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Comment by analogmemory | Hacker News Reader

I recently re-watched some episodes of Transformers and GI Joe that I LOVED as a little twerp. Total garbage writing and animation, which makes me think anyone can make children's shows with some colorful animation and catchy words/songs. This Chu Chu looks like I'm waiting for the acid to kick in.

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Total garbage writing and animation, which makes me think anyone can make children's shows

However there where also a 100 shows kind of like GI Joe and Transformers at same time that all died after a season or two and no one remembers. It would be interesting to see if anybody has done any analysis as to what made the successful bad show more successful than the unsuccessful bad show.

It was the toys. It's not rocket science. The show + toys had to be appealing and the vast majority of competing shows had no toys or terrible ones.

It was one of my welcome-to-the-real-world moments growing up when I learned that the Transformers were initally toys and that the animation series was created later to increase sales.

I grew up in a country that had no Transformers toys (and I had no idea that these exist at all) but I still liked the show. Why? No idea..

Same for me with the Pokemon anime. A few years ago, I re-watched the first two episodes and GOOD LORD was that horrible. Some childhood memories should better be left in the past...

On the other hand, those came out in the US when I was around 20 years old and I remembered visiting my folks during the summer and hanging out with my younger half-brother. He was maybe preschool age and watched plenty of cartoons and other kids shows.

Compared to most of them, Pokemon was actually pretty decent. It had a (very basic, but still...) storyline about kids going off on kid adventures and meeting lots of weird cartoon animals. I mean, sure there was the whole "catch wild animals and train them to fight each other" thing but it wasn't really any more violent than the GI Joe or He-Man or Voltron shows I watched as a kid.

Going back to those, the only real common negative thread is how they were basically ads for toys and games. Taken outside of that, I saw Pokemon as a halfway decent "starter anime" that was loads better than some of the live-action cartoons of the time (Power Rangers and its knockoffs were just awful).

Sure, it was better than average for its time. When I watch it today, I don't compare it to GI Joe or Power Rangers, I compare it to Gravity Falls and Adventure Time.

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