Exactly. At the time they premiered, both TINY TOONS and BATMAN were deemed failures by the marketing department because their appeal went beyond their target audiences. TINY TOONS was intended for babies, so the commercials that aired on the show were for little kids toys. When they realized they had a show that was getting a lot of teen and even adult viewers, the marketing department did not try to attract new advertisers for that market, just whined that the show "played too old." Same with BATMAN, which was positioned for six to ten year old boys only.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
TTA P.S.
In comments on the post I linked to earlier, Paul Dini also talks about something I've mentioned many times before: the marketing people could never adjust to the fact that the '90s cartoons appealed to people who were too old to buy My Buddy or even Kid Sister. They saw the sizeable adult audience as a sign that these shows had failed.
Argh. And Batman was SO GOOD. The artwork... the writing... I'm female, was in my mid-20s at the time, and wasn't an animation buff or even a comic book fan, but I loved it. I can't believe they saw THAT as a failure. Isn't the studio/marketing mentality just baffling?
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing the stupidity/tunnel vision of the marketing people. Rather than acknowledge that they had a hit show(s) on their hands and re-tool their advertising campaign to fit the revised demographics for the show they blame the show and the show creators ? And now use that as a reason why animation is "too expensive" to produce in North America.
ReplyDeleteArrrghhh, indeed.