Did you like Krang's retcon?

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by pferreira

Artists, animators, still in the same job of artistry.

Two points I want to note. Firstly in terms of comparing the 80s cartoon to a toy commercial you need to look at the big competition at the time and what they were doing. He-Man was massive in the early 90s as was GI Joe, they were made to sell toys but could still be fun to watch. Is Turtles on the same level. Not really, I feel the writing and overall production was better. Fred Wolf says on the Turtle Power documentary he wanted the series to be more than just another toy commercial. Now compare Transformers to the Fred Wolf cartoon which was nothing but a toy commercial to the point that Hasbro dictated which Transformers needed to be included in which episode based on popularity or to raise market awareness. Hasbro even told writer David Wise in the Season 4 finale to include every single Transformer in less script time than he had on the page. The animation in the cartoon series at times explicitly shows the viewer (the child) how a character transforms so the viewer on a subconscious level remembers this when he goes to buy the toy. The Fred Wolf cartoon series wasn't bad at all compared to Transformers, at least the former tried to develop it's characters, with the G1 show that wasn't possible as new Transformers had to be included every episode or killed off (the 1986 movie) or phased out due to being unpopular.

Secondly the 80s cartoon as I have mentioned before wasn't done on a big budget. It wasn't produced by Disney or Warner Bros but an independent studio. The budget increased a little when the show became big and went to CBS but it was still viewed as a cartoon so it was to be made cheaply as animation wasn't taken seriously at the time.

I agree, it did more right than wrong.

Yes, I suppose that when compared to the slightly older cartoons like Transformers, which had a way larger toylines to promote by the way, it's somewhat less insulting. If you start out with ten action figures to promote, then of course there's going to be more focus on a handful of character than if you started out with forty action figures to promote.

That doesn't really make it good though, it just makes it a little less shameless than what came out before. The show had a hamster mutate into a human sumo wrestler covered in tattoos, just for the sake of promoting a toy, so it's still a shameless toy commercial.