The Half-Hour Toy Commercial, Part 2: More Than Meets the Eye!

The story behind the Transformers begins with with a pair of toylines from Japanese toymaker Takara (also known as Tomy in the US) known as Microman and Diaclone. In 1974 some of the Microman line was licensed by Mego (known to geeks like me for their wide collection of DC and Marvel Super-Hero doll...uh...8-inch action figures) and was marketed as The Micronauts. The Micronauts toyline failed (though the Marvel Comic based on it is quite fondly remembered by many and, like Rom: Spaceknight, outlasted the toy on which it was based) but the technology behind the line was bought by Hasbro who then used it to rebrand it's GI Joe line from the '60's as GI Joe: A Real American Hero. As anyone who was a little boy (or was buying toys for one) in the early '80's knows quite well, GI Joe was a giant success. So much so that Hasbro elected to buy the rights to Takara's Diaclone line as well; Diaclone was a spin-off of Microman, featuring exceptionally tiny Microman figures piloting transformable mecha (designed by future Macross -- known by many in the US as Robotech -- designers Shoji Kawamori and Kazutaka Miyatake). Hasbro decided to follow the same formula that had brought them success with GI Joe; partnering with Marvel Productions and the Griffen-Bacal Advertising agency (which also brought their own animation studio --Sunbow--into the mix) they used a three-pronged marketing strategy which included the toyline, a Marvel comic-book tie-in, and an animated series. Marvel's then-editor in chief, Jim Shooter, developed the basic plot outline--warring robot factions, good Autobots waging their battle to des-troy the e-vil forces of....the Decepticons--and then brought in comics great Dennis O'Neil to create character names and profiles. For whatever reason, Hasbro was unsatisfied with the bulk of what O'Neil turned in and asked for revisions, which O'Neil declined to do (he is, however, credited with having named Optimus Prime). Shooter then brought in Bud Budiansky, who would go on to write the Transformers comic for Marvel, who then proceeded to hammer out the characters and scenarios most of us remember.

The animated series was produced jointly by Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions, with the bulk of the animation done by Toei (in Japan) and Akom (in Korea). It debuted in America in syndication in September of 1984, with the three-part pilot "More Than Meets the Eye." This was immediately followed by the series. Oh, and in case you're wondering as to why I'm covering Transformers before GI Joe, it's because, while Marvel/Sunbow produced two syndicated GI Joe mini series ("GI Joe: A Real American Hero" --also called "The MASS Device,"-- and "The Revenge of Cobra") in 1983 and '84, the series itself didn't start until 1985, a year after the debut of Transformers. You probably weren't wondering. Oh well...

Suffice to say, Transformers was a big success, not only in the US, but also in Great Britain and Japan. This actually makes discussing the series a little difficult, as, after the US series ended in 1987, Japanese animators Toei produced 5 more Japan-only Transformers series (using the same character designs and plot threads from the original series), and Great Britain had at least one season cobbled together from old animation. What's more, the Transformers has been resurrected a number of times, as Transformers:Beast Wars, Transformers: Armada, and the more recent Transformers: Animated (ick, in my opinion), just to name a few, right up to the most recent version appearing exclusively on The Hub. For the purposes of this article, I will only be discussing what has come to be called Transformers, Generation 1, the series that aired in the US from 1984-87.

This one loomed large in my childhood. The toys were a pure delight; the first one I got was given to me by my dad (not even on my birthday! How about that?) and was one of the smaller plastic Transformers that I now understand were from the Diaclone line (the most famous of these was, of course, Bumblebee, though that wasn't the one I was given). Later I got the Lamborghini, Sunstreak, and was just about as pleased as a nine-year old could be. The cartoon was just icing on the cake; it was on in the early morning, just before I went to school, so I got to watch it while eating breakfast. Let's make no bones about it, it was an adventure series aimed at elementary-school kids, but even so, it had echoes of the epic in it, particularly in the later seasons. The animation was the kind anyone familiar with a Marvel/Sunbow production would expect; occasionally quite good, sometimes a bit sketchy but, somehow, always compelling (Marvel/Sunbow , together or apart, also produced Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Hulk, GI Joe, Dungeons and Dragons, and a host of others, just in case you didn't know, and, in the case of Marvel Productions, was the last remnant of the old Termite Terrace that produced all those great Warner Bros. cartoons). There's a definite anime flavor to the animation that's subtle, but easy to catch if you know what to look for. But, as with anything, the appeal was not so much the animation as the characters, and the mythos.

The basic storyline as established for the cartoon was that the Autobots and Decpeticons had for centuries (or perhaps millennia) been fighting for control of their home planet, Cybertron. When energy reserves begin to run low, the Autobots launch a mission, led by their commander Optimus Prime, to search for new resources. Optimus and his crew are pursued by the villianous Megatron and a contingent of Decepticons. Both ships crash-land on a prehistoric Earth and are, for reasons I can't remember, placed in some form of suspension until they awake in our modern era. They take the forms of various vehicles and machines in order to camoflage themselves, and so their conflict continues, with humanity and the Earth now thrown into the mix.

The heart and soul of The Transformers was Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots. He was pretty much everything any little boy (and probably not a few little girls) might hope to grow up to be: powerful, compassionate, just, intelligent and heroic. And he was a giant robot; I mean, c'mon, who didn't want to be a giant robot? At least once? The characters that surrounded him, except in the VERY beginning, tended to fluctuate; at first you had Ironhide and Doc and Jazz and so forth, but the writers would occasionally haul somebody else in if they could use them to a specific purpose. Bumblebee was always a constant; he was the perenniel "little brother" to the other Autobots, a young soldier, spy and scout with loads of courage and potenetial but little comparative experience (which is funny, since according to the series even the youngest of the Autobots is several million years old). On the opposite side you had the sneering, brutal Megatron and his lieutenants, the ambitious Starscream and the coldly obedient Soundwave. An interesting twist in this series was that the heroes always seemed to be playing catch-up to the villians; the Decepticons controlled Cybertron, where the Autobot resistance had been driven underground, and controlled the "cosmic elevator" (or whatever) that allowed them to get supplies from home. The Autobots allied themselves with humanity, but that ended up doing us more good than it did them. The essential difference between Autobots and Decepticons was not so much that one was good and the other evil as that the Autobots worked to preserve life and sustain themselves while the Decepticons only concern was to sustain themselves and to secure their means of doing so. As time went on we learned more about the history of Cybertron, about how both Autobots and Decpticons had been slaves to the Quintessons (and their respective emblems were slave brands--the Autobots as workers and the Decepticons as soldiers).Ultimately the Decepticons would be driven from Earth, but the Autobots would lose Cybertron to them in the process. Optimus would die and be resurrected; the horrendous Unicron, Devourer of Worlds would show up (he was, I'm not kidding, a truly titanic robot that transformed into a planet--after his destruction in Transformers: The Movie there was a whole storyline where one of the Decepticons was hearing voices telling him to reattach Unicron's head to Cybertron so that Unicron might be reborn...crazy stuff).

The Transformers ran in first-run syndication from 1984 to 1987, for a total of 98 episodes. Transformers:The Movie (the animated one, not the one with Shia LaBoeuf) came out in '86, and is well worth taking a look at (and yes, that's Orson Welles as Unicron, believe it or not). A fine adventure 'toon, all things considered. A good deal of fun.

Next time: GI Joe!

The Half-Hour Toy Commercial, Part 1: In the Beginning...

Okay, because YOU demanded it (well, maybe not): Toy-Based Cartoons: Crap, or Completely Worthless Drek?





Just kidding, folks. This particular post is inspired mostly by irritation; I was tooling around on Cartoon Brew, a site devoted to all things animated, and in one talkback thread a number of commentators were talking smack about the phenomenon of the "half-hour toy commercial," i.e., the animated cartoon based on a toy. If you're like me, some of your fondest cartoon memories stem from such fare, so you can understand if I felt a little miffed by the prevailing attitude. So, I did a little research on the subject and voila, this post is what you get. Don't you feel lucky?





First off, a history lesson. You'd think the "half-hour toy commercial" has existed as long as there's been TV animation, right? Not so. In the mid-sixties, Mattel attempted to produce an animated series based on Hot Wheels, their venerable miniature toy car line. They received the smackdown in no short order from the FCC, who then issued a ruling that said, essentially, that no cartoon (or children's program) was to be based on a toyline, (or existing product, aimed at children) for all the reasons that you might imagine (I haven't been able to discover if this Hot Wheels series was ever actually aired, or if it died in the production stage). Cartoon characters could be used to advertise products, and were (the Flintstones were used to sell cigarettes, Jonny Quest to sell sneakers, etc), but no cartoon could be completely based around a saleable product. This did not cover, for reasons that I've not seen made clear but am grateful for, cartoons based on comic books, or cartoons that themsleves inspired toylines. This ruling held until approximately 1980, when it was significantly amended; the FCC's new policy stated that a cartoon COULD be based on a toy, so long as that toy was not otherwise advertised during the cartoon's commercial slots. This ruling was by no means unchallenged but the floodgates, so to speak, were opened.





At this point you might be asking "So Rob, what was the first cartoon to be based on a toy?" Well, here's where it gets a little hazy. There are cartoons based on product lines that include toys, but are not inspired by toys specifically; there are cartoons that are not based on toys, but clearly hope to inspire them (this coined the term "toyetic" among cartoon producers, to refer to elements of a show that could help to support a toyline, such as special vehicles and whatnot; Thundercats is perhaps the best example of this), and various permutations along those lines. The first cartoon to be based on a licensed product line was American Greeting Card's Strawberry Shortcake. This line began in 1977 and had multiple iterations in the form of cards, toys, games, etc. The cartoon series began in 1980 and as such, technically qualifies as the first "half-hour animated commercial" for anything. Then you have Pac-Man, based on the legendary video game, which premiered in 1982 (and was considered such a hot property at the time that its commercial breaks were double the normal length to accommodate all its advertisers). If you asked most people who care anything about the topic, they'd say the first was probably Filmation's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, given that it was first a toyline and then a cartoon. Be that as it may, I'm not going to attempt to be exhaustive in my discussion here; there are simply too many series to discuss with any breadth and, to be honest, a lot of them really are pure crap (Rubik the Amazing Cube? Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders? Meh.) In most cases, few even remember the really bad ones, or the equally lame toylines they were based on. I, instead, am going to focus on series I feel were particularly good, particularly important, or ones that, for ephemeral reasons, I just plain liked. It's my post, so I'll talk about what I want. Nnyah!



He-Man and the Masters of the Universe:

-based on the popular sword and sorcery toyline from Mattel. Mattel had originally intended to base a line of toys on Conan the Barbarian, given the resurgence on interest in the character brought about by Marvel Comics’ adaptation and the (then) recent Arnold Schwartzenegger film. Somewhere in production, however, either out of a failure to secure merchandising rights or someone getting the idea that a marauding Nietzschean barbarian probably wasn’t the best model for a line of children’s toys, they came up with Masters of the Universe instead. The backstory they came up with, as detailed in the mini-comics that were included with each figure (beautifully illustrated by Conan veteran Alfredo Alcala) was very reminiscent of Conan’s world, with some science fiction elements thrown in by way of Eternia’s being a post-apocalyptic wasteland with advanced weapons and vehicles as well as magic thrown into the mix. The toys were a big success, so Mattel commissioned Filmation, then a leader in adventure cartoons, to come up with an animated series. Filmation dumped the original premise for the one most of us are familiar with, in which Adam, the prince of Eternia (now more like Flash Gordon’s Mongo –-Flash Gordon, perhaps not coincidentally, being another animated series produced by Filmation—than Conan’s Hyboran age), presented with a magic sword by the mysterious Sorceress of Greyskull which can transform him into He-Man, the “Most Powerful Man in the Universe,” defender of all that is good and true and so forth. His nemesis, the evil Skeletor, plots with his henchmen to conquer Eternia, and also to control the mysterious Castle Greyskull and thus gain, one imagines, absolute power. The premise combines elements of a traditional super-hero scenario with the afore-mentioned Flash Gordon, and bears a more than passing thematic resemblance to another Filmation series, Blackstar, which preceded it by about a year.

I freely admit that I enjoyed He-Man quite a lot when it originally aired in syndication. It was exciting and, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, adventure cartoons have always been something of a rarity. Filmation actually did a lot of great work on this series; the character designs are excellent (and the female characters actually hot, which was a bit of a novelty in 1983, when this series premiered), the backgrounds are detailed and appropriately surreal, and the music is actually quite effective in setting tone and mood. Still, even at the time, I thought the show’s reliance on stock animation was a bit hokey (a lot of character action sequences, clearly rotoscoped, were used repeatedly; this is kind of a hallmark of Filmation productions). Believe it or not, even with the cost-cutting measures of re-used animation and a limited voice cast, He-Man was one of the costliest productions of the ‘80’s because it was entirely produced in the U.S., by union animators, rather than relying on overseas studios. For the time, many of the scripts were groundbreaking, dealing with actual character issues (Adam’s feelings that he can only be of use to anyone through He-Man, Teela’s discovery that she’s an adopted child, Orko’s feeling’s of uselessness, etc.). Looking at it now though, it seems so extraordinarily dated as to make me cringe, especially with the hit-you-over-the head morals tacked on at the end of each episode. He-Man actually pioneered that particular format, one echoed in most toy-based adventure 'toons throughout the ‘80’s. Even though I remember this series fondly, I can’t say it’s one I’d care to see again, even through the rosy spectacles of nostalgia.

He-Man ran in first-run syndication from 1983 to 1985 for a whopping 130 episodes, and it’s spin-off series She-Ra, Princess of Power (1985-87, and introduced in the film The Secret of The Sword, which I am only slightly embarrassed to admit I paid money to see) ran for 77; both episode counts are quite impressive, especially when you consider that a good run for an animated series today is 65 episodes. He-Man was reworked into the almost unrecognizable The New Adventures of He-Man, from French/Canadian animation company DIC, in 1990, and was revived in 2002 as a series, for Cartoon Network, from Mike Young Productions, which more or less faithfully followed the characters and scenarios laid out in the original 'toon.


A few things I didn't know about He-Man, that I learned while doing research for this article: J.Michael Strczynski (creator of Babylon 5) and Paul Dini (one of animation's top writers and one of the guiding lights behind Batman: The Animated Series) were both writers for He-Man, and Bruce Timm (also of Batman: TAS and currently one of the heads of the DC Universe animation wing of WB Animation) was an animator on it; Timm's first published comics work was one of the mini-comics included with a He-Man action figure.

Well, that’s all for now. Join us next time for The Half-Hour Toy Commercial , Part 2: The Transformers!