Still, it outlasted most of its contemporaries. A third season of the cartoon following the movie's events aired, but a reduced budget led to many (but not all) episodes having much cheaper, uglier animation (a distressingly common occurrence for any cartoon lasting a few seasons back then), finally petering out with a super-short three-episode "season 4" mini-series wrapping things up. Turns out gruesomely killing off the characters kids were hoping to see kick butt on the big screen is kind of a bad move.
Transformers 1984 animated series episode list movie#
It even did so well as to get its own theatrical-release movie following the show's second season, though that didn't do so well either box-office-wise or audience-reception-wise. The Transformers aired in syndication, proving a tremendous success that pushed a lot of plastic. Jumping on the brand-new "advertainment" bandwagon of the early 80s, Hasbro teamed up with Marvel Comics and Sunbow Productions to produce cartoons for multiple toylines. Victory: Generally held as the best of the Japanese-original Transformers shows. (Japan, meanwhile, had no qualms about overt toy-shilling in kids' shows seemingly at any point.) Overt browbeating, or sneaky suggestion? But toy companies were very keen on the latter. It's kind of a toss-up as to which is the worse option, really. This prohibition even extended to the commercial breaks, meaning a commercial for the product in question could not air during the timeslot for the show made to advertise said toy. Deregulation pretty much inverted things: an entertainment program could exist solely to be about a product, but it could not overtly, directly tell its audience to buy this product available from fine retailers near you and be the envy of the neighborhood.
yet a show could be "sponsored" (read: owned) by a company with a product to sell, have the company name and product plastered everywhere, and bring the show to a screeching halt to directly address the audience and ham-handedly try and sell them the company's product. Previously, an entertainment program could not be about a product. In the early 1980s, one of the many facets of President Ronald Reagan's "deregulation" push was a change in the rules of how television programs could be used to advertise products in the United States, especially to children.