, I feel the real product placement problem in kids tv has become far worse today. The ultimate example would have to be the Yu-gi-oh series (I believe it was GX?) In the few episodes I've seen, it seems the characters challenge each other to a card duel each time and spend the majority of the last 10 minutes playing the card game, literally speaking out each action, how many cards they have left, how their play gives them points, ect. It could be my lack of interest in today's programs, or my love of the old ones, but it seems to have gotten worse with time.
I'm curious to know what the regulations are today and if they are being circumvented more now or are there less regulations now that there were back then?
One day back in the 80s I was visiting the GI Joe production office & noticed a chart on the wall: down its side was a list of episodes... & across its top the line-up of vehicles made by Hasbro to accompany the action figures. Short and simple, the chart was there to make sure all the GI Joe vehicles got equal exposure in the series. On the other hand, I read a fanzine interview with Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck's creator and GI Joe story editor) years ago who said Hasbro never interfered with the show's scripting.
My personal problem with those series was the simplistic 'good' vs. 'evil' template they all followed. Life is a little more complicated than that and even (or especially) in a cartoon aimed at young kids it wouldn't hurt to acknowledge it.
As one of the "college-aged" people you mention in the bit about these cartoons' legacies, I've got to say that it's important to note that there just wasn't much else on at the time. As far as I can remember, most of the cartoons on TV at that time were an extended advertisement for one thing or another, even Dungeons and Dragons (which young me was rather disappointed to discover was actually a math-heavy board game.)
I have reviewed this article several times (an onerous task since I read it many times during writing and editing it) and can nowhere find any statements implying "Reagan sucks" or "Capitalism is evil." Nor do I consider my readers "knuckle draggers" or "idiots". As for politics being involved in the article, I regularly comment on the intersection between culture and animation, and if politics does not involve our culture, then I must have missed something between Eisenhower and Obama, the presidents and party leaders during my lifetime.
It's interesting that you state "When I saw the title I knew..." you give yourself away as a reactionary and made false assumptions about what you believed it was I wanted to say. Sadly, you mistook cultural commentary for polemic, which is not my forte.
Here's something interesting for both of us, however: I wonder how many of these corporate cartoons would have been successful if pitched to networks or cable channels as original, independent projects?
I'm glad you enjoyed these shows. I think I said something about that in my comments on their legacy, lest you think I'd like to pull a George Orwell and destroy them all retroactively.
3 pages and you could've just said what you really wanted. Reagan sucks, capitalism is evil, blah,blah,blah.
I have fond memories of those shows. God forbid there's clear cut good vs. evil!
The free market should decide. Kids loved those cartoons. PIXAR's characters are toys as well and a plethora of merchandise. Yet no complaints about that.
Kids love cartoons and toys. It's a win/win for kids. Oh the horror!
"deregulation...negated creativity" Are you serious?! LOL
How can one be creative with a bunch of regulations? Unless you want to regulate certain ideals out of cartoons and promote your worldview?
I find it laughable when I see people drone on about "deregulation" are usually the most oppressive of people.
A toy company who creates a toy line and in turn makes into a cartoon has every right to control the content.
Bottom line is perhaps what you consider a great artistic cartoon is for a small niche of Americans. Most kids will be like "Meh".
When I saw the title I knew it was just another progressive expose on the horrors of capitalism and that evil Reagan.
This meme of anything remotely "right wing" is for idiots and knuckle draggers is getting old.
It'd be nice to go a day without politics being injected into every damn issue.
Has anything changed since then? Product promotion/integration is such a large part of all media, not just cartoons, that I'm having a hard time thinking of any examples that live outside of that sphere.
Is marketing a toy, video game, or cereal just a way to expand the bottom line of any creative venture, or are we still watching commercials in between our comercials?
I suppose it's a chicken/egg type of arguement. I'll just go back to listening exclusively to NPR. I already have the tote bag to remind me.
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