History Quotes / MerchandiseDriven

->''"Unfortunately the gorgeous [[Creator/RussellTDavies RTD]] Daleks are replaced with some really naff multi-coloured version that nobody but a scant handful of people seemed to like. Having watched this story recently I [[{{Facepalm}} threw my head in my hands]] when the bloated, Lego set versions emerged from the smoke and proved that a Dalek design can [[VillainDecay genuinely have no menace]]. A feat I would have thought impossible."''

-->--''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''' [[http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguidesimpsons24.html own personal thoughts on]] ''Series/ALF''.

'''Lisa''': I get the impression all they want to do is sell lunch boxes and T-shirts. They're loosing sight of what they're really here for.
'''Marge''': I think what Lisa's saying hits too close to home.
''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''' [[http://www.platypuscomix.net/bored/tvguidesimpsons24.html own personal thoughts on]] ''Series/ALF''.

-->--''[[WebVideo/HalfInTheBag Half in the Bag]]'' riffs ''{{Film/Ghostbusters}} II''

->''"[[CowboyBebopAndHisComputer I can tell you they don't know much about comics.]] Their audience isn't you and me who pay $7.00. It's for the parents who spend $60 on toys and lunchboxes. It is a business, and what's more important, the $150 million at the box office or the $600 million in merchandising?"''

->''"[[EidosInteractive Eidos]] spent something like four million dollars marketing ''Soul Reaver''. You'd think if it had enough faith in its product to spend $4,000,000 pimping it through magazine ads, television commercials, paid articles, action figures, and a crappy one-shot comic book, they could have redirected some of the cash going to pointless promotional swag nobody cared about and put it toward ''[[ChristmasRushed finishing the fucking game]]'' instead. But hell -- maybe I don't understand business."''

->''"''[[TheHobbitTheBattleOfTheFiveArmies Battle of the Five Armies]]'' often feels like a video game, and not in a good way. Major characters posture and pose in front of one another, but there are always goons to be dispatched before the big 'boss' battle can take place. Theron squares off against the lead orc, only for the orc to [[JustYouAndMeAndMyGUARDS summon in wave after wave of foot soldiers]] to fight Theron on a wide open ice pain. 'Finish him!' the head orc instructs his goons, having clearly played a little too much ''Franchise/MortalKombat''. Sadly, he never brazenly declares 'fatality!' in orc-ish."''

-->--'''Creator/OrsonWelles''' on [[TransformersTheMovie his career-defining role]]

->''"Boy, isn't it a wonderful time to be into superhero films! It's hard not to feel spoiled when the film studios take enough money to solve all of the developing world's problems and pour it all into a portrayal of [[BreadAndCircuses your favorite nancy-boys prancing about in leotards!]]\\\
Unless you think that [[SonyPictures Sony's]] generosity ends with ''[[Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2 Amazing Spider-Man 2]]'', you don't have to go five fucking minutes without ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' if you don't want to: You can wake up in the morning and go from an ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' toothbrush to an ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' Happy Meal to ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' [[BreadEggsMilkSquick nitrogen asphyxiation chamber]].\\\
There's just one tiny, little stumbling block in the whole system, and that's that ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' is absolute wank by most accounts, but I'm sure that problem will go away if they keep throwing money at it. Ethiopia doesn't strictly-speaking ''need'' all those schools, do they?"''

-->-- ''{{Rifftrax}}''

->''""I think I upset [=McDonald's=]. ‘What’s that black stuff coming out of [[Film/BatmanReturns the Penguin’s]] mouth. We can’t sell Happy Meals with that!’"''

->''""I think I upset McDonald's. ‘What’s that black stuff coming out of [[Film/BatmanReturns the Penguin’s]] mouth. We can’t sell Happy Meals with that!’"''

[[folder:Literature]]

->''Daisy-head burgers and Daisy-head drinks,\\
Daisy-head stockings, and Daisy-head sinks,\\
Daisy head buttons and Daisy head bows,\\
Mayzie was famous,\\
The star of her shows.''
-->--''Daisy Head Mayzie'' by Creator/DrSeuss

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-action]]

->'''Bartleby''': [[SeriesMascot Mooby the Golden Calf.]] Created by Nancy Goidruff, a former kindergarten teacher, in 1989 to fill a gap in the Saturday morning schedule on local network K-REL. Bought by the Complex Corporation in 1991, and broadcast nationally as the ''The Mooby Fun-Time Hour'', it picked up a large following of children, ages three to eight, and [[LongList spawns sixteen records, two theatrical films, eight prime-time specials, a library of priced-to-own video cassettes, and bicoastal theme parks dubbed 'MoobyWorld'.]] Did I miss anything?\\
'''Mr. Whitland:''' You forgot ''[[AndADietCoke Mooby Magazine]]''.
-->--''{{Film/Dogma}}''

[[/folder]]

----

->''"''[[TheHobbitTheBattleOfTheFiveArmies Battle of the Five Armies]]'' often feels like a video game, and not in a good way. Major characters posture and pose in front of one another, but there are always goons to be dispatched before the big 'boss' battle can take place. Theron squares off against the lead orc, only for the orc to [[JustYouAndMeAndMyGUARDS summon in wave after wave of foot soldiers]] to fight Theron on a wide open ice pain. 'Finish him!' the head orc instructs his goons, having clearly played a little too much ''Franchise/MortalKombat''. Sadly, he never brazenly declares 'fatality!' in orc-ish...Saruman explains that Galadriel used a lot of 'her power' in an epic {{finishing move}}, as if her health bar is depleted. At one point, Legolas springs across falling blocks like the protagonist in a Super Mario game."''

->''"''{{Franchise/Highlander}}: Endgame'' [[FranchiseKiller tanked the franchise]]. It bombed just like ''Highlander II'' and ''Highlander III'' did, but there was no television show going on to keep the brand fresh and popular. Even diehard fans started to give up on the franchise, and [[{{Sequelitis}} after four box office failures]], folks finally caught on that the franchise was never going to succeed in theatres. (Of the movies, only the original can be considered a success, and even it lost money at the box office -- it was [[SleeperHit home video and international sales]] that kept the franchise going.) Despite that, Davis-Panzer Productions [[FranchiseZombie would not let the thing die]]. At this point, I’m pretty sure that they didn’t actually care about the film versions of ''Highlander'' but rather wanted to keep the brand going so they could sell merchandise. Highlander has a lot of fan paraphernalia, ranging from novel tie-ins to replica swords. The fact that there was ever a fifth ''Highlander'' movie suggests that the money was coming from somewhere, and it sure wasn’t from the films themselves."''

->''"I mean, no disrespect to baseball, but it’s not exactly a sport based around a consistent high-tempo pace of thrills. It’s a cerebral slow game, battles between pitchers and batters with tiny punctuated moments that often are quickly snuffed out. And the NFL is largely the same way. A lot of waiting and commercials and waiting and commercials for a few brief… oh, hey, yet another short run or incomplete pass, yeah, I honestly don’t know why anyone claims this sport is exciting for reasons other than [[TestosteronePoisoning toxic masculinity]] and [[ViewersAreGoldfish inertia.]]\\\
And it’s that commercials problem that is the rub. Baseball and padded rugby both have frequent breaks justifying the cramming in of more and more advertisements, whereas soccer really doesn’t. Each half is constant action for 45 straight minutes and there’s no place to put in 300 sexist ads about how berating women and buying beer will [[SexSells get your dick sucked by supermodels]]. Hence why the corporations and the sports networks hate it."''

-->--Chris Sims and 'David Uzumeri [[http://comicsalliance.com/comicsalliance-reviews-steel-1997-part-one/ on]] ''{{Film/Steel}}''

->'"I mean, no disrespect to baseball, but it’s not exactly a sport based around a consistent high-tempo pace of thrills. It’s a cerebral slow game, battles between pitchers and batters with tiny punctuated moments that often are quickly snuffed out. And the NFL is largely the same way. A lot of waiting and commercials and waiting and commercials for a few brief… oh, hey, yet another short run or incomplete pass, yeah, I honestly don’t know why anyone claims this sport is exciting for reasons other than [[TestosteronePoisoning toxic masculinity]] and [[ViewersAreGoldfish inertia.]]\\\

->I am selling this Gundam!

->The dialog of the Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is [[ExcusePlot meaningless word flap.]]

->If you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw numbers, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more "{{Kayfabe}}!" "It's a [[WorkedShoot work]]!" "I've won 34 ''[[LesserStar tag team]]'' belts!" Who gives a '''damn''' how many fake belts you won? If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you're gone.

->''Buy all our playsets and toys!"''

->Boy, isn't it a wonderful time to be into superhero films! It's hard not to feel spoiled when the film studios take enough money to solve all of the developing world's problems and pour it all into a portrayal of [[BreadAndCircuses your favorite nancy-boys prancing about in leotards!]]\\\

There's just one tiny, little stumbling block in the whole system, and that's that ''Amazing Spider-Man 2'' is absolute wank by most accounts, but I'm sure that problem will go away if they keep throwing money at it. Ethiopia doesn't strictly-speaking ''need'' all those schools, do they?

->[[EidosInteractive Eidos]] spent something like four million dollars marketing ''Soul Reaver''. You'd think if it had enough faith in its product to spend $4,000,000 pimping it through magazine ads, television commercials, paid articles, action figures, and a crappy one-shot comic book, they could have redirected some of the cash going to pointless promotional swag nobody cared about and put it toward ''[[ObviousBeta finishing the fucking game]]'' instead. But hell -- maybe I don't understand business.

->You may have heard that this week sees the release of ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'', which, as far as I can tell from the television advertisements, is largely about a school of mutants trained to use their innate super-abilities to eat bacon cheeseburgers.

->''[[TheHobbitTheBattleOfTheFiveArmies Battle of the Five Armies]]'' often feels like a video game, and not in a good way. Major characters posture and pose in front of one another, but there are always goons to be dispatched before the big 'boss' battle can take place. Theron squares off against the lead orc, only for the orc to [[JustYouAndMeAndMyGUARDS summon in wave after wave of foot soldiers]] to fight Theron on a wide open ice pain. 'Finish him!' the head orc instructs his goons, having clearly played a little too much ''Franchise/MortalKombat''. Sadly, he never brazenly declares 'fatality!' in orc-ish...Saruman explains that Galadriel used a lot of 'her power' in an epic {{finishing move}}, as if her health bar is depleted. At one point, Legolas springs across falling blocks like the protagonist in a Super Mario game.

->''Film/MacAndMe ''is the result of some Hollywood producer watching'' [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial E.T.]] ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs through a mist of cocaine dust]] and saying to himself, "Hey, [[SerialNumbersFiledOff what if E.T. ate Skittles instead of Reese's Pieces and we changed his name to McDonald's?]] [=McDonald's=] would give us money for that, right?" He then came up with the alien's design by sketching Yoda ears on an expired condom, and the rest is obscure cinematic history.

->''{{Franchise/Highlander}}: Endgame'' [[FranchiseKiller tanked the franchise]]. It bombed just like ''Highlander II'' and ''Highlander III'' did, but there was no television show going on to keep the brand fresh and popular. Even diehard fans started to give up on the franchise, and [[{{Sequelitis}} after four box office failures]], folks finally caught on that the franchise was never going to succeed in theatres. (Of the movies, only the original can be considered a success, and even it lost money at the box office -- it was [[SleeperHit home video and international sales]] that kept the franchise going.) Despite that, Davis-Panzer Productions [[FranchiseZombie would not let the thing die]]. At this point, I’m pretty sure that they didn’t actually care about the film versions of ''Highlander'' but rather wanted to keep the brand going so they could sell merchandise. Highlander has a lot of fan paraphernalia, ranging from novel tie-ins to replica swords. The fact that there was ever a fifth ''Highlander'' movie suggests that the money was coming from somewhere, and it sure wasn’t from the films themselves.

->A 4 Hour Commercial, with [[AndTheRest some occasional Football in-between.]]

->It’s no coincidence that teams like the Bills and Browns have struggled over the past few decades as their cities have experienced grave economic misfortune. Neither team can attract top-tier coaching or GM talent, and they aren’t raking in Fuck You Money side deals from Pepsi...Cowboys, for all of their [[IncompetenceInc atrocious mismanagement]], are blessed with certain advantages that [[MotorCity Detroit]] cannot ever have.

->I mean, no disrespect to baseball, but it’s not exactly a sport based around a consistent high-tempo pace of thrills. It’s a cerebral slow game, battles between pitchers and batters with tiny punctuated moments that often are quickly snuffed out. And the NFL is largely the same way. A lot of waiting and commercials and waiting and commercials for a few brief… oh, hey, yet another short run or incomplete pass, yeah, I honestly don’t know why anyone claims this sport is exciting for reasons other than [[TestosteronePoisoning toxic masculinity]] and [[ViewersAreGoldfish inertia.]]\\\
And it’s that commercials problem that is the rub. Baseball and padded rugby both have frequent breaks justifying the cramming in of more and more advertisements, whereas soccer really doesn’t. Each half is constant action for 45 straight minutes and there’s no place to put in 300 sexist ads about how berating women and buying beer will [[SexSells get your dick sucked by supermodels]]. Hence why the corporations and the sports networks hate it.

->To understand ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' fiction, it is important to understand that it exists '''[[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/To_sell_toys to sell toys]]'''. Hasbro and Takara Tomy are toy companies, and they are primarily interested in continuing to sell toys to children and, yes, even "adults". The cartoons, comic books, etc., mostly exist to make this happen. To be sure, they normally make a profit in their own right, but this is regarded as mere gravy.\\
The "to sell toys" effect often distorts the fiction in interesting ways. Primarily, since you can't usually sell someone the same toy twice, [=HasTak=] constantly introduces new toys, and often requires the creators of the fiction to introduce the new characters into ongoing storylines. Older characters (whose toys are no longer being sold) are shoved aside to make room.

->Lucas cracks out an armored case with his name on it. He opens it to reveal a padded, velved-lined interior on top of which rests...the ultimate gaming peripheral. The Excalibur of controllers. The mightiest weapon in any gamer's arsenal. '''The Power Glove.''' That's right, the Power Glove is not meant to be exposed to the elements. It must kept sealed away, lest untrained hands damage it or mishandle it. The devastation could be immense! It must be kept under lock and key at all times... The man wields the fucking Power Glove. Betta reccanize.

->In ten years, there's been 25,000 products based on the franchise, including... pez dispensers, a... blender, a shopping cart and... buckets?

->My clam has won! And you can too if you go to the store and buy our toys! ''Buy our toys!'' '''BUY OUR TOYS!'''

->You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.

->All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have a point of view and a serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist is trying to talk honestly and seriously about life, then I believe he has a responsibility to think beyond satisfying the market’s every whim and desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as artists while [[TheManIsStickingItToTheMan using the strip’s protagonists to sell boxer shorts]] are deluding themselves.

->We have no obligation [[SoOkayItsAverage to make history]]. We have no obligation [[LowestCommonDenominator to make art]]. We have no obligation [[StrictlyFormula to make a statement]]. To make money is our only objective.

->I've been ordering to Yoji ''[Shinkawa]'' to make the character more erotic, and he did it well. Recently I've been making characters this way. The initial target is to make u want to do cosplay or its figurine to sell well.

->If you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw numbers, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more "{{Kayfabe}}!" "It's a [[WorkedShoot work]]!" "I've won 34 ''tag team'' belts!" Who gives a '''damn''' how many fake belts you won? If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you're gone.

->'''Bartleby''': [[SeriesMascot Mooby the Golden Calf.]] Created by Nancy Goidruff, a former kindergarten teacher, in 1989 to fill a gap in the Saturday morning schedule on local network K-REL. Bought by the Complex Corporation in 1981, and broadcast nationally as the ''The Mooby Fun-Time Hour'', it picked up a large following of children, ages three to eight, and [[LongList spawns sixteen records, two theatrical films, eight prime-time specials, a library of priced-to-own video cassettes, and bicoastal theme parks dubbed 'MoobyWorld'.]] Did I miss anything?\\

->Tat Wood, in ''About Time'', notes that it is the first story in some time to have no references to previous stories. This is a telling detail that explains at least part of why the story is unloved. The fact of the matter is that ''Series/DoctorWho'' has, for several years now, been catering primarily to an audience of fans. Fandom is an exceedingly middle class practice, based as it is on a surplus of leisure time and the [[CrackIsCheaper disposable income to fritter away on Dapol action figures, Target novelizations, trips to conventions, and other such commercial product]]. This fact is largely responsible for the maddening sociopathy of mainstream science fiction fandom -- it's a self-selected group of reasonably affluent people focused on capitalist production. They are myopic by design.
-->--'''Phil Sandifer''' [[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2012/06/thats-it-ive-been-renewed-paradise.html on]] ''Series/DoctorWho'', [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS24E2ParadiseTowers}} "Paradise Towers"]]

->No wonder this company was in the shape it's in...If you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw numbers, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more "{{Kayfabe}}!" "It's a [[WorkedShoot work]]!" "I've won 34 ''tag team'' belts!" Who gives a '''damn''' how many fake belts you won? If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you're gone.

->No wonder this company was in the shape it's in...If you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw numbers, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more "{{Kayfabe}}!" "It's a [[WorkedShoot work]]!" "I've won 34 tag team belts!" Who gives a '''damn''' [[BrutalHonesty how many fake belts you won?]] If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you're gone.

->No wonder this company was in the shape it's in...If you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw numbers, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more "{{Kayfabe}}!" "It's a [[WorkedShoot work]]!" "I've won 34 tag team belts!" Who gives a '''damn''' [[BrutalHonesty how many fake belts you won?]] If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you're '''gone.'''