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Old 03-28-2019, 01:51 PM   #1
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The "I never thought they/this would become as successful as they/it did" thread

You know when someone or something becomes way more successful than you had predicted? This can be for ANYTHING. From actors, to musicians, to video games, to fashion trends, to movies, to products, to comic books, etc.

I'll start:

Hugh Laurie: Americans might know him primarily as Dr. Gregory House in the House MD medical drama, but I grew up watching him on Black Adder where he played a comedy relief character who wasn't particularly intelligent. To think he'd move to USA one day to star in a very popular medical drama show... it really shocked me. I was blown away by how versatile he was as an actor. Never thought he'd be able to pull off a serious character like that.

League of Legends: For some reason I thought this was gonna be a flavour of the month type of game that would be highly popular for a couple of years tops, but boy was I wrong. it's still an extremely popular game and doesn't seem like it's gonna lose a significant amount of popularity any time soon.

Dave Bautista: In WWE, he was a plan B sort of choice after Randy orton's face turn had bombed. Then he began getting quite popular and ended up becoming the face of the company alongside Cena. And nowadays he does movies in Hollywood and is rather successful at it. Probably the most successful wrestler to actor transition in history after The Rock.

The 4Kids TMNT cartoon: When it was first announced, I was excited and yet afraid at the same time. I was afraid it would bomb and get cancelled after a season or two. I never expected it to even break the 100 episode barrier, let alone make it to 7 seasons with, what, 157 episodes? It wasn't as successful as the FW series or the Nick series were, but clearly it was successful enough for it to last for 7 seasons and over 100 episodes. Clearly the TMNT property was revived. Doubt there'd have been a Nick show if the 4Kids show never existed.

Bryan Cranston: He was the father in Malcolm in the Middle, a comedy show. A sitcom dad, basically. To think he'd star in his own show one day(Breaking Bad) and a drama to boot. I honestly never thought his career would take off like that.

Mario Kart: I've never thought Mario Kart would become the juggernaut it is today. As a kid I grew up with MK64 and didn't even know there was a Super Nintendo instalment until some years later. So I thought MK64 was just gonna be an one off thing and didn't expect Mario kart to become its own franchise and still be going strong 2 decades later. I wouldn't be surprised if Mario Kart alone was the 3rd highest selling Nintendo franchise after the mainline Mario series and Pokémon. The Wii MK game sold over 30M copies worldwide, for crying out loud!

FIFA video games: As someone born in 1990, I grew up with Konami's football titles being way superior to EA's. International Superstar Soccer killed i on the SNES and the N64. And Pro Evolution Soccer killed it on the PS2. But around 2006 or 2007, FIFA dethroned PES for good and Konami was never able to catch up to EA again in the football department. FIFA became HUGE and still is to this day while PES seems to be a rather forgotten series nowadays, when it clearly dominated when I was kid/teen. PES 4, 5 and 6 were all massive games and considered the cream of the crop of football video games at the time.

This is all I can think about for now. What about you?
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Old 03-28-2019, 04:16 PM   #2
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I never thought the TMNT would become popular again post-2009.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:21 PM   #3
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Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan View Post
I never thought the TMNT would become popular again post-2009.
Well, that too, kinda. Not that it came close to the FW series and the first 3 movies popularity level, but it sure was more popular than the 2k3 series and the tie-in 2007 CGI film.

I kinda expected TMNT to eventually fade away or go on a long dormant period again after the 2k3 series was over, That or finally dying, with Turtles Forever being the property's last hurrah. Before the Viacom/Nick buying the property, I didn't expect to see a 3rd cartoon series, let alone an eventual 4th one less than a decade later.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:47 PM   #4
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Masters of the Universe

I don't believe the Masters of the Universe will become popular again. Maybe I'm wrong.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:55 PM   #5
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James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar movies.

I figured both would be lucky to make back their budget at the box-office.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:56 PM   #6
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I don't believe the Masters of the Universe will become popular again. Maybe I'm wrong.
So He-Man? Has He-Man had any sort of revival?

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James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar movies.

I figured both would be lucky to make back their budget at the box-office.
Both movies had a lot of hype, though. So I can't say I was surprised that both were so popular.
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Old 04-01-2019, 04:53 PM   #7
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He-Man has had a couple of revivals. In 1989 they tried to relaunch it as something less like Conan and more like Star Wars, but people hated it. It was much too different from the original to ever get any traction.

In 2002 they did a modernized update of the original series, which was much more serious and serialized, rather than the comedic and episodic nature of the original, but the mishandling of the toyline by Mattel killed the series' momentum and led to an early and abrupt cancellation at the end of the second season, before the season's final episode could even be produced (although it was later produced as a comic book to give the series SOME kind of ending).

It remains a popular toy and comic book franchise, but the toys are very expensive and aimed at adult collectors only. About 10+ years ago they released some of their figures in two-packs with Mattel's DC figures in stores as "Masters of the Universe vs. DC Universe", but they sold very poorly (mostly because the two lines were not at all in scale with each other so the sets didn't look good, even though the individual figures were quite good). But that was "proof" to Mattel that the series can't sell in toy stores, so it's most likely going to remain an online-exclusive, collectors-only brand forevermore. Mattel doesn't even make toys based on the license anymore, they sub-license the brand to companies like Super7 for a kickback. The toys do alright, but I guess Mattel figures that producing them themselves is too much hassle. The comics DC has been putting out supposedly do okay.

There's also supposedly a movie coming out, but that's been the case for about 15 years. And given that the people making it supposedly want it to be campy and over-the-top like the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies, I don't see how it's going to be any good.

He-Man is probably my all-time favorite thing after Superman, but I highly doubt it will ever be popular in the mainstream again. It's too many things at once so it's tough to make it fit into a "box" for marketing purposes. Companies can market A Thing as "A Star Wars Rip-Off" or "A Conan Rip-Off", but for some reason, "It's like Conan Mixed With Star Wars" is too much for people to wrap their heads around. I don't get it; that's literally "Every Single Cool Thing" in one franchise, but for some reason it doesn't sell.

Pisses me off, but it is what it is.
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Old 04-01-2019, 05:04 PM   #8
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I see. He-Man as before my time, and unlike Speed Racer or FW TMNT, they never aired reruns of it in my country afaik. So I never got the chance to see it. I only know the "by the power of grey skull" quote, pretty much.
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Old 04-01-2019, 05:05 PM   #9
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Gotham or how to crap on the batman mythos and put it in a blender
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Old 04-01-2019, 05:16 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Prowler View Post
I see. He-Man as before my time, and unlike Speed Racer or FW TMNT, they never aired reruns of it in my country afaik. So I never got the chance to see it. I only know the "by the power of grey skull" quote, pretty much.
I've noticed that people who didn't grow up with it kind of have a hard time wrapping their head around it. Even people who are *just* a little younger than I am kind of missed the peak.

But it was absolutely the Biggest Thing In The World for a hot minute. The toyline originally ran from 1982 through 1989 and even knocked Barbie off the perch of being Mattel's most successful and top-selling brand, which was unfathomable. Only G.I. Joe really came close to it during the peak years. TMNT hit it big shortly after but that didn't really have anything to do with He-Man's decline, as the cartoon had already been cancelled and rebooted and the toys were on the way out.

Objectively, He-Man "mania" was probably bigger than "Turtlemania" at its peak but that peak didn't last very long at all. It was still popular for a bit, but there were just SO many toy and cartoon lines catching fire in the mid/late 1980s that it was inevitably going to flame out. Kids have short attention spans, after all. Most of the "classic" toy and cartoons of that era that are so fondly remembered really only lasted like two or three years because there was too much competition.

Some people blame the launch of She-Ra for "killing" the line but that's an extreme over-simplification. It didn't really help anything, but the peak had already come and gone and kids had mostly moved on to The Real Ghostbusters and G.I. Joe by that point. Once a toyline hits its peak it's almost impossible to reverse the momentum, some things are inevitable.

It's just rather shocking when a line goes from having like 70% of the market share to like 20% within a year or two, but them's the breaks. Again, when He-Man launched in 1982 there was very little competition for boys' toys. By the end of the decade there were a dozen awesome things for kids to get into. They didn't do anything "wrong", people simply moved on.
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Old 04-01-2019, 05:54 PM   #11
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Base on Season 1, I never did think RWBY would be as big as it is. And I loved RWBY lol.
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Old 04-02-2019, 01:03 PM   #12
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I've noticed that people who didn't grow up with it kind of have a hard time wrapping their head around it. Even people who are *just* a little younger than I am kind of missed the peak.

But it was absolutely the Biggest Thing In The World for a hot minute. The toyline originally ran from 1982 through 1989 and even knocked Barbie off the perch of being Mattel's most successful and top-selling brand, which was unfathomable. Only G.I. Joe really came close to it during the peak years. TMNT hit it big shortly after but that didn't really have anything to do with He-Man's decline, as the cartoon had already been cancelled and rebooted and the toys were on the way out.

Objectively, He-Man "mania" was probably bigger than "Turtlemania" at its peak but that peak didn't last very long at all. It was still popular for a bit, but there were just SO many toy and cartoon lines catching fire in the mid/late 1980s that it was inevitably going to flame out. Kids have short attention spans, after all. Most of the "classic" toy and cartoons of that era that are so fondly remembered really only lasted like two or three years because there was too much competition.

Some people blame the launch of She-Ra for "killing" the line but that's an extreme over-simplification. It didn't really help anything, but the peak had already come and gone and kids had mostly moved on to The Real Ghostbusters and G.I. Joe by that point. Once a toyline hits its peak it's almost impossible to reverse the momentum, some things are inevitable.

It's just rather shocking when a line goes from having like 70% of the market share to like 20% within a year or two, but them's the breaks. Again, when He-Man launched in 1982 there was very little competition for boys' toys. By the end of the decade there were a dozen awesome things for kids to get into. They didn't do anything "wrong", people simply moved on.
That's kinda surprising. I knew it was a rather big franchise in its prime, but had no idea it was THAT big. Bigger than Turtlemania? Damn.

Admittedly I don't really know what He-man is about. Conan and Star Wars sounds like a really odd mix. How did that turn out?
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Old 04-02-2019, 03:58 PM   #13
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It's just rather shocking when a line goes from having like 70% of the market share to like 20% within a year or two, but them's the breaks. Again, when He-Man launched in 1982 there was very little competition for boys' toys.
Ronald Reagan liberalized the laws in 1983

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Old 04-02-2019, 04:11 PM   #14
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That's kinda surprising. I knew it was a rather big franchise in its prime, but had no idea it was THAT big. Bigger than Turtlemania? Damn.

Admittedly I don't really know what He-man is about. Conan and Star Wars sounds like a really odd mix. How did that turn out?
It really was, but again, that Hot Spot was very brief, like a year. But at its peak there were a million toys, a live action film, a touring live-action stage show, TWO cartoon shows (the He-Man show, which had been cancelled but still constantly airing in re-runs, and the She-Ra show), magazines, comic books, children's storybooks, record albums, and an animated film. And that's just a rough breakdown. Just like TMNT at their peak, He-Man was literally "everywhere". It just didn't last as long.

Long story short, Mattel wanted to do a generic boys' action toy line and they were inspired by both Conan and Star Wars, they couldn't decide exactly which way to go with it so they combined it into one thing. It's essentially Conan, Dungeons & Dragons style stuff but there's also space ships and laser weapons and stuff like that. The earliest comics and stuff were much more Conan-inspired but then they branched it out into what most people are familiar with, which is a hybrid.

There's a ton more to it than that but that's the shortest and simplest explanation.

Again, the 1989 reboot (which was supposed to be a continuation of the original series) was just a Star Wars clone with no fantasy elements at all, and people really didn't like it because it was such a huge departure. It wasn't really too bad, but it was WAY too different. I can appreciate it for what it is now, but I absolutely couldn't stand it when I was 7.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:19 PM   #15
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Ronald Reagan liberalized the laws in 1983

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Old 04-02-2019, 04:39 PM   #16
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Objectively, He-Man "mania" was probably bigger than "Turtlemania" at its peak but that peak didn't last very long at all.
I kind of doubt it was bigger than "Turtlemania"....... How many movies, video games, and other tie-ins, how many did He-man have?????

Honestly that like Say Digimon was bigger than Pokemon.

I was born after both the TMNT and He-man peaks (Well after" but looking at objectively at how many tie-ins and other media form forms TMNT came in. I think its safe to say TMNT had a larger and longer peak.


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That's kinda surprising. I knew it was a rather big franchise in its prime, but had no idea it was THAT big. Bigger than Turtlemania? Damn.
It diffidently a huge franchise/property and was immensely popular back in its peak.



As far as what I thought would fail, but became a massive success......

I would say Netflix and even GameFly to an extent. I swore BlockBuster was going to squash them like a bug. But boy was I wrong! Netflix has changed the game as we know it!

Nick TMNT Cartoon is another one I thought would bomb/ be terrible. When I heard they were making April and Casey Teens or even worse "The Krang" I thought this incarnation of TMNT was going to be terrible, but has been hugely popular.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:41 PM   #17
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Blackstar

Masters of the Universe is based on a 1981 CBS cartoon called Blackstar.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:45 PM   #18
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I kind of doubt it was bigger than "Turtlemania"....... How many movies, video games, and other tie-ins, how many did He-man have?????

Honestly that like Say Digimon was bigger than Pokemon.

I was born after both the TMNT and He-man peaks (Well after" but looking at objectively at how many tie-ins and other media form forms TMNT came in. I think its safe to say TMNT had a larger and longer peak.


It diffidently a huge franchise/property and was immensely popular back in its peak.
Again, if you weren't there then you don't know.

If its peak had lasted longer then it's impossible to say what might have been. But that's not what happened. Again, I lived through all of it. Don't let a personal bias steer you away from Objective Fact.

The fact that TMNT had a longer boom period is a Fact, but whether it was hotter than MOTU during its peak is very debatable. All we can say with certainty is, the peak lasted longer.

TMNT also had much less competition in 1989-1991 than MOTU did between 1986-1988. So there's a lot of variables that make things tough to discern. TMNT only had Batman:TAS as its competition until the Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons took off. MOTU had at least a half-dozen popular franchises competing for air time and shelf space. So that clouds the waters quite a bit.
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Old 04-02-2019, 07:55 PM   #19
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James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar movies.

I figured both would be lucky to make back their budget at the box-office.
At least Titanic had memorable lines and scenes! I barely remember anything from Avatar.
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Old 04-02-2019, 08:13 PM   #20
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At least Titanic had memorable lines and scenes! I barely remember anything from Avatar.
Amen to that. For a movie that made billions of dollars, "Avatar" left NO cultural footprint whatsoever. Blue cat-people and dreadlock-sex. That's all anyone remembers.

"Titanic" was a very pretty load of "Meh" but at least it had Billy Zane. More things need Billy Zane.
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