this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
899 points (99.7% liked)
memes
10668 readers
1829 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So, you're not wrong, but... these shows were literally designed to sell the toys. They were basically half-hour commercials.
G.I. Joe, TMNT, Transformers, X-Men, He-Man, Power Rangers, My Little Pony... they were all built on the same model (hey kids! whine at your parents until they buy our plastic ~~dolls~~ action figures!).
Quit making capitalism sound cool.
There is an excellent documentary series on Netflix called The Toys That Made Us which covers a lot of these. The Star Wars episode was very interesting, it gives you a look at the wheeler-dealer moneymaking side of the franchise (and some of the early toys are hilariously bad).
Some of it is kind of cool, and produced some genuinely enjoyable cultural icons... but also a lot of it was very manipulative, and you end up realizing how much of this cultural period was manufactured, packaged and sold to us through TV.
The van shot pizzas, dude.
Very good show!