Comment by dwild | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dwild | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> My kid is only two, so I'm not quite there yet, but most of this children's advertising makes my skin crawl. I'm glad to see that I was right about Paw Patrol, it's clearly modeled to be source for many lines of toys (wide cast of characters, each with their own theme and accompanying accessories that can be infinitely re purposed in different toy sets). Slap on "super hero" mode and you've added a whole other dimension to the matrix of possible toys.

That was always the case though. Star Wars isn't worth billions because of the movies, it's worth billions because of the branded products.

Never seen Transformers toys? GI Joe? TMNT? Childrens TV shows were always about selling toys, that was always the bread and butter.

I agree with everything else though, theses unboxing videos and theses "loot crate", they are quite new and play with the instant dopamine rush. They are quite dangerous and seriously need to be stopped. It's crazy that the FTC put so much effort with COPPA to stop "tracking kids" on Youtube, but did nothing against theses kind of videos.

> Childrens TV shows were always about selling toys, that was always the bread and butter.

As the article points out this simply isn't true. They weren't always like that. It was the direct result of a change in law during the Reagan presidency. All of your examples come after that.

Look at kid's shows from before the change in law. Say, the 1960s. Underdog, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Gilligan's Island, Flipper, Green Acres, Captain Kangaroo, etc.

It is maybe worth noting that TMNT started as an indie comic making fun of superheroes. Think about it, superhero turtles livin in the sewers... No particular point, I just think it's funny.

The point I choose to see is that consumerism and capitalism do not discriminate. Anything and everything can and will be assimilated and squeezed for every cent that it’s possible to extract, no matter how punk and anti establishment/anti commercial your original creations may have been. (see also: the appropriation of feminist/LGBTQ/other originally fringe movements iconography by major companies the moment it became profitable to do so)

This is one of the strengths of capitalism, I have thought about it many times.

It came up in a fairly exemplary way once when there was a fashion photographer in a group I went drinking with. Nice bloke with some interesting stories. He mentioned a plan for an elaborate practical joke at a fashion show by showing some crudely made post-apocalyptic style collection. Anything "scandalous" would effectively just end up being good publicity.

Yes, TMNT was very cool at the start, I always assumed it was some 'big monolith' that they sold out to, in fact, it was the original creators themselves. They saw $$$ in toys and completely adapted the creative line for toys, cartoons etc.. They pretty much cashed in on their indie creation.

As well they should have, the toys were great.

The story that I always remember is that TMNT is based roughly on Daredevil

In Daredevil, Matt Murdoch pushes an old man out of the way of a truck that contains chemicals that blind him but give him superhuman abilities. He is then trained by his mentor Stick the fight against The Hand.

In TMNT, there is an incident that involves chemicals getting into a sewer that transforms the turtles as well as the rat that is with them. That rat is named Splinter, and he trains the turtles to fight against The Foot.

Also no particular point aside from my own amusement!

There’s a lot of comics nerdery scattered throughout the early issues. Up to and including an issue that is basically about Jack Kirby and how Stan Lee screwed him over.

There is a Netflix series "The toys that made us" which chronicles the history of the toys and the TV shows. In some cases, the cartoon came first. In most, the toy came first followed by a manufactured cartoon to sell the idea to kids:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80161497

The Youtube channel Toy Galaxy[0] does the same thing.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoe3Qo_DymYyBR6X9VxFjQ

If anyone wants a taste of this show, this 1 minute clip about the arbitrary origins of He-Man’s Battle Cat is one of the funniest things I saw last year.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ponettplus/status/113087611982831...

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is a another classic example, as much of its storyline and character designs were constructed around being able to reuse random molds left over from other toy lines.

And all of the transforming robot series (Transformers, Gobots, etc.) were just attempts at repackaging existing toy lines from Japan for the US. That's why one of the Autobots (Jetfire) is a Macross fighter.

As a kid in this era, toys lines of shows/books were an immense joy. I understand concern over teasing kids too much with commercial products.. but unless it devolves into large social mania..(in which case makes some regulations) I don't think it's a problem at all.

Toys are what kids want. They want to connect reality with imagination at their level. Just like video games.

"Merchandizing! ...every kid's favorite: Space Balls the Flame Thrower"

Yeah, it's not new. It's a tried and true strategy that has been refined over the decades. That doesn't make it any better. It was as slimy then as it is now.

> That doesn't make it any better. It was as slimy then as it is now.

Oh yeah definitely, it still quite bad. It was just to mentions how that strategy isn't new and that we lived through similar abuse.

I remember transformers being one of the worst. Evey episode introduced new "characters"... Voltron was good, and then they needed a robot with like 50 cars that made up the big guy so there were more toys to sell.

> Star Wars isn't worth billions because of the movies, it's worth billions because of the branded products.

Counterpoint: Scarcity of baby Yoda merch. The show purposefully withheld information about the character from marketing departments for fear of spoiling the story. Star Wars wants to make tons of money, sure. But it's not why they're huge.

What scarcity? They may have played that close to the vest to not spoil the story, but just look at Disney run with it now[1]. It's hard to imagine a scenario where they weren't fully aware of the demand for merch that the character would generate.

[1] https://www.shopdisney.com/franchises/star-wars/

Do you not remember the months and months in which it was not possible to buy a baby Yoda doll, at any price?

The Mandalorian first aired 3 months ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com