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!