The 80’s were a hell of a time to be a kid.
No, they weren’t the best time to be a kid. Every person on the planet today insists the decade of their formative years was the sweetest time in human history to grow up. The truth is every decade over the last half century had its pros and cons.
But the 80’s offered a rare combination of entertainment and brash consumerism no other decade could; Saturday morning cartoons.
After-school cartoons quickly followed suit and kids were soon being bombarded with unadulterated capitalism. And they loved every second of it.
Programming aimed directly at kids existed long before 1980 and animation is a considerably larger (and more sophisticated) industry in a post Saturday morning world. But the 80’s were an entirely different beast. When the American government slapped down strict marketing and parental controls governing kids animation, Saturday mornings became an absolute free for all and cartoons quickly morphed into half hour long commercials for toys, games and even candy. How crazy was it? The Rubik’s Cube, Pac-Man and even gummy bears had Saturday morning cartoons that lasted for years.
Animation became the tent pole of a toy line’s success or failure. It was a tried and true formula; a cartoon show would hit the airwaves before the toy line hit the shelves, hooking kids on the mythology the cartoon invented for the toy (usually within reach of the annual Christmas buying orgy). When Transformers invaded North American toy stores, they discovered that the very similar yet much cheaper (and therefore more parent friendly) Go-Bots were already there. But as we all know, Optimus Prime and company would declare retail supremacy over their toy shelf competition from Gobotron. What gave them the edge? The Transformers’ show-one of the most popular after school cartoons in history-beat the Gobots to the airwaves by a matter of weeks.
When Mattel launched it’s Bravestarr toy line with the hopes it would be their next gravy train, they made the titanic error of airing the cartoon show nearly a year after the toys appeared on store shelves. It was a mistake many pop culture historians point to when explaining why the property-which checked all the other boxes for retail success-died before it even had a chance.
Kids fell in love with the concept and the characters when they watched the cartoon. And that drove them to save up their allowance to buy the toys, put them on their Christmas lists or just mercilessly pester their parents until Mom and Dad finally gave in and bought some. The 80’s were an unprecedented boom or bust roller coaster ride for the toy industry, with the cream of the crop raking in hundreds of millions of dollars before flaming out like a supernova. And the biggest cog of any successful marketing machine was a cartoon show.
And don’t look now, but it looks like an 80’s resurgence will inject new life into a battered and bruised toy market.
While Snake Eyes didn’t exactly set the box office on fire last summer (outside of Black Widow, F9 and Shang-Chi has anything this year?), it has rekindled interest in the G.I. Joe franchise. And while it won’t be a surprise to see some Snake Eyes toys on a lot of shopping lists this fall, a rumoured G.I. Joe cartoon planned for 2022 could drive potential demand for Joe toys even higher and mean great things for toy stores this time next year.
The global toy industry has been facing some hard times lately. The demise of Toys’R Us in 2016 was a huge blow and the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the toy business harder than many others (both production and distribution have been brought to their knees). Anything that wasn’t Marvel, Lego or L.O.L faced the daunting task of generating consumer demand on its own. Until now.
You can even get a mashup of Transformers (perhaps the greatest surviving 80’s franchise) and the X-Men Animated Show (one of the greatest cartoons from the 90’s). The X-Spanse, a Black Bird jet that transforms into a robot bent on defending Mutant rights against human hatred, joins a family of cross-franchise Transformers that already includes the Delorean from Back to the Future and Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters. You can even get a My Little Pony with an Autobot insignia stamped on its ass.
Transformers has been one of the most persistent franchises in toy history, with a cartoon always on somewhere in the world and new toy lines hitting the shelves every year (usually aimed at adult collectors who have been addicted to the franchise since they were kids). But the conclusion of Netflix’s War For Cybertron trilogy and building hype around a new Beast Wars themed movie next summer could do wonders for toy sales.
And speaking of Ghostbusters, it was one of the most successful multimedia feel good stories of the 80’s. With a new movie looking like a possible hit this November, could new toys be that far behind? Especially this close to Christmas?
With DisneyPlus ushering in a new era for Star Wars, don’t be surprised to see tonnes of new merch based on red hot properties like The Bad Batch, Visions of Star Wars and The Book of Fett.
But perhaps no other 80’s property has been as thoroughly reinvented or rejuvenated as He-Man and The Masters of The Universe. While the first half of Kevin Smith’s Revelations was more than a little controversial, it got people talking and the second half should be a hit when it drops. And while some middle aged fans were unhappy with how the show departed from or underused some characters, it began attracting a new generation of fans (ones who weren’t alive when He-Man, Teela and the rest were defending Castle Grayskull the first time around).
And if new fans weren’t attracted by the bright light of that return, they could quite well be drawn to the shiny new CGI reboot Netflix will unleash later this month. The new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe show is a complete reimagining of the He-Man mythology tailor made for a new generation of fans. If successful, Mattel could find themselves with a pair of fanbases hungry for toys based on He-Man. And wouldn’t you know it, separate toy lines based on both are currently scheduled to hit toy shelves this fall.
(Mattel has even been taking advantage of the hype around MoTu, using it to sell a selection of “classic’ themed toys. It’s possible everyone from hardcore collectors to new fans could wind up buying an original He-Man, a new Battle Cat and a completely reimagined Skeletor from three different MoTU shows within weeks or even days of each other).
Between the possible return of Toys “R” Us in the U.S. (it’s still very much a thing here in Canada) and the renewed interest in toy franchises among consumers of all ages, the toy biz may have good reason to celebrate this Christmas season (even if we’re still knee deep in a pandemic. Thanks anti-vaxxers).
And it could all be thanks to the 80’s, the decade that refuses to die.
Image via www.variety.com
