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The Ridiculous History of Saturday Morning Cartoons, Part One: A Golden Age · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
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Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for uh Max the young
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Speaker 1: man Williams, and you'll see why that's appropriate for this series.
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Speaker 2: It's true. Does that make us the olds? Ben?
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Speaker 1: Oh, geez, well that's an old brown they do? You
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Speaker 1: call me Ben Bullen Ed Noel. We've both got a
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Speaker 1: little bit of gray in our hairs.
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Speaker 3: We do, but not a hair falling out, not a
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Speaker 3: receding hairline to be seen. Both fabulous heads of hair.
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Speaker 3: That's how it's going to remain. But what we do
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Speaker 3: have is a pretty rich and h and layered memory
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Speaker 3: of the past.
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Speaker 1: Yes, history is a palimp sayst And this is going
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Speaker 1: to be just so you all know, folks. This is
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Speaker 1: something we discussed as a series back in a few
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Speaker 1: episodes ago, and we were both I think galvanized by
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Speaker 1: the sheer gravity of our nostalgia for Saturday mornings. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's the one time where you're growing up in your
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Speaker 1: your parents maybe are not at work so they're sleeping in,
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Speaker 1: but you're a kid. You wake up in the morning
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Speaker 1: for a specific appointment of destination TA television for sure.
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Speaker 3: And you know what's funny, Ben, I don't. I did
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Speaker 3: the research for this, and I didn't mention what I
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Speaker 3: actually remember even a little more in my formative years,
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Speaker 3: which was Sunday Morning on Nickelodeon Nicktoons. But we will
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Speaker 3: get to that and how it ultimately kind of ate
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Speaker 3: the lunch of what you're describing, Ben, traditional broadcast television
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Speaker 3: Saturday morning cartoons, because I think when those were really
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Speaker 3: in their heyday, me and you were truly like little
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Speaker 3: tykes with our bulls of cereal, you know, sitting in
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Speaker 3: front of the comforting glow of the TV, like you said, Ben,
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Speaker 3: maybe while your parents were out. It's something that's just
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Speaker 3: absolutely exploded during the second half of the twentieth century
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Speaker 3: in the US, particularly Saturday Morning has been synonymous with
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Speaker 3: a couple of things that kind of operated hand in hand,
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Speaker 3: cartoons and advertising.
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Speaker 1: There we go, and yes, folks, you heard it right.
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Speaker 1: Noel Brown is our research associate for this series, and
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Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough. Man. I'm excited to learn
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Speaker 1: more with you on this. Can you paint the picture
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Speaker 1: of the providence or the origin story for us, your
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Speaker 1: research shows that it dates back to like the nineteen fifties,
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Speaker 1: just after World War Two.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, even earlier than the fifties, I mean you had
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Speaker 3: a lot of animation being used in commercials, and of course,
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Speaker 3: like even earlier than the fifties, you had black and
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Speaker 3: white cartoons like the Flintstones that were one hundred percent
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Speaker 3: they were well, Sima Willie was more of a thing
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Speaker 3: that you would have seen in theaters, but you did
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Speaker 3: start to see the Flintstones and stuff like that. It
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Speaker 3: was meant to be family programming, but it would have like,
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Speaker 3: you know, cigarette ads in it, like it's like Fred
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Speaker 3: Flintstones smoking Winston's. And then you started to see animation
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Speaker 3: really being incorporated into commercials. But it wasn't until the
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Speaker 3: fifties that the big three networks nbcabc's, CBS realized that
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Speaker 3: they kind of had kids on lock like during the weekends,
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Speaker 3: captive audience that advertisers and particularly serial and toy brands
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Speaker 3: really wanted to get their hooks into.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we could we could look back at
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Speaker 1: this time, as you were saying, and we could see
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Speaker 1: that there were, you know, the the repackaged stuff that,
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Speaker 1: as you said, used to be in a theater like
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Speaker 1: Steamboat Willie. They were they were targeting something that advertisers
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Speaker 1: still target today. Wu tang is right when they say
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Speaker 1: Wu tang is for the children. They would have these
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Speaker 1: They would have these live action characters like Bozo the
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Speaker 1: Clown or Cowboys, introduce different animated shorts. They would have giveaways.
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Speaker 1: You tell your parents to what drink war Oval team?
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Speaker 2: Oh no, I know.
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Speaker 3: I think we both immediately thought of the Little Orphan Annie,
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Speaker 3: which we did a whole episode on, By the way,
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Speaker 3: the Little Fanny Comics decoder ring. This was a radio
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Speaker 3: thing though in Christmas story. But it's the same rules
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Speaker 3: apply where you think it's this magical, you know, being
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Speaker 3: part of the story, and you're following every week to
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Speaker 3: get the cipher, and then it turns out that it
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Speaker 3: translates to drink more ovaltine. And you had these studios,
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Speaker 3: many of which were making shorts that were screened theatrically
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Speaker 3: as like the opening act for you know, the feature film,
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Speaker 3: start to make stuff exclusively for television. Studios like Terry
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Speaker 3: Toons and Walter Lance. They had back catalog stuff that
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Speaker 3: they were now kind of repurposing for television. And then
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Speaker 3: you started to have some of these early TV animation
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Speaker 3: pioneers like Hanna Barbera really going towards some cost saving
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Speaker 3: methods in the way that they made animation a little
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Speaker 3: less precious than the Walt Disneys of the world.
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Speaker 1: Let's just say, yeah, at this time, this is new technology.
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Speaker 1: Legislation is reactive always, right, so they're not being pressing it.
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Speaker 1: The buffins and the legal beagles have yet to catch
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Speaker 1: up to this new phenomenon. They don't yet regulate how
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Speaker 1: many commercials you can have in any show.
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Speaker 3: All voluntary. We know how that goes, like self reporting,
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Speaker 3: you know, right. It wasn't until the eighties that the
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Speaker 3: National Association of Broadcasters or NAB enforced these voluntary guidelines.
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Speaker 3: So again, up to that point, it was up to
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Speaker 3: the broadcasters and these limited ad times. They went on
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Speaker 3: to limit ad times to nine and a half minutes
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Speaker 3: per hour on weekends and twelve minutes per hour on
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Speaker 3: the weekdays. By as early as nineteen fifty two, though,
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Speaker 3: you started to see parents groups getting up in arms
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Speaker 3: about this early brain rot you know, I mean, you know,
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Speaker 3: his brain rod is kind of a throwback term. All
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Speaker 3: these parents have been saying, this is going to rot
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Speaker 3: your brain. Sure, right, once old is thou new again?
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Speaker 3: People used to hate Gregorian chant also true, and I
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Speaker 3: think we are both huge fans and we should do
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Speaker 3: an episode on Gregorian chance.
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Speaker 2: Okay, I believe we've done the Gregorian Calendar.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we were kind of curmudgedly about it too.
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Speaker 2: That's true.
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Speaker 3: Well, you know me and my leapier phobia, so that
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Speaker 3: sort of figures into that.
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Speaker 2: But it wasn't. You know, it's early in the fifties.
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Speaker 3: After this sort of new TV animation thing is kicking off.
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Speaker 3: In nineteen fifty two, you started to see parents groups
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Speaker 3: getting up in arms and reaching out and lobbying the
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Speaker 3: Federal Communications Commission as well as the Federal Trade Commission
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Speaker 3: to impose limits on violence and sexual innuendo for any
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Speaker 3: programming that might have been aimed at young younger folks.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. A big part of this, by the way, folks,
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Speaker 1: is that animation was heavily weaponized in the propaganda of
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Speaker 1: World War Two.
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Speaker 2: What a good point.
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Speaker 1: You know, there were a lot of evil things that
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Speaker 1: were hacking the minds of children to make them hate
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Speaker 1: German people or Japanese. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Well, and you can see some of those, like I mean,
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Speaker 3: Walt Disney Company has been around so long they'd rather
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Speaker 3: we forgot.
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Speaker 2: That they did a lot of those.
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Speaker 3: But if you go to the I think I've screamed
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Speaker 3: about this place on the pod before, but the Walt
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Speaker 3: Disney Family Museum, which is not affiliated with the Walt
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Speaker 3: Disney Company.
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Speaker 2: It's owned and run by the Walt Disney.
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Speaker 3: Family Trust, and in it you will see some of
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Speaker 3: these posters and animations, like you know, if Zifioro says
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Speaker 3: VI is zimmasta race and all that, as well as
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Speaker 3: some you know, depicting Asian you know, Asians in very
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Speaker 3: very offensive and stereotypical ways and all the stuff that
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Speaker 3: you're talking about. So if you're interested, that stuff exists
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Speaker 3: and you can still check it out. But it's a
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Speaker 3: good point. I mean, it is a way of kind
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Speaker 3: of hijacking the minds of young people. But also it
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Speaker 3: comes from that tradition of like political cartoons. And you know,
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Speaker 3: you can say all of a lot with cartoons, and therefore,
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Speaker 3: what is an animation if not just a more robust
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Speaker 3: and hypnotic form of a cartoon.
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Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, very well said. And I love the
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Speaker 1: idea of protest museums dude. Back when I was in
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Speaker 1: Brussels a few years back, they had this awesome problematic
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Speaker 1: comic book museum with a lot of tent tins and stuff,
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Speaker 1: and right across the street they have another non affiliated,
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Speaker 1: non official comic strip museum, fight Museum. It's Yeah, Protests
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Speaker 1: five museum, where they pretty much say, the guys across
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Speaker 1: the street are evil and colonialists and bonkers, so we're
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Speaker 1: I don't want to derail us, but we're painting a
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Speaker 1: picture here. It's as you said, no nineteen fifty two,
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Speaker 1: concerned citizens are having an outbreak of moral panic.
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Speaker 2: And I was there want to do right.
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Speaker 1: As they're want to do. And now we have the
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Speaker 1: origin story or the genesis of programs that seek to
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Speaker 1: not just entertain but also.
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Speaker 3: Educate, stuff like Captain Kangaroo and of course the ever
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Speaker 3: beloved Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which combined education with entertainment. But
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Speaker 3: moving into the sixties, you really started to see the
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Speaker 3: beginning of the Saturday morning cartoon kind of boom when
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Speaker 3: the Big three again ABC, CBS and NBC really decided
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Speaker 3: to go all in on this and carved out multi
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Speaker 3: hour blocks of TV on Saturday and filled them with
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Speaker 3: animated half hours of programming from folks again like Hanna
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Speaker 3: Barbara Filmation, which I believe brought us he Man eventually,
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Speaker 3: and you started to see you know, iconic animated shows
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Speaker 3: like Scooby Doo, where are You Yep Yep Archie, which
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Speaker 3: of course had its origins as a comic strip. They
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Speaker 3: incorporated these you know, belovable ensemble casts. They would sometimes
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Speaker 3: have musical numbers, like with Scooby Doo, it's like a
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Speaker 3: Monster of the Week situation. And all of these early
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Speaker 3: formats sort of like the Twilight Zone Ben, were just
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Speaker 3: endlessly aped, you know, copied.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, templatized. Right, this is a situation, folks where your
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Speaker 1: faithful correspondents Noel, Max and Ben would have a meeting
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Speaker 1: where some of our top rast says, well, this show worked,
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Speaker 1: can we not do it one hundred times?
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Speaker 3: No, it's tails all the time, whether it's in music,
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Speaker 3: record executives, broadcasts, something hits, They're like, we want the
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Speaker 3: next that thing, you know, whatever, do whatever it takes
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Speaker 3: to get us the next that thing. Started to see
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Speaker 3: superhero shows and adventure shows. Again, a lot of this
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Speaker 3: stuff coming from more traditional medium like comic books popping
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Speaker 3: up they often times we're sort of it was like
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Speaker 3: you could tell it was the early days because they
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Speaker 3: were still sort of treating them like sitcoms with laugh
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Speaker 3: tracks and mega mega cost efficient aggressive production schedules.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they're grinding stuff out. It's really tough for the
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Speaker 1: animators at this point to be honest, folks. And now
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Speaker 1: we again have our concerned parent groups, our watchdogs, several
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Speaker 1: of whom are low key funded by network rivals, and
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Speaker 1: they start telling the FCC, you gotta get rid of
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Speaker 1: all this violence, you gotta get rid of all this
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Speaker 1: commercialism you're targeting children. This is where we see things
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Speaker 1: like the Action for Children's Television or.
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Speaker 3: ACT, which was founded in nineteen sixty eight and worked
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Speaker 3: alongside the FCC to help impose some more strict regulations
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Speaker 3: surrounding television advertising during children's programming.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because they were like, you were disguising these things
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Speaker 1: as shows, as entertainment, but what they really are technically
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Speaker 1: will be, you know, twenty three to thirty minute advertisements.
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Speaker 3: Ben I think this is a really interesting trajectory that
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Speaker 3: we're going to get into because it kind of mirrors
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Speaker 3: a lot of what's going on right now with like
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Speaker 3: all of the massive insane deregulation that we're seeing, you know,
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Speaker 3: from this current administration, and like comparing it to you know,
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Speaker 3: the environmental rollbacks and things like that. Like it's just
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Speaker 3: an interesting way of sort of plotting those kind of
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Speaker 3: changes and how like the differences in administrations can make
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Speaker 3: all the difference in what is okay and what is
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Speaker 3: not okay, you know, culturally speaking, because that's what we're
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Speaker 3: about to see here.
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Speaker 2: And a particularly.
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Speaker 3: Memorable example, Act argued that Mattel's nineteen sixty nine cartoon
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Speaker 3: Hot Wheels, was essentially just a commercial for toy cars.
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Speaker 3: And this is coming from a great article on history
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Speaker 3: dot com how toy promotions took over eighties cartoons.
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Speaker 2: Really good source there.
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Speaker 3: And let's see the writer, or David Owen rather is
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Speaker 3: quoted in this piece, the author of the man who
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Speaker 3: invented Saturday Morning. And he said, the FCC agreed and
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Speaker 3: asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing, folks. They agreed with Action for
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Speaker 1: Children's Television, and they said, we have to go on
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Speaker 1: record and note that this is an advertisement disguised as
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Speaker 1: a show.
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Speaker 2: For sure. And it wasn't only about the ads.
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Speaker 3: It was also just about how much time kids were
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Speaker 3: spending in front of their TVs.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 3: There were studies being done into the long term effects
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Speaker 3: of exposure to these kind of binge early binge watches.
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Speaker 2: Wait what brain rut? Brain right again? Yes?
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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, of course and that's yeah, what's what's
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Speaker 3: what's old is now? Well once was old is now
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Speaker 3: knew again, And parents and teachers were really concerned about this.
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Speaker 3: We started to see again results coming out of these
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Speaker 3: more now you've got a little time, you know, longitudinally speaking,
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Speaker 3: showing that direct marketing associated with these shows and the
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Speaker 3: time spent front of the shows could cause kids to
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Speaker 3: have a tough time differentiating between the shows themselves and
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Speaker 3: the advertisements run within them. And they also just were
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Speaker 3: not equipped to understand how manipulative these particular tactics were.
15:30
Speaker 3: As far as they were concerned, they just really liked
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Speaker 3: the cars, and therefore why wouldn't they want to own
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Speaker 3: them without thinking that maybe they were being taken advantage
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Speaker 3: of a little bit, a lot of bit.
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Speaker 1: A lot of bit, a bit of a lot, a
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Speaker 1: lot of move.
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Speaker 3: And there's another great source we've found that I just
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Speaker 3: want to mention from the Saturday Evening post The Rise
15:50
Speaker 3: and Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons by Charles Moss.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, do check it out, folks. If we fast forward
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Speaker 1: a bit to the nineteen seventies, we'll see that these producers,
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Speaker 1: these ad clients, and of course, as you mentioned earlier,
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Speaker 1: in all the big three networks, they responded to these concerns.
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Speaker 1: These concerns are cyclical. We're experiencing the same stuff now
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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, with people worried about short form
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Speaker 1: social media content and how old a person should be
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Speaker 1: before they can own a cell phone or check in
16:36
Speaker 1: with YouTube.
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Speaker 3: Right, That's part of what I was teasing earlier and
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Speaker 3: even beyond that. But like now, instead of the TV
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Speaker 3: networks getting sued or taking a task, it's the social
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Speaker 3: media proprietors like Mark Zuckerberg and all of those cats
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Speaker 3: that are kind of being accused of. Well, I think
16:53
Speaker 3: it was found to be absolutely the case that they
16:56
Speaker 3: knew how much this was messing with kids' mind.
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Speaker 1: It's one hundred percent, dude. And so all these folks
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Speaker 1: realize there is a well spring of money and they
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Speaker 1: have to play nice with government regulation and citizens groups.
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Speaker 1: So they say Okay, we'll make stuff a little bit
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Speaker 1: less violent, which is why you don't see somebody's head
17:21
Speaker 1: getting blown off by a bullet.
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Speaker 3: Right or even with he Man, it was to point
17:26
Speaker 3: it out on this podcast that I think we both
17:28
Speaker 3: have enjoyed blank check with Griffin and David. Griffin pointed
17:32
Speaker 3: out that one thing that you'll see you'll never see
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Speaker 3: he Man do in he Man cartoons.
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Speaker 2: Is sword fight.
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Speaker 3: He's always using the sword to deflect stuff or to
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Speaker 3: like maybe cut down a tree or something, but never
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Speaker 3: like stabbing or slicing or even going sword to sword
17:48
Speaker 3: with another character.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's summoning the power of Gray Skull.
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Speaker 2: Sure, whatever that is.
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Speaker 1: Whatever that is, dude, check out the film. We'll get there.
17:57
Speaker 2: We'll get that. The hey Man part of it is
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Speaker 2: a lot of fun, but it's huge.
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Speaker 1: But we also have to, like to your point, we
18:03
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that the big dogs didn't just bend
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Speaker 1: the knee to these demands to soften action and violence.
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Speaker 1: They went a step further and they said, we're going
18:16
Speaker 1: to start doing public service announcements.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Well, in nineteen seventy eight, the FTC actually had attempted
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Speaker 3: to try to ban all direct advertisement to kids under
18:27
Speaker 3: the age of six. Lobbying groups prevented that from happening, associated,
18:31
Speaker 3: of course, with the toy companies, the ad agencies, serial industries,
18:35
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. But rather than you know, poke
18:40
Speaker 3: the bear, I guess they knew they were sort of
18:41
Speaker 3: being targeted. That's when they made those decisions to start
18:45
Speaker 3: essentially voluntarily making this kind of content, stuff like Schoolhouse Rock.
18:52
Speaker 3: I'm just a bill, just a little low bill. You're
18:54
Speaker 3: sitting there on Capitol Hill.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And then you have stuff like NBC's One to
18:59
Speaker 1: Grow from nineteen eighty three.
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Speaker 3: The Bod Squad, which I don't know personally, but I
19:04
Speaker 3: can imagine that it was about like biology and probably
19:07
Speaker 3: sort of like slim good body kind of stuff. Or
19:09
Speaker 3: The Magic school Bus.
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Speaker 1: Oh, which, by the way, I'm still divided over whether
19:17
Speaker 1: whether that teacher in the school bus.
19:19
Speaker 2: Was Miss Frizz.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know whether Miss Friz was amazing or
19:24
Speaker 1: evil or possibly both. There's a diagram.
19:27
Speaker 3: There is an episode of The Magic school Bus where
19:29
Speaker 3: they go into the bodies of salmon and essentially get
19:33
Speaker 3: like ejaculated out of fish's bodies right.
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Speaker 1: Right, because they're learning about salmon migration and spawning and all.
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Speaker 2: Of that stuff. It gets a little icky.
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Speaker 3: Schoolhouse Rock taught about grammar and civics and things like that.
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Speaker 3: Fat Albert was another kind of an example of inclusivity
19:54
Speaker 3: and represented representation and also had a moral kind of
19:59
Speaker 3: lessons that it through this ensemble character driven kind of
20:03
Speaker 3: you know, cass. You also had started to see costumed
20:07
Speaker 3: kind of things like the Banana Splits, the sid and
20:09
Speaker 3: Marty Croft company that made hr puff and stuff. And
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Speaker 3: we're the kind of psychedelic like pre Barney, a little
20:17
Speaker 3: more edgy kind of kids shows. But it's public service
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Speaker 3: announcements and news shorts that start getting kind of interesting.
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Speaker 3: I would love to play an example of each of
20:26
Speaker 3: these really quickly.
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Speaker 2: Oh time for comer. Do you ever get that hungry
20:33
Speaker 2: feeling after school? Oh? I do. I'm so hungry I
20:36
Speaker 2: could eat a wagon wheel when I'm slow in the
20:39
Speaker 2: draw and I need something to chaw. Hanker for a
20:42
Speaker 2: good cheese.
20:46
Speaker 3: This guy's like a Is he a piece of cheese?
20:49
Speaker 3: Is he a piece of corn? Is he one to
20:52
Speaker 3: eat himself?
20:53
Speaker 4: You know?
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Speaker 1: It's like our grimmest question earlier, isn't it's kind of.
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Speaker 2: Hole in his hat?
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Speaker 3: I imagine, just just for the folks at home, he
21:01
Speaker 3: is like a cowboy talking about he's standing next to
21:04
Speaker 3: a wagon in front of an old saloon. He has
21:07
Speaker 3: a acaine, but the hole in his hat seems like
21:11
Speaker 3: that would imply previous violence.
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Speaker 2: I'm just putting that out there.
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Speaker 1: He's also got a you know, he's got a neckerchief,
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Speaker 1: a bandana. Uh, he's got boots but no pants.
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Speaker 2: No he is, I think he is. I don't know.
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Speaker 3: He's meant to be a cheese or some weird horrific monstrosity.
21:29
Speaker 1: The cheese guy.
21:30
Speaker 2: He's the cheese guy.
21:31
Speaker 3: So he is talking about wanting to eat himself, which
21:33
Speaker 3: is a little odd and also been I know you
21:35
Speaker 3: were thinking this too, like is this from Big Dairy?
21:41
Speaker 2: Is this and not? I mean, this is meant to
21:42
Speaker 2: be a psa.
21:43
Speaker 3: At the end of it, he shows you how to
21:45
Speaker 3: make a nice snack, a healthy snack. But we know
21:48
Speaker 3: now that a grilled cheese sandwich ain't the healthiest of snacks.
21:51
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
21:52
Speaker 3: You know this mild actual public service at best, in
21:57
Speaker 3: the pocket of Big Cheese at worst.
21:59
Speaker 2: And then you also have these little news shorts. Think
22:01
Speaker 2: like oh with Lynda Ellerby.
22:04
Speaker 3: Remember that from when we were kids, it was like
22:06
Speaker 3: nick News or something like that. There was, it was
22:09
Speaker 3: very much a precursor to that. And that's the closest
22:12
Speaker 3: analog that I could have, like kinda sometimes anchored by kids,
22:15
Speaker 3: you know, definitely giving kids a kind of current event
22:19
Speaker 3: thing in sort of.
22:20
Speaker 1: Kids speak, or a feeling of agency.
22:23
Speaker 3: And maybe even a feeling of kind of being like
22:25
Speaker 3: the grown ups watching the news, you.
22:27
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to wonder shows and.
22:31
Speaker 3: Beat kids, beat kids, Kids on the Beat, kids on
22:35
Speaker 3: the street. Right, and all of this, you know, kind
22:38
Speaker 3: of ushered in a new arrow of Saturday mornings blending
22:41
Speaker 3: entertainment and you know, admittedly, like we're saying, pretty light education.
22:45
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's kind of like the window dressing,
22:49
Speaker 1: oh of education. Hey, everybody in a box, yes, right right,
22:54
Speaker 1: everybody remember that crosswalks exist for a reason. But also
23:00
Speaker 1: so buy all this stuff.
23:02
Speaker 2: Always leave a note.
23:04
Speaker 3: But of course, the you know, steady march of capitalism,
23:08
Speaker 3: along with some pretty clever loopholes that the toy industry
23:12
Speaker 3: along with the animation studios kind of figured out, would
23:15
Speaker 3: change a lot of this sort of more you know,
23:18
Speaker 3: idyllic animation landscape quite a bit, and that all started
23:23
Speaker 3: with Star.
23:24
Speaker 1: Wars nineteen seventy seven. Folks, you remember where you were
23:31
Speaker 1: if you're at a certain age in life. This was
23:34
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, this could be the subject of its own
23:38
Speaker 1: ridiculous history episode or series. There are a lot of
23:41
Speaker 1: podcasts about the Star Wars universe, some of which feature
23:44
Speaker 1: our own big sister, Holly Fry that.
23:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the ultimate Star Wars Fani.
23:50
Speaker 1: She very much is. We love we love you, Holley,
23:53
Speaker 1: We love hanging out. So this, this Star Wars thing,
23:57
Speaker 1: audiences around the world loved its box office breaking numbers. Uh.
24:05
Speaker 1: The the big money that they made was not just
24:10
Speaker 1: in airing the film in your typical theatrical system of
24:15
Speaker 1: the big studios. They monetized and commodified this stuff by
24:21
Speaker 1: teaming up with people who were already good at making.
24:25
Speaker 3: Toys, for sure, But a lot of these toymakers didn't
24:29
Speaker 3: really take the bait at first. They did not believe
24:32
Speaker 3: that Star Wars was going to be a success. Big
24:36
Speaker 3: established you know titans in the in the industry, like
24:39
Speaker 3: Mattel and Mago.
24:41
Speaker 2: What happened to mego, I.
24:42
Speaker 3: Don't think any they don't think they stood the test
24:44
Speaker 3: of time like Mattel. But they originally passed on licensing
24:48
Speaker 3: Star Wars toys because again they thought that this was
24:51
Speaker 3: going to be a flop and not have any cultural significance.
24:54
Speaker 3: So a small, kind of much more upstart company based
24:58
Speaker 3: in Ohio Kenner was able to get the deal and
25:02
Speaker 3: they got that licensing thing, but they actually weren't able
25:04
Speaker 3: to release any toys until nearly a year after the
25:07
Speaker 3: movie premiere. But thankfully it was going to be a trilogy,
25:11
Speaker 3: it was ongoing and and it was a massive, massive SMAs.
25:15
Speaker 3: So when Kenner released these Star Wars action figures, the
25:18
Speaker 3: demand had been brewing this whole time, and they just absolutely,
25:22
Speaker 3: you know, rocketed off the shelves in nineteen seventy eight,
25:27
Speaker 3: and a lot of these, as we know, as you know,
25:30
Speaker 3: are worth a whole lot of money to this very day.
25:33
Speaker 1: Oh are you kidding? I still have some of my
25:37
Speaker 1: some of my always I did. Nobody tried to rob me. No.
25:42
Speaker 1: Kenner had released these figures that you you're probably familiar with,
25:48
Speaker 1: so you can see them. They're about three point seven
25:50
Speaker 1: five inches toll. They sold millions and millions of these.
25:55
Speaker 1: They sold the atat vehicles, these play sets the job
25:59
Speaker 1: of the thing.
26:00
Speaker 3: They also set the tone for the scale of all
26:03
Speaker 3: as they Yeah, you know, like G I Joe et
26:07
Speaker 3: cetera were kind of like, you know, following suit.
26:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, the original G I. Joe's were more like your
26:13
Speaker 1: typical dolls. You know. Star Wars was doing something really interesting,
26:19
Speaker 1: or Kenner was doing something really interesting by rephrasing these
26:24
Speaker 1: not as dolls but as action figures, and all of
26:28
Speaker 1: the sudden, all the other toy companies, the big dogs
26:33
Speaker 1: you mentioned, like Mattel and Mago, they're they're looking around right.
26:37
Speaker 1: We can only imagine they're chomping their bubblegum cigars and
26:42
Speaker 1: they say, wait, we can make money by taking shows
26:49
Speaker 1: and making toys from them.
26:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
26:53
Speaker 3: No, it's a good point, Ben about the ged Joe's
26:55
Speaker 3: originally being much more doll like, because it was not.
26:59
Speaker 3: It was not until success of the Star Wars and
27:01
Speaker 3: the scale of those three point seventy five inch mini figures.
27:05
Speaker 3: I guess comparatively that that really was sort of codified
27:09
Speaker 3: because of how damn successful they were. So even the
27:12
Speaker 3: some of these legacy toys changed the course and decided
27:16
Speaker 3: to go in that direction, and they realized they needed
27:18
Speaker 3: to either link up with some pre existing intellectual properties
27:23
Speaker 3: or create some from scratch with the express purpose of
27:28
Speaker 3: selling these little plastic figs to kids.
27:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were saying, you know, we don't even have
27:34
Speaker 1: to spend that much money on the writing. Who respects writers.
27:38
Speaker 1: We just we got to sell these toys. Guys. We
27:41
Speaker 1: got some great designs from our graphics department. We don't
27:45
Speaker 1: have to spend too much time on the names of
27:49
Speaker 1: the characters. We've got a guy, let's pull him.
27:52
Speaker 2: He may right, you know, man, it's so funny you
27:56
Speaker 2: say that.
27:56
Speaker 3: Another great little conversation on the Griffin and David episode
28:01
Speaker 3: was just about how this was such a mashup of like,
28:05
Speaker 3: let's do let's have wizards and sci fi space.
28:09
Speaker 5: Aliens and swords and you know, vehicles, lasers, guns on
28:14
Speaker 5: top of them and all of the names and with
28:17
Speaker 5: a very very vague, incredibly vague mythology. It's like he man,
28:23
Speaker 5: he holds his magic sort of lofts and all of
28:25
Speaker 5: a sudden he said the words, how do you notice
28:28
Speaker 5: say the words by the power of Gray Skull, I
28:30
Speaker 5: have the power?
28:31
Speaker 2: What power? You know? Talking about the babe with the power?
28:35
Speaker 3: No, and it's so funny, man, because another thing they
28:38
Speaker 3: mentioned in some of the dossier stuff that they did
28:41
Speaker 3: was that the focus groups showed that kids really.
28:44
Speaker 2: Loved the idea of having power.
28:47
Speaker 3: And you'll notice that the turtles were also turtle power,
28:51
Speaker 3: and it was just like they were off to the races.
28:53
Speaker 3: You didn't have to even have that much of a story,
28:56
Speaker 3: and he man Mattel's Masters of the Universe nineteen seventy,
29:00
Speaker 3: those executives landed on that winning formula.
29:03
Speaker 2: They created a little slightly.
29:04
Speaker 3: Different scales, it pretty close, a little taller five point
29:07
Speaker 3: five inch figures, and they cooperated with a network television
29:11
Speaker 3: program that was already in the pipeline in order. So
29:15
Speaker 3: this wasn't exactly them making the cartoon for the toys,
29:18
Speaker 3: but it was might as well have been.
29:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is our inflection point because these guys are
29:30
Speaker 1: talking to each other, These folks are talking to each
29:32
Speaker 1: other in the toy making world and the network TV world,
29:36
Speaker 1: and the network TV producers are saying, well, we're working
29:42
Speaker 1: on an animation thing that's been very hot since nineteen
29:45
Speaker 1: fifties on Saturday mornings, and Mattel says, Okay, we don't
29:50
Speaker 1: want to have another Star Wars opportunity pass us by Kenner.
29:55
Speaker 1: Really ate our lunch, but maybe we can get it
30:00
Speaker 1: on the ground floor. To your point about power and agency,
30:04
Speaker 1: a show called He Man and the Masters of the Universe.
30:08
Speaker 3: He's the most powerful man in the universe and also
30:10
Speaker 3: a fabulous singer and with great style and a great bob. Well,
30:14
Speaker 3: it wasn't necessarily them making the cartoon to serve the figures.
30:19
Speaker 3: There was a conversation going on because again how nimble
30:22
Speaker 3: the animation was and how quick the production turnaround was.
30:26
Speaker 3: They could work with the toy manufacturers to tweak the
30:29
Speaker 3: show to make it make more sense for the toys
30:32
Speaker 3: they could manufacture and the time that they had and
30:34
Speaker 3: get things to market. And then they could you introduce
30:37
Speaker 3: new characters and immediately have the figure So obviously this
30:40
Speaker 3: was a smashing success. And then when old, that old
30:45
Speaker 3: wiley bastard Ronald Reagan entered the White House in eighty one,
30:50
Speaker 3: much like we're seeing now, he brought along with him
30:53
Speaker 3: in just an absolute wave of deregulation surrounding all kinds
30:58
Speaker 3: of aspects of and this really did a number on
31:03
Speaker 3: the FCC's ability to exercise the same kind of level
31:07
Speaker 3: of control that they had previously been doing.
31:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we see a resurgence of
31:14
Speaker 1: a political pattern that occurs in the United States today,
31:20
Speaker 1: a lot of what we would call patronage hires, right
31:24
Speaker 1: or hiring your henchmen and your sycophants. President Reagan maybe
31:30
Speaker 1: he was awake enough or aware enough at this point
31:33
Speaker 1: to do it. Probably one of his masters told him
31:37
Speaker 1: to do it. He appointed a new chairman of the FTC.
31:42
Speaker 1: And this chairman is a hitman, right, He's hired to
31:47
Speaker 1: do the deregulation stuff I got talking about.
31:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah.
31:51
Speaker 1: And so this guy passes the FTC Improvements Act of
31:57
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty which says, hey, we're the FDC. We know
32:03
Speaker 1: our job is to protect what the public sees and consumers,
32:10
Speaker 1: but we also are passing this law that makes it
32:15
Speaker 1: very difficult for us to regulate children's propaganda and advertising.
32:20
Speaker 2: Yep.
32:21
Speaker 3: And this directly affect the Gen X era kids and
32:25
Speaker 3: how much TV and advertising they are consuming on those
32:29
Speaker 3: precious Saturday mornings. So this deregulation really opened the door
32:33
Speaker 3: to a kind of a new wave of toy driven
32:36
Speaker 3: cartoons following that same he man blueprint, just taking it
32:40
Speaker 3: to the next level. We've got Gi Joe again more
32:42
Speaker 3: of a legacy brand. Then we've got newer ones like Transformers,
32:45
Speaker 3: My Little Pony gem and the Holograms. They also kind
32:49
Speaker 3: of had the power care Bears, the care Bear stare.
32:52
Speaker 2: And I love ThunderCats. ThunderCats was my jam.
32:54
Speaker 1: ThunderCats is great.
32:55
Speaker 2: Start Thundercatter, you know what I mean. Like ThunderCats was
32:59
Speaker 2: like had a little more story to it. I don't know,
33:02
Speaker 2: that's how it feels like.
33:03
Speaker 1: You say that when we're hanging out off air.
33:06
Speaker 2: Oh, I do. Yeah, I think it's got cool.
33:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, then I.
33:09
Speaker 3: Think about it. There's a lot of similarities. I mean,
33:11
Speaker 3: Lionel holds his sword aloft, I mean the Mamra, the
33:15
Speaker 3: Dead Carrier version of Skeletor. It's just like it's a
33:19
Speaker 3: little more sinister. Hey man, is goofy? You know it's
33:22
Speaker 3: it's and then you know, they really did start to
33:24
Speaker 3: get a little edgier.
33:25
Speaker 1: Oh and then we again we have a star Hawk.
33:28
Speaker 1: We also have Silver Frocks silver Hawks, thank you. We
33:32
Speaker 1: also have full length animated adaptations of these things of
33:37
Speaker 1: g I Joe and care Bears. Of course, has that
33:40
Speaker 1: really creepy feature link that with the face in the book.
33:44
Speaker 1: You remember, Oh, freaked me.
33:46
Speaker 2: Out when I was a kid, big time.
33:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Witch, it's like a demonic force inside this
33:50
Speaker 3: book that takes over the mind of the hapless magician's assistance.
33:54
Speaker 1: It makes the kids all like sunken eye and they're
33:58
Speaker 1: they're bad at being friendly.
34:00
Speaker 3: Ben, I think there were actually two, and it creepy
34:03
Speaker 3: stuff happens in both of them. Because I think you're
34:05
Speaker 3: describing the plot of the first one. I can't remember,
34:09
Speaker 3: but definitely, Oh, there are two, but I'm miss I'm
34:12
Speaker 3: kind of misconstruing what happens in which because I'm remembering
34:15
Speaker 3: some of what you're describing. But then the one that
34:17
Speaker 3: I'm describing, I think took place in like a traveling
34:19
Speaker 3: circus kind of thing, and like it was almost like
34:21
Speaker 3: a carnival kind.
34:22
Speaker 1: Of situation there, something wicked. This way comes exactly.
34:27
Speaker 3: But like we said, we've got critics now calling this
34:30
Speaker 3: new wave of shows that we were talking about essentially
34:34
Speaker 3: program length commercials, the thing the very thing they were trying.
34:37
Speaker 2: To avoid back in the sixties.
34:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got loop pulled back in. Uh, this is
34:42
Speaker 1: where we see a retisance of other cartoons like pac Man.
34:48
Speaker 1: Check out our episodes on the early days of video games.
34:52
Speaker 2: Apparently had a cartoon right right, And.
34:55
Speaker 1: It's all these are all designed not some deep aesthetic purpose.
35:02
Speaker 1: They're designed to expose children to games that already exist.
35:08
Speaker 1: Like the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series was amazing, but
35:13
Speaker 1: it's because they wanted kids to play D and D
35:16
Speaker 1: or play pac Man, or you know, get their parents
35:19
Speaker 1: to buy them. Or Rubiks.
35:20
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by what a Rubik's Cube cartoon could have
35:23
Speaker 3: possibly been.
35:25
Speaker 1: We also as.
35:28
Speaker 2: Was there also a Magic eight Ball cartoon? I can't imagine.
35:31
Speaker 3: But we then saw some that I think we all remember,
35:34
Speaker 3: or the two of us remember, some of these movie
35:37
Speaker 3: tie ins pre existing and kind of more like, okay,
35:40
Speaker 3: new things coming out, let's have a tie in cartoon
35:42
Speaker 3: things like The Real Ghostbusters, which was had to be
35:45
Speaker 3: called the Real Ghostbuster because there was already a cartoon
35:48
Speaker 3: called Ghostbusters, completely unrelated to the Ghostbusters movies, Rambo The
35:53
Speaker 3: Force of Freedom, which if we can imagine, I mean,
35:56
Speaker 3: these are gonna be a little violence, you know, Chuck
35:58
Speaker 3: Norris Karate come with.
36:01
Speaker 1: K's with Ks Karate Commandos.
36:05
Speaker 3: And I do believe that they got around some of it.
36:07
Speaker 3: I mean there were still beholden to some of these
36:10
Speaker 3: you know FCC guidelines, but there were more little loopholes,
36:14
Speaker 3: Like I said, with he Man not stabbing anybody or slicing.
36:17
Speaker 3: Same thing with Rambo and gid Joe. They couldn't fire bullets.
36:20
Speaker 3: I think it had to be lasers, and yeah, pewp pew, right.
36:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had to be lasers. People could
36:27
Speaker 1: fall if they were bad guys, but couldn't show them dying. Right,
36:32
Speaker 1: And now we have to go to experts like Selma Perak,
36:37
Speaker 1: professor of Information Media Studies at Western University, and Professor
36:43
Speaker 1: Purak points out something that I think we've already clocked here,
36:48
Speaker 1: which is you've got what we call latch key children.
36:52
Speaker 1: They come home when school, unless they are in extracurriculars
36:56
Speaker 1: or after school programs. They take the bus, the Bluebird
37:00
Speaker 1: bus hold like three point thirty or what have you.
37:03
Speaker 1: Their parents don't get off until five. They turn on
37:07
Speaker 1: the TV, and as Professor Perak says, the TV is
37:11
Speaker 1: the babysitter. And explosion of cartoons can be fast food,
37:15
Speaker 1: junk food.
37:16
Speaker 3: But now that's of course more like what happens with
37:18
Speaker 3: the iPad. So while kids loved these shows and we're
37:22
Speaker 3: super you know, just thrilled to be babysat by the
37:26
Speaker 3: idiot Box, the parents once again began growing more concerned.
37:31
Speaker 2: Some of these parenting.
37:32
Speaker 3: Groups were really worried about how much time their kids
37:37
Speaker 3: were spending in front of the TV, especially on Saturday mornings,
37:40
Speaker 3: and so they continued to you know, lobby the FCC
37:44
Speaker 3: and lawmakers, and the federal government did ultimately step in
37:48
Speaker 3: and set some stricter regulations about what networks could not
37:51
Speaker 3: show on Saturday mornings because you know, obviously not wanting
37:57
Speaker 3: to run a foul of some of these groups as
38:00
Speaker 3: they had run ins within the past, and jeopardize these
38:03
Speaker 3: incredibly massive profits that they were making. The toy companies
38:08
Speaker 3: and the networks they were kind of leaked up with.
38:10
Speaker 3: This was like a golden age for them. They were
38:12
Speaker 3: just raking it in. So they started to voluntarily put
38:16
Speaker 3: some of these nineteen seventies style PSAs and educational messages
38:20
Speaker 3: at the end of shows like he Man, which was
38:23
Speaker 3: the first to kind of include these. So let's hear
38:27
Speaker 3: one of the he Man ones, all.
38:29
Speaker 1: Right, folks, to get this is sort of like an
38:31
Speaker 1: Aesop's parable. This is your big takeaway today.
38:35
Speaker 4: He Man had to decide whether or not to chop
38:38
Speaker 4: down the tree. Now, the trees around you probably won't
38:40
Speaker 4: speak the way Skytree did, or if they do, we
38:44
Speaker 4: haven't learned to hear them yet. The trees are living things,
38:48
Speaker 4: and when you respect to treat, you show that you care.
38:51
Speaker 2: About all life. Goodbye.
38:53
Speaker 1: Indeed, it's a weird total shift for the he Man universe.
38:58
Speaker 2: It's a little weird, and I don't think we're going
38:59
Speaker 2: to play.
39:00
Speaker 3: But there was one that was sort of like, if
39:01
Speaker 3: you ever meet a stranger and they look at you funny,
39:05
Speaker 3: make sure to tell a parent.
39:06
Speaker 2: I'm softening it a bit. If you can imagine.
39:09
Speaker 1: It's big, very special episode energy, which we'll see later.
39:13
Speaker 2: Cautionary after school specials.
39:15
Speaker 1: Right just so, and we know that this PSA public
39:20
Speaker 1: service announcement trend created a title wave of other things,
39:27
Speaker 1: most famously probably g I. Joe's knowing is half the battle.
39:33
Speaker 1: We see this replicated. Know what I'm thinking from your
39:37
Speaker 1: research here is that what we're seeing is honestly a
39:43
Speaker 1: bunch of very wealthy companies chasing money.
39:47
Speaker 3: Chasing money and playcating the Standards and Practices Department and
39:53
Speaker 3: you know, the lobbies and the FCC and the parenting groups.
40:00
Speaker 3: As you said earlier, Ben, in a way of kind
40:01
Speaker 3: of checking the boxes but without having to really alter
40:04
Speaker 3: the main story, aka the the selling point exactly. And
40:09
Speaker 3: it was at the end, you know, the kids didn't
40:11
Speaker 3: want to see it. They could flip. I mean, it
40:12
Speaker 3: wasn't like right in the middle or incorporated. I mean,
40:15
Speaker 3: I guess there were certainly some shows that kind of
40:17
Speaker 3: had a little bit more of a moralistic kind of
40:20
Speaker 3: through line, you know, but it really was kind of
40:24
Speaker 3: shoehorned at the end for most of them.
40:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I wish they spent more on the mythos
40:30
Speaker 1: and more time on the mythos and the writing, because
40:33
Speaker 1: one thing that always gets me is, like, you know,
40:36
Speaker 1: you watch, uh, you watch Star Wars, for instance, right
40:39
Speaker 1: before it becomes an animated offshoot, or you watch he
40:44
Speaker 1: Man to your earlier example, what do the bad guys want? Dude?
40:49
Speaker 2: Why wower?
40:51
Speaker 1: But why?
40:52
Speaker 2: What are the power do? What even is the power?
40:55
Speaker 2: We don't know.
40:55
Speaker 1: Skeletor's pissed at Gray School. He wants the power of grace.
41:02
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do.
41:04
Speaker 2: Man, he doesn't know, he doesn't know what he'd do
41:06
Speaker 2: if he got it.
41:06
Speaker 3: He's like Roadrunner, or rather he's like Wiley coyote chasing Roadrunner.
41:10
Speaker 2: If he got it, it would be the end of
41:12
Speaker 2: the show too. He's never gonna get it. We don't
41:14
Speaker 2: want him to get it.
41:15
Speaker 1: And we want you to get this. NOL, thank you
41:19
Speaker 1: again for the phenomenal research here.
41:22
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for the fun conversation.
41:23
Speaker 3: I think this is something that we both remember, and
41:25
Speaker 3: we're gonna follow this up with the era that we
41:27
Speaker 3: all remember for sure, as we got a little older
41:30
Speaker 3: and started to see the kind of gradual decline of
41:34
Speaker 3: Saturday Morning cartoons and the evolution of it into other stuff,
41:38
Speaker 3: we're going to start to see, you know, new forms
41:41
Speaker 3: of animation, edgier forms of animation, things like MTV. Really,
41:44
Speaker 3: what enters the chat here is cable that changes everything.
41:48
Speaker 3: But that is going to be covered in Part two
41:51
Speaker 3: of the Ridiculously Commercial History of Saturday Morning Cartoons.
41:55
Speaker 1: And of course we'll be able to hear our our
41:59
Speaker 1: friend and colleague, Max the Beachhead Williams chiming in. He's
42:04
Speaker 1: got some locked and loaded stuff there. For Part two
42:08
Speaker 1: of this series, big big thanks to our super producer,
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Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, our research associate, Old Brown, Big big
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Speaker 1: thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, as well as our very
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Speaker 1: own Skeletor Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: That's a great impression, isn't it though? Oh Man, this
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Speaker 2: is a lot of fun.
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Speaker 3: Ben.
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Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks.
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Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.