Anyone else notice that back in the 80s when a toyline had a movie made -the toyline died relatively soon after? Gi. Joe.. Transformers.. He-Man prob others but i've stopped remembering. Here's what my theory is - Toyline was decent/cartoon was great and generated decent $ - movie was made to make more $$, introduce new characters, get rid of old characters - have stores drop old peg warmers. Movie relative success -but kills off a crapload of characters probably scarring a few of us in the process. New characters are introduced but the age category of many the kids - makes the toyline a little less successful. BOOM - Depression era, for those of you not born yet or too young to remember - the toy lines in the mid 80s were astronomical. Gi.Joe figures normall at 3.99 skyrocketed to prices that went to 10.99 in places. (i think Eatons, Simpsons Consumers Distributing - oh i'm Canadian ) Keep in mind that in some areas 10$$ is minimum wage now. Imagine what it was 24 odd years ago. Thats probably why the toylines and cartoons died. $$ and the fact that half of north america went piss poor.
What? G1 died like ... 4 or 5 years after it's movie, same with GI Joe. That's not relatively soon. That's a long time.
First of all, I don't. But even if I did, how do you figure that? Japanese G1 ended in 1992; Japanese G2 began in 1993. Don't take my word for it; take it from Keibunsha's Transformers Generation book. Covers both generations in exhaustive detail.
Sorry there were a number of random tangents in there. how strong were the toy lines for that following years? were they as strong as the 1st 2 lines? and this is just musings..After the movies i remember the toy line being scarce in the stores -course mebbe the big dept stores were changing direction as well.
Huh? Hasbro ran so many G.I. Joe and Transformers' toy commercials back in the day during their own shows, I can't recall names, but I remember seeing Hasbro's logo appearing at the end of them. Wouldn't Hasbro have had to pay the same amount of money as any other company running commercials during the Transformers' time slot? I think Hasbro was the biggest sponsor of their shows. I figure G1 ended for a number of reasons, but I think these two are probably at the top: the original cast was replaced by characters not as "cool" as the original--Hasbro killed off nearly everyone from the original cast of characters in its first feature film (a thank you and f' you wrapped up in 80 or so minutes). The 80s had a number of interesting shows back then, and with new ones popping up out of nowhere, Transformers gradually lost its shine. I wouldn't be too surprised if shows like Robotech took a lot fans with during its first season. Its long story arc, transforming mecha and likable characters was more fun than G1 ever was.
Please be joking also i think killing off optimus prime was the best thing they ever did. Rodimus is always the more interesting character
I didn't even discover Robotech until Transformers ended. But, if we are talking "fun" Transformers has Robotech beat. As to which is better Macross (the meat of the Robotech series) or Transformers.... it's debateable.
*Sigh*, so many crappy answers (with a few good answers later in the thread). There was to be a G.I. Joe Season 3 (87-88) but it was cancelled before production. I'm not sure about a 5th season of G1 because Season 4 (87-88) was so short, 3 episodes. The question should lie not with Season 5 but Season 4 because that's where the show ended. And remember, "The Rebirth" was to have 5 parts but it was hastily cut down to 3, which is why it feels so rapid-pace. Something happened between when Season 4 was greenlit and while Season 4's "The Rebirth" was being produced that ended the series. There was something going on with Hasbro's funding of the productions at Sunbow. Hasbro pulled all their funding. It wasn't declining toy sales. The go-ahead for production of a 1987-88 season would have come sometime in late 86 or early 87. Xmas 86 was good, but sales were level with 1985, which was the highest year to then, but sales plummetted in early 1987. It could have been a quick reaction to pull the plug on the first sign of a cooling toy market. Some context for 1987. - TF G1 was still in the top 10 for best-selling toys in at least some months of 1987 (I'd love to have the data for each month). G.I. Joe was still up there too, He-Man was falling. - 1987 was considered one of the worst years in toy industry history for how much sales fell. Sales fell early on, which can't be attributed to the NES (which launched nationally ~Fall 86) because while it sold steady early on, it was off the radar of the toy industry and the business papers as a whole until late summer-fall 1987 when it rapidly heated up and became Xmas '87's "hot toy". The NES would have impacted 1988's toy sales as it continued to grow beyond Xmas in terms of console sales (not to mention G1's quality cheapening considerably). The big games out by early 1987 would be: Super Mario Bros, Ghosts N Goblins, Gradius, and most of the black boxes. The big games joining them by the end of 1987 would be: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Rad Racer, Castlevania. - TMNT toys only hit the shelves around June 1988 (there was a mini-series on tv in Dec 1987 though), had a weekly cartoon in 88-89, only getting a weekday cartoon in 89-90. - The 1987 Stock Market Crash occurred around 10/19/87 if memory serves me right on the day (-25% in 1 day), and while that scared people, the crash didn't impact toy & video game sales for the holidays. People viewed the crash as a one time occurrence and not the start of a new recession by mid-Nov 1987. BTW, the crash just erased all of 1987's gains, resetting the clock back to 12/31/86. 1987's growth was puzzling to many because it didn't match up with the indicators, and like the Flash Crash of 2010, it was new technology getting ahead of the regulations (all of 1987's growth was artificial). So... - No, it was not the NES that did in the cartoon. It was one factor doing in the toyline. - No, it was not "fucking turtles". - No, it was not shooter games. The 8-bit era was dominated by platformers, not FPSes. There were run n guns, which were the dominant genre in arcades then which had some popularity on the NES. The arcade chain of popularity goes: shoot-em-ups -> run n guns -> beat-em-ups -> fighters - No, it wasn't quite poor sales. Sales started to plummet in 1988 for a few reasons, but the decision to end the cartoon came in 1987. Hmm, I'll have to look into that. I thought Japan was booming til 1990 when their bubble popped. The 1980s was a strong decade for them overall but I might not know about a small but sharp downturn. I do know 1997-98 were a bad 1 1/2 years for Asia, a sharp recession stemming from currency attacks. It hit Thailand, South Korea, and a few other places the hardest, Taiwan & Hong Kong to a lesser extent. Japan was protected from it but it pulled down their growth significantly. 1987... you're measuring some criteria over others. If I remember correctly, 1985 had the highest sales, 1986 was down a bit but still stellar, 1987 was down more but it was still a solid-selling top 10 toy. It exited the radar in 1988 and from there slid into obscurity. 1987 was the peak of the toy boom. Just like any boom, irrational exhuberance follows, which meant big, expensive toys, Fortress Maximus & the Defiant Space Shuttle Complex (USS Flagg was 1985-86 though). Yes, the end of the cartoon didn't end G1 toy sales. Someone who looked at He-Man's ratings (new episodes 83-84, 84-85, but reruns in 85-86, 86-87 paired up with She-Ra) found 1 season of reruns can still keep mostly high ratings (would be 87-88 for TF) but about a third of the way into the 2nd season of reruns sees ratings plummet (would be 88-89 for TF, which had that kid Tommy & Optimus Prime host eps). Remember, one has to be careful equating their growing disinterest with the fanbase at large. I got relatives that were in the same grade level as you. One was into Transformers. Interest cooled off considerably over 1988 because they had a NES and the toys just seemed cheaper in quality that year. He had a fair number of 1987 figures, only a few 1988 figures, and 1, maybe 2 1989 figures (I remember Octopunch). I've seen this with other things-- the arrival of the NES lobbed off the older few years of the toy-buying spectrum. You were in one of the first years that flipped from toy-aligned to video game-aligned. That's why the toy industry retooled towards younger kids (more cartoony designs, neon colors, sound effects, etc). Previously, they had to appeal to younger & older kids alike, which is why there were elements of restrained cartooniness, some realism. Look at GI Joe's early years (say, 1984-1986. 1987 was bizarro in GI Joe & TF) to the later years (1991-1994). Changes in gun laws relating to toys are why Megatron wasn't re-issued like Optimus Prime was and why G2 made him a tank. Megatron was one of the last out the gate. Shockwave was ok as an unrealistic ray gun. Megatron was sold for about 2 years as a mail-order with Robot Points to get around this seemingly. And in the late '80s, the NES Zapper Light Gun was re-issued with orange & gray plastic instead of dark gray & light gray plastic. Sixshot, I wonder if he was designed as a challenge, to see if someone can engineer a TF toy with as many alternate modes as they could.
the show started going downhill cause of optimus priem dying since he had such an impact on kids but to make things better they had him come back by the end of the 3rd season but that did not help the toy sales were so poor there was nothing they could do so they just stopped the show.
It could have been Asia in general rather than specifically Japan, I'm pulling from memory. Since it deals with the effect of economic downturn on Animation and Toy production factories, Asia-outside-Japan makes more sense as that's where that stuff really happened and it jives well with your info on the sharp recession there. Apparently that had a huge effect on Hasbro's choices for that year. I think it was mentioned in Toyfairs interviews about Inhumannoids iirc. But I know I've seen it mentioned in another set of interviews about the era as well. -ZacWilliam, it really struck me when I read it, in a "what if" sorta way, as it apparently had such an effect on lines I loved as a kid. I would have LOVED to see Inhumanoids and Visionaries continue, not to mention Sunbow TF and Joe toons and it was interesting to hear about a single root cause for losing all that.
Me too, especially Visionaries. That series was awesome. Unfortunately they don't even have official DVDs of them - though there is a site that sells DVDs of the two series. I don't know if they have permission or not, but I doubt it. And Visionaries at least can be traced back to the toys failing due to the numbers sold not matching up to the cost to produce them because of the hologram emblems, from my understanding.
I'd like to see more on this. Might you have links to more info? It's strange to hear that shows/toy lines got cannceled because of asian markets.... because I always was under impression that they just plain failed. I'm oddly happy to hear that they had some success. On the other hand it's sad to know that Hasbro didn't get back on the horse and start making cartoons again a few year later.
I don't. I can't remember where i read it either, but it does seem to be a commonly held view in the G.I.Joe community (?)* Beyond that, Jim Shooter alleged that Sunbow's numbers were overly optimistic, and that this simply caught up on them where their working relationship with Hasbro was concerned. He did also say that differences between Marvel and Sunbow as to how brands should be handled was a source of tension between the two companies.....so he may be biased. Actually, as i recall it now (?) his commentary seemed less than impartial. *i'm pretty sure the stories about DIC offering Hasbro a financial incentive came from sources other than Shooter, but honestly i can't remember now.
Why were DIC quite so keen to get GI Joe? Has there ever been any rumour that DIC or any other company made a similar offer to Hasbro for Transformers?
