The cartoon was entertainment in it's own right? It may have been a facade, but the veneer was pretty thick.

I enjoyed many cartoons as a child and never got any of the toys. The only ones I remember wanting were the transformers, because my friend had them and so there was social pressure.

Arguably the whole of HN (the argument is far from watertight IMO ;o)) is here to promote YCombinator and their associates; but it's still valuable to me beyond that. I mean that's how it works, provide something of benefit and surreptitiously embroigle your insidious messages in to that of how someone is inferior without your product.

It is - possibly - all terrible.

Children's cartoons on TV aren't usually great, but at least there's a curation process. There's only so much airtime, so we're only going to spend a minute asking us to tune in next week. Not 20% of the time asking us to subscribe and like amd follow. FCC enforcement makes it unlikely that truly awful stuff gets mixed in.

He-man always came with a lesson at the end, iirc.