This is Part Ten in a series.

We’re at an odd point in this series now.  The timeline isn’t that firm in my head.  GI Joe happens between seasons 2 and 3 of our Transformers treatment, as it helps to explain the shift in relations between the Autobots and Earth Governments.  Sky Commanders needs to happen shortly after Transformers because we’re going to need a large supply of Energon on Earth to power all the new technology.  And M.A.S.K. we hinted at during season 3 of Transformers.  After that shows may be happening concurrently, or not precisely in the order I am presenting them.  The exact timeline needs to be fully hammered out.  We’re entering a sort of plug and play phase of this series.

Centurions needs to happen early in the timeline, because we’re going to be setting up issues with complex AI on Earth.  And I feel like it should be the first AI related incident, but another series could happen before it that also deals with the AI issue.  But I think Centurions happening first makes slightly more sense, so we’re going to say it comes after M.A.S.K.  Anyway, a refresher on what Centurions is, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIajdXHRmJ4

So, we’re keeping the same basic premise.  In the original Centurions cartoon, there is a unified world government, and given that we’ve introduced Cybertronians, an extraterrestrial threat, that makes sense.  So, we’re keeping that.  Now, humans also realize that because evil Cybertronians are a thing, they need a way to fight Transformers, hence the experimental exo-frames and the armor systems of the Centurions series.  That is our next step in integrating Cybertronian technology with Earth Technology, the fusing of man and machine for power extreme.

We’re also going with Centurions because it would serve as a good way to bring the Microman toy line back to America.  Takara wants to bring the line back, they tried importing to the US in the mid-2000s.  It didn’t really take off, but the modular aspect of Microman and excellent articulation would be a good fit for Centurions.  Also, there’s something poetic about spinning Microman off GI Joe, as that was how it originated.  And, of course, spinning GI Joe off Transformers, which was an import of the Microchange line, which was a spin-off of Microman, which was a spin-off of GI Joe, it’s a nice sort of circular loop.

We’re also eventually going to do something with the Micronauts, so we’ll have two toy lines that make use of the Microman play pattern, but we’re going to get to Micronauts later.  Right now, let’s get back to Centurions.  So, we’ve got a united Earth Government, due to the revelation of the existence of aliens thanks to the Autobots and Decepticons, and perhaps another event.  That other event we’ll get to later in the series, it’s a cool addition, but it’s not something we can guarantee, so we’re going to do as much as we can without it.

Sorry, back to the topic at hand. Again, united World Government, new phase of integrating Cybertronian (and perhaps other alien tech) with human technology, fusing man and machine for power extreme, so that a single human can hold his or her own in a fight against a Cybertronian or any extraterrestrial, really.  That’s where we are.  We’ve got Doc Terror and Hacker causing all sorts of trouble.  Doc Terror and Hacker as per the original series are cyborgs, half robot.  And eventually, their robot halves, as in the original series get joined together into a single AI creation.  It goes mad, turns against Doc Terror and the entire world.

But why does it go mad?  Well, remember how Unicron’s body is at the center of the Earth?  Yeah, that has some impact on AI developed on Earth, especially AI that doesn’t have a spark.  The AI created by fusing the robotic halves of Doc Terror and Hacker is very close to having a spark, but it just falls short, and it’s corrupted by the presence of Unicron’s body, causing it to go rogue.  This is the first time we encounter this phenomenon, but it won’t be the last time.  Eventually, this rogue AI is defeated.  During this series, we get another cameo from the Benton that appeared in Sky Commanders, he’s still working on developing AI, perhaps he worked with Doc Terror for a time, before Doc Terror went all world domination.  Doesn’t really matter, again, he’s not a major character, we’re just doing a quick check in with the cameo, showing what he’s working on, the skills he’s gaining.

And that’s really it for the Centurions, we’re laying down the basis for rogue AI and why it happens, setting up rules that maybe aren’t fully explained to the audience yet, but that we are aware of.  Eventually, this bit about Unicron’s influence causing AI without sparks to go crazy will be revealed to the audience, but probably not until Jem and the Holograms.  Anyway, our next series is going to be Micronauts.

This is Part Nine in a series.

Alright, so now we’re into M.A.S.K. aka Mobile Armor Strike Kommand.  And we’ve sort of set up for this series already, we’ve got Matt Tracker as someone who went through GI Joe training but never got his code name, a nod to the 25^th Anniversary GI Joe figure released of Matt Tracker.  We also set up his brother as another trainee, and then in Season 3 of our treatment of Transformers we mention that there was an accident, Matt’s brother dies in this accident, and Miles Mayhem, who was part of the program that Matt and his brother were brought into after GI Joe was disbanded, steals their technology.  Same basic premise as the original M.A.S.K. cartoon.

Miles goes on to form V.E.N.O.M. and Matt feels it is his responsibility to stop Miles, so he re-activates the M.A.S.K. program, or something like that.  M.A.S.K. is the next step in Cybertronian technology research.  We’ve gotten mass shifting down.  We have laser technology.  Hard light technology is also now mastered.  And in Sky Commanders we started toying with very basic form changing technology.  That last category is what the M.A.S.K. project was focusing on.  So, we’ve got a car that can then fly, a helicopter that can turn into a jet, so on and so forth.  These are the first true transformations that humans develop, where vehicles change form and function in major ways.

And that’s all we really need from M.A.S.K.  Again, we end the series with V.E.N.O.M. defunct but not all the members dead or in jail, some are still out there, to spread knowledge and technology to other groups.  We maybe see a few scenes on Cybertron during this series, and things seem to be going well, but we don’t really spend much time there.  That’s it.  On to the next series.  We’ll be visiting the Centurions next.

This is Part Eight in a series.

There are a few things I forgot to mention in the last post, so we’re going to start off with those, before moving on to Sky Commanders. Agent Fowler being a former GI Joe that completed the training but never got his code name, gives us a chance to bring the Joes back for a guest appearance in Season 3 of our Transformers treatment, and let Agent Fowler earn his code name.

Also, MECH is a group inspired by Cobra, but not related to Cobra. Cyrus was in the military and faced down one of Cobra’s initial attacks, when conventional weaponry stood no chance against Cobra, before GI Joe was activated. That’s why he believes in the superiority of technology. He saw what superior technology can do, but he’s unaware that it’s based on alien technology. 

Additionally, going forward most of the antagonists are going to be either inspired by Cobra or splintered from it. Finally, we also get a tease of what Matt Tracker is doing in Season 3 of Transformers, as just like in Transformers: Prime, Optimus gets a new alt mode that is a truck from the M.A.S.K. program, which has temporarily been shut down due to an accident, referencing the death of Matt Tracker’s brother.

Okay, that’s it, now we’re on to Sky Commanders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8S4UkJCMdY

There’s not much we need to change for this series, the element Pheata Seven becomes Energon and Dark Energon. The unstable continent is the result of Unicron’s spark being separated from his body. Essentially, Unicron’s body is dying due to its separation from his spark, and said body is in the center of the Earth. To preserve itself, as it can’t fully die while Unicron’s spark still exists, the body is shedding mass, and thus Energon and Dark Energon, resulting in this unstable continent manifesting in the South Pacific.
 
 And that’s it for the major changes we need to make to Sky Commanders to fit it into the Hasbroverse, but we’re not quite done. There are a few other little tie ins we’re going to throw in. So, one aspect of the technology that’s being worked on in this series, is very simple function changing transformations. A plane turning into a fortress, but it’s a very simple function change, as a fortress, it still mostly looks like a plane. 

Additionally, we’re introducing hard light projections, these are the light cables the Sky Commanders travel on, for these hard-light cables to work, they also need a very rudimentary AI. Who is a junior researcher helping to develop this hard-light AI technology? Someone with the last name Benton, grandfather or great grandfather of Jerrica Benton of Jem and the Holograms fame. And now we’re starting to see things getting interconnected. This Benton isn’t a major character in Sky Commanders, his name is just dropped in one or two episodes as a treat for fans, hinting at other things to come.
 
 Eventually, this series wraps up, mostly because Unicron’s body stops shedding mass and thus Energon and Dark Energon, and while Earth has a new continent, it is no longer unstable. The Raiders are “defeated” but it’s more they just go dormant, maybe the leader of the group is captured, but the other members scatter, available to lend their knowledge to other groups, helping to create the bad guys in subsequent series.

And that’s pretty much it for this show. We’ll move onto M.A.S.K. next, I guess.

This is Part Seven in a series.

So, GI Joe.  Can the Joes even work in the modern day?  Given that they’re not on toy shelves, someone seems to have decided they can’t.  I disagree.  The Corps, a toy line that is basically GI Joe, is still on toy shelves, and getting large sections, https://twitter.com/ToyboxSoapbox/status/1204871298075299840?s=20

Now, I will admit, I believe that is a picture of a toy store in the UK, but Walmart and Target have their own lines of military characters, I believe the old Toys R Us line was True Heroes, which it seems are the same figures Walmart and Target are selling, just under a different name.  And companies wouldn’t be making those toys if they didn’t sell.  Walmart and Target wouldn’t have them on the shelves in the quantities they have them, if they didn’t sell.  So, they sell.

Additionally, we have many active duty military members with families, and many veterans with families.  Children of parents who served will see their parents in the Joes, that figure isn’t just Shipwreck, it’s Shipwreck and that child’s father, mother, uncle, aunt, or grandfather.  I know this, because my father served.  He served in the 7^th Cav in Korea, and in the Special Forces in the Reserves, back when the Special Forces had a division in the Reserves.  Both Duke and Flint were my dad, they were some of my favorite Joes.  This is a toy line that allows children to imagine their family members as the heroes of the story, that is powerful.  That will sell toys.

But GI Joe still won’t sell you say.  Then why was Overwatch so popular?  Soldier 76 is effectively Duke.  Genji might as well be Snake Eyes.  Hanzo is Storm Shadow by another name.  Lucio is kind of close to Doc.  Widowmaker feels like the Baroness but French.  Reaper seems like a cross between Cobra Commander and Zartan.  Sombra with her implied connection to Reaper feels an awful lot like Zarana.  Moira is a gender bent Doctor Mindbender.  Doomfist is a cross between Sigma 6 Destro and the Destro that broke off from Cobra to lead the Iron Grenadiers.  Tracer reminds me a lot of Lady Jaye.  The Omnics as weapons of war seem very close in concept to B.A.T.S.  Roadhog and Junkrat might as well be Drednoks. And for a time, Overwatch was the biggest video game in the world, but GI Joe won’t sell.

Then there’s Fortnite, a lot of those designs look like GI Joe characters, Firefly and Snake Eyes come to mind.  It’s the biggest video game in the world right now, but GI Joe won’t sell, even though it’s character designs will.  I really don’t subscribe to the notion that GI Joe won’t sell, there’s too much evidence to the contrary.  I will say that GI Joe needs to change a little to work in the modern world, but it will sell.  It’s the most culturally diverse cast of characters of any pop culture franchise in the world and has been culturally diverse since it was re-tooled in the 1980s.  It can work in today’s climate, even with the anti-war sentiment.

So, how do we fit GI Joe into the Hasbroverse?  Well, we use the Autobots sharing Cybertronian technology with humans as the reason GI Joe exists.  The new weapons created from the technology need to be field tested.  GI Joe is the special unit that tests these weapons in “real world” conditions.  These are weapons that have passed the initial testing phase.  Now they are being put in the hands of real soldiers, in “battlefield” conditions to see if they are actually useful or if any changes need to be made before they enter mass production.  Remember, part of the deal with the Autobots is that their technology is only used to defend Earth from extraterrestrial threats, not against other humans.  As such, the “battlefield” conditions these weapons are tested in are simulations that are as close to the real thing as possible.  The insights of real soldiers on the tests and the weapons is hoped to make the weapons more useful and mitigate the issues presented by testing them only in simulations.

One of the weapons manufacturers helping the US Government develop weapons using this new technology is MARS, run by Destro.  Some of his weapon designs don’t get approved by the Government or are never shown to the Government as he knows they’ll never be approved.  Instead, he sells those concepts to Cobra.  Now, the type of technology being worked on at this point, derived from Cybertronian technology, is mostly laser weapons, and simple transformation technology, mainly space saving technology, which implies some mass shifting.  Basically, missiles that collapse on themselves and then “unfold” after being fired, allowing a vehicle to carry more missiles into combat.  Or bullets that shrink, so soldiers can carry more ammunition.  We’re not working on transformations that allow objects to change their function, though perhaps Destro tries for a bit of that, but very simple function changing transformations, if they’re used at all.  Perhaps some anti-gravity technology is worked on as well.

So, Cobra starts rolling out with advanced weaponry, provided by MARS.  Conventional weaponry can’t really stand up to what Cobra is rolling out, and so GI Joe is mobilized to deal with Cobra, in violation of the agreement with the Autobots, hence why Optimus Prime is so upset with the US Government in what we’re calling Season 3 of our Transformers treatment.  GI Joe also finds they need more bodies to deal with Cobra.  So, they start pulling in more recruits from various armed services.  The GI Joe team is made up of US Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, and Coast Guard soldiers, as well as soldiers from the various Special Forces of the US Armed Forces.  In addition to US Armed Forces members, GI Joe also consists of members of the Special Forces of nations allied with the US, it is an International Team.

Now, training for GI Joe involves being taught how to drive any ground vehicle, how to fly planes and helicopters, and how to operate naval vessels.  This helps explains why all the Joes can fly and drive anything.  Of the new recruits that are brought in to help fill out the team are three people, Matt Tracker and his brother, as well as the man who will eventually become Agent Fowler in Season 3 of our Transformers treatment.  Unfortunately, GI Joe gets disbanded as the Cobra threat is dealt with just before Matt Track, his brother, and Agent Fowler graduate from the training program and earn their code names, other than the lack of a code name, they’re fully trained Joes.

That’s pretty much it for GI Joe.  Story wise, we just need Cobra defeated, and those three trainee Joes that never graduate from the program before it is disbanded.  And from here we move back into Season 3 of our Transformers treatment, timeline wise.  When it comes to this series of articles, next we’re going to move onto Sky Commanders.  I hope you’ll stick around.

This is Part Six in a series.

As I said in the previous post, I’m going to restrict myself to broad strokes as much as possible.  The goal here is to get an initial three season run out of the Transformers series, and remember, that’s three 26 episode seasons, and we’re releasing on streaming platforms, like Netflix, so that’s really more like 12, 6-7 episode seasons released quarterly over a three year period.

The first season we start on Cybertron, kind of.  Mostly because we need to establish a few things.  We show how during the war on Cybertron the Autobots and Decepticons deal with other planets.  The Decepticons take the form of unmarked military vehicles from whatever planet they are trying to conquer.  They then stage attacks on important facilities within the various factions on the planet, causing the native inhabitants to go to war with each other, and either fully or nearly wipe each other out.  If they don’t fully wipe each other out, the Decepticons wait until the population reaches a certain threshold and then unleash a weapon on the planet that causes any non-spark powered technology to go dead.  At this point, with no resistance left on the planet, they take over and strip it of all resources, obtaining large amounts of energon.

The Autobots by contrast form a partnership with the planets they encounter, giving them technology to use to protect themselves from Decepticons in exchange for a small percentage of their resources.  To keep their involvement on the planet a secret and avoid attention from the Decepticons the Autobots take on the forms they are best known for, civilian vehicles.  This is a noble strategy, and shows the Autobots to be our heroes, however, it also explains why they eventually lose the war.  They need to ally with ten planets to get the same amount of resources that the Decepticons get from a single planet.  Additionally, it is a continuous process, meaning supply routes need to be maintained.  The Decepticons take a planet, strip it, and move on, leaving a barren husk in their wake, they are less vulnerable to being cut off from their energon supplies, though eventually they will run out of planets to consume close enough to Cybertron to make harvesting them worthwhile.  We only need to spend a few episodes setting this up.

Also, while still on Cybertron, we show the Decepticons setting off their weapons that shut down all non-spark based technology across an entire sector of space, creating a dead zone that some third faction theoretically cannot cross.  This is the turning point of the war, allowing them to focus their full efforts on the Autobots.  However, as always, Energon on Cybertron is running low, for both parties, and it’s getting harder and harder to get new Energon shipped in, both sides are attacking supply ships.  Cybertron must be abandoned.  A deal is reached.  Each side will send off ships to distant colonies, first the Autobots will send a ship, then the Decepticons, so on and so forth.  In this scenario the Autobots have a huge tactical advantage as they have more allies out in the universe, and the worlds that they’ve visited are habitable.  What worlds the Decepticons will go to are barren wastelands, it’s a death sentence for them, so they all get sent out to become raiders, conquering new worlds and turning them into proper colonies, ruled with an iron fist.  Additionally, each ship that goes out into the universe is a Titan, this will come into play later in this Hasbro-verse.

Now, ships are being sent out, and it’s down to Optimus and the last remaining Autobots, and Megatron and the last remaining Decepticons.  As in the Generation 1 cartoon, Megatron follows Optimus through the Space Bridge because he realizes that Optimus isn’t heading to a known Autobot colony.  He’s heading to an unexplored region of space.  And thus, we get them crashing into Earth during the age of the dinosaurs, and that’s the end of the first season.

Second season starts with the Transformers waking up, Decepticons first as in the original Generation 1 cartoon.  They then begin to employ their tried and true strategy from the war, set the natives to fighting each other and killing themselves, so they can harvest all the resources for themselves.  The Autobots eventually wake up, and start actively trying to stop the Decepticons, except they try and keep their presence on the planet a secret from the natives.  They learned during the war that revealing themselves to a general populace usually led to panic, and they’ve got the Decepticons making trouble already, they don’t want to be lumped in with them and attacked on two fronts.

Eventually, the Autobots make a deal with the US Government and its allies, similar to the one they made with other planets during the war.  That deal always came with a single caveat, the technology the Autobots share is only to be used to defend the entire planet from off planet threats, never against other denizens of their own world.  The tide starts turning on Earth, and the Decepticons are mostly fought to a standstill.  Eventually, Megatron realizes he needs more troops, so he leaves Earth to gather more Decepticons.  End season 2.

Now, Season 3 takes place years later, when Megatron eventually returns, it plays out very similarly to Transformers: Prime.  Optimus and the Autobots while still working with the US Government do not trust the government, this is because Cybertronian technology was used against other humans, not alien threats.  How that happened will be covered during the events of another series that takes place during the time between seasons 2 and 3.  Effectively, this third season does a lot of the same things Prime did.  We learn Unicron is sleeping at the center of the Earth, Primus is at the center of Cybertron.  M.E.C.H. exists.  And Agent Fowler is the liaison between the Autobots and the US Government.  We end the season with a similar situation to the movie that finished the Transformers: Prime series.  Unicron’s spark is separated from his body, Optimus Prime is dead, and Cybertron is revived.  Most of the Transformers return to Cybertron.  Maybe we need more than a single season for all that, which is fine, but that’s the basic gist of what we need to have happen in this season.

Maybe we even treat this as two separate series, with Seasons 1 and 2 dropping together, then other shows such as the next one I’m about to talk about dropping, then season 3 dropping, in as many seasons as it needs to tell its story effectively.  We don’t need the exact same events as Transformers: Prime to occur during season 3, we just to get to that end point, while hitting certain other points along the way.  After the events of what I’ve laid out for season 3 occur, we don’t visit Cybertron for a while.  Maybe Autobots make brief guest appearances in subsequent series, but after a certain point on the timeline, Cybertron goes dark, and we see no Transformers.  Until a message comes through to Earth from a reborn Optimus Prime, at this point, he should have been dead for a few real world years, possibly even close to a decade, depending on how many properties we tie together, and how long it takes to get through them all.  Some can run concurrently, so it all depends.  We’ll get into the contents of the message from Optimus later in this blog series, it’s a surprise.

Anyway, that’s how I’d set up the Transformers for a Hasbro-verse.  Not much changes for them, and that makes sense, they’re the first property in the timeline.  But we’ve laid some groundwork for some very interesting stuff later.  Next up, we pay a visit to G. I. Joe.

This is Part Five in a series.

So, let’s set some ground rules for what we’re doing here before we get into it.  I’m not laying out every episode of a series.  I am going to give the basic premise and maybe a few story beats that must happen.  For the most part, the overall premise of a series is going to be the same as what’s come before.  That doesn’t mean the same stories will be told, that would be boring.  I may use an already existing version of a series as a basis for the overall concepts I want to happen in a series.  Again, that does not mean I want the exact stories that were told in that series to be told again.  I may borrow story ideas from existing series, but I’m borrowing the concept not the way it unfolded.

So, we need to talk about something, these series are going to be released on a streaming service, but when I talk about a season, I mean a standard television season of 26 episodes.  That standard season will be released in four chunks over the course of a year, allowing a new wave of toys for that season to be released in each quarter of the year.  So, we’re going to have Season X part 1 which will consist of 6 episodes, Season X part 2 which will consist of 7 episodes, Season X part 3 which will consist of 6 episodes, and Season X part 4 which will consist of 7 episodes.  When we start on a series, we will commit to a certain number of seasons for that series, off the top of my head rule of thumb is three 26 episode seasons, but to commit to a set number of seasons, each season has to have a story arc already planned.  If you only need 1 season or 2 seasons to tell the story of that series, that’s fine.  If you need four, that’s fine too, but you must know what stories you’re going to tell in each season before you start it.

Now, when I say you must have the story for every season, I don’t mean you have to have every episode of the series written before it goes into production.  I mean, you must have an outline for each season.  You must know where you’re going, maybe a few story beats.  Something like what I’m doing here, but I’m giving an outline for entire series in one go.  What I’m giving would need to be made a bit more specific.

Also, we don’t introduce characters and do nothing with them.  Any character used in these shows needs to have a purpose, even if they show up for just one episode.  Now, that purpose may be as a background character making a cameo because they end up being relevant to another series.  That said, cameos like that should happen organically, and while the character should be named, a big deal of their presence shouldn’t be made.  They’re there, but they’re not the focus of the current series, so they shouldn’t steal the spotlight.  Connections to other series happen, but those connections should never become the primary focus of a show, not even for a single episode unless you’ve got an excellent story to tell that relies on those connections.

Also, we’re going to go into a lot of background detail in these outlines most likely.  Most of it will not end up in the show.  It will be information the writers know and imply to the audience, but never outright state.  Just because we know a bit of background information doesn’t mean we have to inform the audience of that background information.  If they ask at a Con or something, the answer can be given, but we don’t need to tell the audience everything explicitly in the show.

The question is probably coming up why split a 26-episode season into four parts.  That way new episodes drop every quarter, allowing you to release new figures for the line every quarter.  Another question is how there will be enough stock of figures in stores when a season drops when the figures are being 3D printed rather than injection molded.  Development of a series takes two years.  The first year is all planning, finalizing designs and writing scripts.  The second year, episodes get made.  That gives a year when you have finalized designs to print enough figures for the initial launch and would allow you to see how well they are selling and if investment in injection molding tooling would be wise based on a strong enough demand.

Now, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, this Hasbroverse is more expansive than you think, and includes some franchises you aren’t expecting.  I think we’ve laid enough groundwork.  The Transformers are coming up next.

This is Part Four in a series.

Okay, so let’s talk about what everyone wants to do, an Expanded or Connected Universe.  Oh, but only Marvel can do those.  Well, here’s the question.  Why is Marvel the only one who can do it?  DC has done it, not on film, but they did it in the comics just fine.  In fact, DC Comics started out as entirely separate stories; it was only over time that they became interconnected.  Kingdom Hearts has done it, connecting various unrelated Disney Movies into a single narrative, granted the way they’ve done it is utterly confusing regarding the lore, but it’s worked.  Voltron did it, connecting two wholly unrelated anime series into a single cohesive narrative.  Robotech did it, combining three utterly separate anime series into a single coherent story.

It can be done, it’s not impossible, but it is hard.  You have to stop focusing on getting to the connected world and tell a good story.  For most of the first Iron Man film, we don’t even realize it’s part of a larger universe, same with the Edward Norton Hulk film.  Focus on the story first.  Also, have an idea of the overall story you’re trying to tell.  For the first phase of Marvel films, that story was the formation of the Avengers, though they laid the groundwork by introducing the Tesseract for the next overarching story they wanted to tell about the Infinity Gauntlet, and then set that storyline fully in motion during the events of the first Avengers film and in its post-credit scenes.

You can’t rush into a connected universe; we must care about the characters first.  We have to want to know more about them, which will make us want to know more about the world they live in.  You can maybe try to sell us on the world instead of the characters, but that’s a harder thing to do, it can be done.  JRR Tolkien sold people on the world of the Hobbit and then got to write the Lord of the Rings.  With Star Wars the setting was the real star of the first film, at least for George Lucas, but the characters were still solid if a bit generic in some ways.  And by generic, I mean they were all kind of archetypes, which doesn’t mean bad.

Anyway, the Dark Universe about the Universal Monsters utterly flopped, because they spent so much time trying to establish a world, they sort of forgot to tell the story of the characters that were in the movie.  The DCEU flopped because they were rushing through the characters to get to the connected universe.  Maybe if they had let Zack Snyder make his Superman Trilogy where he would have ended up as the Superman people know at the end, things would have gone differently, but Warner Bros wasn’t willing to stick with that vision after Man of Steel didn’t do as well as they hoped.  And that’s kind of the other thing with expanded universes; you must pick a vision and stick with it.  You can make minor adjustments, but you can’t try and completely restructure the story, especially when you’re trying to establish it.  You need to build up some good will and momentum before you completely change course.

Anyway, this entire series of posts is all about how I would do an expanded universe.  Which expanded universe you ask with dread in your voice?  A Hasbroverse.  Now, there are three ways of doing a Hasbroverse.  And the first two are the same.  Both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons have a multiverse.  Each property that Hasbro owns takes place in a different universe within this multiverse, either using Magic: The Gathering as the base universe or Dungeons and Dragons as the base universe.  But those two approaches are boring, they’re the easy answer.  That’s not what we’re going to do here.  Nope, we’re going to connect things in a single universe.  And we’re going to have an overarching theme/story for that universe.  What is said story?  What would happen if humans got their hands on alien technology?  Hence the first property we’ll start with, is Transformers.  Yeah, we’re going to do each property in this connected universe as its own post, because honestly, there are a lot of them.  Before we get to that though, we need to set some ground rules, that’s the next post.

This is Part Three in a series.

A few articles about the benefits of play just to add to the information I’ve already provided.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182

https://www.parentingscience.com/benefits-of-play.html

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-benefits-of-play/

We have a problem, at least in America.  Kids aren’t being allowed to play anymore.  They go to school, and they’re given too much homework.  Then after school, they’re shuffled off to sports practice or music instrument practice or some other extra-curricular activity that eats up most of their day.  They come home, do that homework, which is too much, and then maybe they have an hour or two before bed.  By the end of the day they’re mentally and physically exhausted.

Toy companies say that they’re losing to video games, that kids aren’t interested in toys when they can play video games.  That’s not what’s happening.  If I take my seven-year-old nephew or six-year-old niece to a toy store or the toy aisle in Walmart or Target their eyes go wide and they want everything.  I took my nephew to Toys ‘R’ Us once and he decided he wanted a Megazord, despite not knowing anything about Power Rangers.  Kids still love toys, and selling toys to kids isn’t hard, just put some in front of them.

However, I will admit that maybe kids aren’t playing with toys as much as they used to.  Again, remember, these kids have more homework than they should.  They’re overloaded on extra-curricular activities.  By the time they’re done with all their obligations in a single day, they have very little free time left to play in, and again, they’re mentally and physically exhausted.  They want to relax and play, to unwind, to engage in the developmental benefits of play that help them understand social interactions and how the world works, but they don’t have the energy for such demanding activities.  Instead, they veg out with a video game, just like an adult does after an exhausting day at work.

Toys aren’t competing against video games, they’re fighting for children’s time against homework and extra-curricular activities, and they’re losing.  Toy companies don’t need to worry about making their toys more interactive, and more like video games, that way lies madness.  Oh, and by the way, that approach doesn’t seem to be working, anyway.  That’s not what kids want from toys, nor what they need from them developmentally.

So, what can toy companies do?  Well, they need to be funding studies that get published in magazines about the necessity of play for children’s development.  Show parents through studies that having their children constantly engage in one particular sport year-round is terrible for their physical health.  Remind parents that playdates are important to social development, as it is social interaction combined with free play, rather than social interaction in a structured environment as is the case with team sports.  Educate parents as to the lack of benefit from too much homework at a young age, a topic we are starting to hear more and more about these days.  Toy companies need to sell parents on the need for toys, since as we know, selling toys to kids isn’t hard.  Parents today are the children from the 70s and 80s that were so successfully marketed to by toy companies through cartoon shows.  They’re afraid of their children being brainwashed by consumer culture.  You need to remind them that play is healthy, that toys are healthy in that they facilitate play, and that buying toys for their children is therefore healthy, as it is good for their child’s development.

You need to sell parents on the idea that cartoons like Transformers and GI Joe serve a social function other than to sell toys.  They are morality plays, teaching children how we expect them to behave.  That is a necessary function in any society and so letting children watch these shows isn’t rotting their brains, it’s helping to raise them into moral individuals.  Fund studies about the necessity of morality plays, which have been around since the Middle Ages, by the way.

Additionally, people want to feel good about their purchases, so make them feel like the money they spend on toys is helping to make the world a better a place.  That means assuring them that the toys made by your company are produced in factories that pay their employees a living wage.  Maybe even have a small percentage of every sale go to a charity.  For GI Joe a small percentage of each sale could go to Fisher House, a charity that allows the families of wounded soldiers stay near the hospitals they’re being treated at free of charge.  Transformers toys have a small percentage of sales that go towards encouraging STEAM education.  Jem toys give a small percentage to Save the Music.  Barbie gives a small percentage to a charity that helps girls in need or something.  Barbie is harder as that line doesn’t have quite as specific a focus, given all the jobs that Barbie has.  Animal-based brands give to the Humane Society or some other animal-related charity.  Parents would then feel good about spending money on these toys and would be more likely to buy them.  The endorphin rush of “doing good” is a powerful marketing tool, take advantage of it.

But now let’s get back to television because of course, television shows are how you market your toys to kids and teach them the necessary mythology so they can have adventures with their toys.  The fact that kids have so little free time means they can’t sit down in front of a TV at a set time after school every day; they’re in the car off to some extra-curricular activity.  That’s why afternoon cartoons are dead; it’s why Saturday morning cartoons are also dead, it’s why Cartoon Network is airing a show with little continuity from episode to episode all day every day, or at least, why they were.

Kids don’t watch live TV anymore, they watch recorded episodes or they watch Netflix where they can get any episode of a show they want any time they want it, such as in the car while being shuttled from school to some extra-curricular activity.  That’s probably also why modern kids love the 15-minute episode format.  They can watch a full episode of a show in that car ride.  Binge watching is where it’s at, even if you manage to get parents to ease up and let their kids be kids.

Release shows to Netflix or Hulu or whatever streaming service, or better yet, all of them.  But keep in mind that presents a new problem, those shows are now out there for children to encounter forever.  A child may become obsessed with a show years after you stopped making toys for it.  How do you get that business?  It’s impractical to keep toys in production with the injection molding manufacturing method in perpetuity.  You’re wasting space on keeping inventory you may never use in stock.  You can’t do that.  And given that molds eventually wear out and you’d have to replace them, it’s also too expensive for too little return.

Start 3D printing toys.  Sell them through websites, printing them on demand.  You don’t need to keep inventory; you don’t need to swap out molds to switch from producing one figure to another.  You can produce what you need, as you need it.  You can even design the figures, so you’ll never need to paint them.  Just have the different colors print as separate parts.  Then you can either sell them unassembled or assembled, maybe make both options available.  For slightly less money, people can put the figures together themselves.  For a bit more, you’ll ship it out to them fully assembled, though delivery might take a bit longer.  Of course, this also means you can start selling individual parts to a figure as well, should some part of the figure either break or an accessory get stolen.  You’ve just created a brand-new revenue stream.  And now distribution issues aren’t a thing anymore, which have been a recent issue that toy collectors have been complaining about.

That’s about it for this edition of this blog.  Next time, I think we’ll start moving towards what I want to talk about, though it’ll still be more of a related topic, it’ll just be more closely related than these last two posts.

This is Part Two in a series.

So, in preparation for my next post in this series, I wanted to add some evidence, and provide some evidence for my previous post.  I’m going to provide a link to some YouTube videos from Saberspark that discuss what’s going on at Cartoon Network.  He provides examples of the schedule of the network showing the overabundance of Teen Titans Go.  The videos are older, and the schedules may be out of date, but it is something that was, and likely still is happening.  I’m also going to provide some articles relating to overuse injuries appearing in greater numbers in young student-athletes, as well as a paper dealing with the over assignment of homework for elementary school students.

https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/overuse-injuries-in-children/

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=4508484&page=1

http://adc.bmj.com/content/90/5/525

This is Part One in a Series

Alright, so I’ve got this idea kicking around in my head that I just need to let loose into the world. The only problem is, I need to establish a few things first.  So, this is going to the start of a series of blog posts, and while the content of this post is relevant to the final post I want to make, the content of this post won’t really tell you where I’m going, exactly, I don’t think.  Maybe it will, and I just think too highly of myself. Anyway, I’m not sure which topic to start with of the first two, they’re kind of super interconnected, but I think I need to establish this stuff, before going on to the next.

Anyway, we need to discuss how we’re moving towards an “On Demand” society and what that means for television.  As you are probably all aware, streaming has changed everything for television and the networks still aren’t sure how to deal with that, especially when it comes to animation, which has consequences for the toy industry.  Networks are having trouble selling kids on shows, especially ones with long-form storytelling, this, in turn, affects toy sales because now toy companies don’t know how to sell their toys to kids since the cartoons they used to use aren’t working.

Now, this sort of gets into the ThunderCats Roar issue.  I’m not thrilled with the series, but just hear me out, I’m not just, “Oh, this doesn’t look like my ThunderCats, therefore it sucks.”  I know one of the main arguments for ThunderCats Roar is that they tried a serious reboot in 2011 and it failed.  Did it though?  Yes, toy sales weren’t there, but honestly, the toys weren’t very good, and I mean that from a quality standpoint.  Bandai America missed the mark in terms of the audience for the show, it was older viewers, and the toys needed to be of higher quality to appeal to those viewers. There was another problem though, which was far more problematic.  Cartoon Network sabotaged the show, they barely advertised it, and let it go on a month-long hiatus after the first seven episodes without any indication when it would be coming back.

Why is that break a problem? Well, go back and watch the first seven episodes of the 2011 ThunderCats series.  They set a goal, get to the Tower of Omens in the first few episodes. By episode seven they have reached that destination and gotten answers as to what they need to do next.  It is a self-contained arc, almost a season-long arc, in fact.  If you suddenly go on break after episode seven and don’t announce that the show will be coming back shortly, people are going to think the first season is over, and they need to wait probably about six months before the season picks up again. Contrast this with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which goes on break regularly.  When broadcast, at the end of an episode they announce when the next episode is going to air if the show is taking a break.  ThunderCats (2011) didn’t do that, I know, I watched episode seven when it aired, live.  That’s not good.  

Then when the show returned, Cartoon Network started moving the airtime around, much like they did with the 2002 He-Man series.  If a show doesn’t maintain a regular airtime, it loses viewers.  That means you can’t gain an audience, and if you don’t gain an audience it doesn’t matter how good or bad your toys are, you’re not going to move them, because no one cares about the series.  So, Cartoon Network’s handling of that show meant it never gained an audience past the hardcore ThunderCats fans, who were all relatively old, in their 30s or so.  They’re not going to buy cheap toys, but that’s what was available.  So, yeah, the toys didn’t move.  The 2011 ThunderCats show didn’t fail to connect with audiences, Cartoon Network made sure it didn’t connect with audiences.

So, with ThunderCats Roar, I have to wonder why it’s being aired on Cartoon Network, given how the network treated the property back in 2011 that just seems like a bad idea. Especially since even popular shows like Steven Universe, OK KO, and others are barely being aired in favor of Teen Titans Go.  How is ThunderCats Roar going to connect with audiences if it barely ever gets any airtime?

Now, I’m not a fan of Teen Titans Go, but I completely understand why it is thriving.  In an era with streaming services that allow you to watch story heavy shows on demand, how can a weekly serialized television show really work?  I love NBC’s The Blacklist, but I prefer watching it after a season has aired and it’s put up on Netflix, it’s so much more enjoyable than waiting a week between each episode.  There is a sentiment out there that story-based cartoons simply don’t work these days. I don’t agree, Voltron: Legendary Defender is in its sixth season.  The toys sales don’t seem to be there, but Netflix seems happy enough with its viewership to keep it going, at least through six seasons.  There is a thriving community of fans for the show across all social media platforms.  People are watching it.  Are kids watching it?  I don’t know, but it’s being watched.  RWBY is also getting enough views that Rooster Teeth keeps making more episodes. Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Star vs the Forces of Evil, the new DuckTales are all being watched. Story heavy or at least focused cartoons still work today.

But viewing habits are changing, and I understand why a show like Teen Titans Go is appealing.  After every episode, it resets to the status quo. If it happens to be on television you can watch any episode without feeling lost, and in the era of streaming, those are the kind of shows that are going to work on traditional television, where people don’t need to set aside time every week to catch the next episode, so they can follow the over-arching story.  This is especially true for children, they don’t have the same amount of free time they used to have to follow television shows, for reasons I’m going to get into in the next post in this series.

But why is Cartoon Network airing Teen Titans Go and nothing but Teen Titans Go?  Well, it’s resonated with children, possibly because they don’t need to follow it.  But also, kids have a habit of just watching whatever they like over and over again. How many stories have you heard over the years of someone talking about how when they were a kid, they burned through some movie they had on VHS because they watched it every day?  I’ve heard a lot of those kinds of stories.  Kids fixate on a show that’s their favorite and then they just watch it on repeat.  Netflix feeds into this desire.  Kids will pick their favorite show, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood or Paw Patrol or whatever, and just watch every episode of that on repeat, even if they’ve already seen the episode.  Cartoon Network just constantly airing Teen Titans Go is playing into this behavior. Their favorite show is always on Cartoon Network, so kids will tune in and stay on Cartoon Network, because the network is feeding this binging behavior, and oh, yeah, it doesn’t matter what order the episodes air in, because there’s no real continuity between episodes, which makes Teen Titans Go perfect for this sort of strategy.  If a kid comes in halfway through a Teen Titans Go programming block, it doesn’t matter, they haven’t missed any story elements.

So, I completely understand why if you’re airing ThunderCats Roar on Cartoon Network you’d go with a format similar to Teen Titans Go.  The episodes are self-contained, and it looks kind of like what kids are already watching. But is that right for ThunderCats? I’m not going to sit here and say that the original 80s ThunderCats cartoon was super serious all the time. I mean, there’s an episode of the series where Cheetara gets obsessed with gold, because women love gold, and her obsession with it I think nearly causes her to betray the team, though it ends up saving them in the end.  Like that’s ridiculous, but it was also sincere, and ThunderCats Roar doesn’t look sincere, it looks sarcastic.

But things need to change to resonate with a modern audience.  Yes, you’re right.  Voltron: Legendary Defender is very different from the 80s Voltron cartoon, but they have the same heart.  The new DuckTales is also quite different from the original DuckTales, but again they have the same heart.  When you reboot a show, you need to figure out what resonated with people about the original show and translate that to a new audience.  I think ThunderCats Roar missed that mark, at least from what I’ve seen so far, but I could easily be wrong.

The more important points here though, are changing viewing habits and how they’re affecting what shows look like, and then choosing the right airing format for what you want to do and making sure that vision fits the property you’re bringing out. ThunderCats Roar has the right tone for the airing format it has chosen.  I’m just not sure it picked the right tone for the property because it’s not showing off what made people fall in love with ThunderCats in the first place, and if you miss that mark, you’ve given up what makes your property unique and memorable, since that’s what stuck with people.

Anyway, I’m going to end this here.  We’ll get into the time demands on modern children and how that affects toy sales, and how these changes in viewing habits have left toy companies scrambling to figure out how to sell toys in the next post.  In addition to a few other points, I think.