It's the incredible GI Joe mobile command center,
and it's hunting for Cobra.
Concerned parents, corporate greed, and the brainwashing
of a generation of children may sound
like a rejected pitch for an episode of Batman
The Animated Series, but we actually
dealt with all of that in our reality.
Once upon a time, humanity was battling a foe known the world
over as a societal menace and a destroyer of young minds
that needed to be stopped for good.
That foe's name was Saturday morning cartoons.
And no cartoon was more powerful than GI Joe.
GI Joe is the codename for America's daring highly trained
special mission force.
If you were a child of the '80s or '90s,
then you probably have a very specific memory
of sitting yourself down in front of the TV
in the early hours of Saturday morning
and watching the latest adventures
of your favorite cartoon characters.
But while those memories may seem pretty sweet and innocent
on the surface, there's an oddly sinister history behind them
that we're still feeling the effects of today.
Hey!
I was watching that.
TV rots your brain.
In 1960, the first episode of The Flintstones
aired on ABC, created by the legendary William Hanna
and Joseph Barbera, The Flintstones
became the first critically and commercially successful
animated television show.
Right from the beginning, everyone's favorite modern
Stone Age family was tied to advertisements.
In this case, The Flintstones' first two seasons
were sponsored by the most 1960s company ever, Winston
cigarettes.
Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.
Without this retrospectively terrible sponsor
and the rest of the show's advertisement revenue,
it's likely that The Flintstones wouldn't have existed.
But luckily for Hanna-Barbera, commercials on TV
had already become commonplace in the 1960s, which
just so happens to be the decade that the first ever
commercial for Hasbro's fiercely patriotic line of GI Joe
action figures emerged, 20 years before the iconic TV
show would show its face.
The commercials for these new toys
would run between television shows like The Flintstones,
further perpetuating the success of animated TV
with their advertising dollars.
Other companies and Hanna-Barbera
themselves looked to The Flintstones success
as a sort of blueprint.
Some sort to create their own unique shows,
while others simply reran cartoons
originally made for moviegoing audiences in a prime time slot.
And the most prime slot of all ended up
being Saturday mornings.
See, by the time the 1970s rolled around,
children were suddenly a very important demographic
of the TV viewing public.
They were voracious content consumers, uncritical viewers,
and most importantly, completely oblivious to the fact
that they were being marketed to.
Research said that a lot of children
couldn't understand the difference between the TV
show meant to entertain them and the commercial
meant to sell them things.
And they certainly didn't understand the concept
of persuasive marketing.
Obviously, a lot of the marketing aimed at children
was for toys, including GI Joes.
But with more eyes comes more critique.
Concerns were starting to rise about just how much advertising
was too much advertising, particularly when
it came to ones targeted at sleep-eyed children who
were just trying to eat their Pink Panther flakes
and watch Tom and Jerry reruns.
[TOM SCREAMING]
Action for Children's Television, or ACT,
pressured the Federal Communications Commission
for change, and the FCC, in turn,
pressured the National Association
of Broadcasters, or NAB.
After years of pushback, they did eventually
outline some changes to their programming.
Namely, they would be cutting down on how many commercials
could run on Saturday morning cartoons
and regulating the content of the remaining commercials.
Suddenly, toy ads were under a lot more scrutiny
than ever before.
Lastly, the NAB would be putting more
of an emphasis on educational shows
rather than purely entertainment-based ones.
But that last bit was more of a suggestion than an actual rule.
Science rules.
Edutainment shows would become the exception.
Companies were really looking for creative ways
to make themselves richer than all of the eccentric Scooby-Doo
villains.
And the first franchise to find an answer to their commercially
restrictive woes was GI Joe.
Through a legal loophole in the toy marketing guideline left
over from the '70s, Marvel and Hasbro
made history by airing one of the first ever TV
advertisements for a comic book with GI Joe number one in 1982.
Toy commercials were being restricted, but comics?
Those didn't have any regulations.
Hasbro would go one step further with their capitalistic genius
by partnering with the '80s TV legend Ron Friedman in 1983.
Together, they created 95 episodes of GI Joe A Real
American Hero, and its popularity cannot be
overstated.
Kids adored GI Joe, and so did Hasbro,
since it managed to find a way to advertise toys
to children without actually putting
any toys in commercials.
Since the focus was on comics and the characters
in those comics, they weren't technically marketing toys.
But they still sold them.
A lot of them.
Other companies were quick to bank off GI Joe's success.
So began a decade that produced some incredible animated
television that still largely is relevant today.
Shows like Transformers, ThunderCats, Super Mario Bros
Super Show, She-Ra, and Super Friends
all took advantage of the GI Joe model.
But while their quality was disparate,
these shows all had one thing in common.
They were made to sell toys to children.
Figures and vehicles each sold separately from LJM.
Product placement and promotion was no longer bound
by the borders of ad breaks.
Now the TV shows themselves had become ads.
Thanks to the innervation of GI Joe, commercials
were unnecessary until sitting President Ronald
Reagan and his new head of the FCC deregulated them.
So TV shows became commercials for toys,
ad breaks became commercials for toys,
and toys essentially became commercials for TV shows.
It was a never ending cycle of toy propaganda.
A lot of parents were obviously unhappy with this,
and the main target of their ire became GI Joe.
Early pressures from parents and the still active ACT
did result in some pitiful attempts at placation.
You probably remember when a show's main characters would
lecture kids about the importance of hard work
and putting reflectors on your bicycle in an out of place PSA.
If you have to ride when it's getting dark,
have the right equipment.
And wear bright clothes.
GI Joe was the first to adopt the practice,
not out of an urge to do good, but out of necessity
so they could continue their children's marketing campaigns.
Your advice really hit home.
Now I know.
And knowing is half the battle.
The real goal was clear.
Children's TV had been turned into a toy marketing industry.
By the mid '80s, department store shelves
were bursting with the latest My Little Pony playsets,
Mario Bros video games, and of course, GI Joe action figures.
Toy companies were making record profits,
and the kids were unquenchable.
But ACT and other organizations continued
to fight back against this growing trend well
into the '80s, making it increasingly difficult
to turn a profit.
GI Joe A Real American Hero stopped airing new episodes
in 1986, and Hasbro scaled their toy production
back after a lackluster year of sales in 1989.
President H.W Bush signed the Children's Television Act
into law in 1990.
The CTA, or the Kid Vid Rules, ordered the FCC
to take action against these exploitative shows
and commercials and put resources
into the creation of more educational kids content.
GI Joe had long since disappeared
from Saturday mornings, but the culture
of toy marketing it created took years to reverse.
Other '80s icons had mostly gone extinct
or were struggling to stay afloat
in the new political climate.
And new shows were being created that surpassed them
in popularity.
Like all children's television that came before it,
these shows were not born purely out
of a desire to educate or entertain children.
They of course made money off of merchandise and advertising.
But with the FCC's more strict rules in place,
the days of blatant brainwashing were over.
And in a way, the entertainment and toy industries
have never recovered.
The adventure of GI Joe Cobra Mumba and other vehicles
and figures sold separately.
Go, Joe!
For the most part, all of the companies and brands
that created children's television programs in the '80s
are still around today, producing TV shows,
making toys, and banking on the nostalgia of the adults that
grew up watching the programs designed specifically
for the purpose of making as much money as possible.
With the rise of streaming, children are no longer
expected to sit down at 8:00 AM on a Saturday
and consume a block of programs and advertisements.
While we grew up loving cartoons,
we couldn't know in the moment just how powerful
their messaging was on our young minds.
If only GI Joe had taught us about the dangers of television
marketing and how it brainwashed a generation of kids.
Oh well, now we know.
And knowing is half the battle.
GI Joe.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
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