#I honestly don't watch enough tv to know what other shows are currently being culled | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delicatefury · 2 years

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I wonder how many people realize that the best way to support the cartoons they love is to… buy the merch?

The official merch.

It really is that simple. It’s why Transformers and My Little Pony keep coming back. It’s why there are so many Barbie movies. Why Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe failed but the 3D animated He-Man is thriving. Why Pokemon is the biggest money making franchise of all time and will never not have an anime. Why Bluey, Cocomelon, and other little kid cartoons are having money poured into them while other studios are being cut off ruthlessly. It’s why Frozen and Cars got fucking sequels while The Owl House was reduced to 3 specials for its final season.

Because, for those IPs, people buy the official merch.

Parents aren’t going on Etsy to get a hand-crochet plush of Bluey or Bingo. They’re picking one up at Target. The Transformers collector isn’t buying small batch stickers from a fanartist on redbubble, he’s buying an official hasbro figure at the comic store and his kids a sticker sheet at Walmart. Hand painted cards are never going to replace the Pokemon TCG.

And that’s where companies make their animation budget back. Not through advertisements. Not through subscriptions. Merch.

And it doesn’t matter if the fan stuff is better made. It doesn’t matter if you can commission exactly what you want. As much as it sucks, fan merch is copyright infringement, and the animation companies don’t see a single red cent from it.

You can sign all the petitions you want. You can stream every single one of these cartoons in the background on a repeat to falsify watch numbers, you can post all the fanart and fanfiction you want in an active fandom of millions and it won’t save your show. So long as the cartoon isn’t justifying the expense of animation from official merchandise sales, the companies have no incentive to keep making them.

I’m not saying those actions never work. But the surest way to make sure these companies stay invested in your favorite cartoon, is to make sure their investment in your favorite cartoon pays off.

Edit: it’s in a reblog, but I’m adding it here too.

I’m aware that these companies aren’t making that much merchandise for some of these shows. Definitely not at the level a bunch of shows from my childhood were. In which case we need to be asking three important questions:

Why do they not think these shows are marketable?

Why are they making these shows if they don’t think they are marketable?

How do we let them know we will buy official merch in a quantity that will get their attention?

Money talks to these corporations, so why are they cutting off their ears?

#animation #cartoons #merch #it sucks #I get not wanting to support Disney and the like #believe me I get it #but it’s a fact of reality #that the shows that sell official merch stay around #and the ones that don’t #regardless of popularity #tend to get cancelled or reduced seasons #because animation is expensive #it’s profit model is different from live action shows #it’s all about the merch #the owl house #toh season 3 #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt #infinity train #I honestly don't watch enough tv to know what other shows are currently being culled #but this is a trend I've noticed #because I do know what's sold in the toy section of Target #(nieces and nephews y'know)#and kids cartoons I've never heard of fill the aisles #but the shows I see trend on Tumblr rarely even have one item on the shelf

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