“Toy firms are creating TV programs to sell”
If you’ve read my two books on action figure marketing in the eighties — Each Sold Separately* and Action Figures Not Included* — then you’re familiar with the backstory of how toys and cartoons merged in the early eighties. Government regulations relax, toymakers — spearheaded by Kenner and Bernie Loomis with Strawberry Shortcake — step in and quickly show how cartoons can sell toys, world of toymaking changes forever. That’s the basic story. Add in “and they overdo it, killing the Golden Goose” and you have the broad story of cartoons based on toys between 1980 and 1990.
Newspaper articles from the eighties embrace the “they just want to sell your kids toys!” angle, as demonstrated in this 1985 article by Ellen Goodman. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only newspaper article against toys published on February 16, 1985. Here’s an Associated Press article from that same day, written by Lawrence Killman and stating:
“In what is apparently the hottest marketing strategy in the toy business, manufacturers plan to introduce feature-length cartoons, Saturday morning series and holiday specials featuring animated versions of their new toys.”
Sounds like smart marketing to me.
Related articles
- 1984: Toymakers and “Pre-Packaged Fantasy” (battlegrip.com)
- Affiliate Link – Saturday Morning Mind Control (battlegrip.com)
- “Toymakers hit it big with the classics” (battlegrip.com)