Merchandise Driven - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Toyetic

Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost

The Nerd: We know what the real message is...
Both: BUY OUR FUCKING PRODUCTS!

—Critic and Nerd: The Making of "Coming Out Of Their Shells

"How can Transformers possibly "sell out"? It started as a 20-minute toy commercial."

Ethan, Shortpacked!

The Merchandise Driven show, otherwise known as the "half-hour commercial", is not merely a television show with a line of toys, but a line of toys that created a television show, created for the purpose of making so much money for the producers' pockets, that they probably need to hire two people just to keep their trousers from falling down.

The show has a full symbiotic relationship with the toy company or other manufacturer of licensed show-themed products, which is usually the primary or even the only sponsor of the show. The program only exists to sell products, and is most commonly associated with cartoons and anime targeted at a younger audience. Some shows can start out independent, and with too much success become Merchandise Driven.

The key difference between a show with merchandise and a Merchandise Driven show is that in the latter, the toy manufacturer will actually have some degree of creative control, often able to demand the insertion of characters which are already toys, or even require that any new characters in the show must be capable of being made into toys. Military- or paramilitary-themed shows and Humongous Mecha anime are particularly prone to this. Another sign of a toy manufacturer exerting influence is the shoehorning into episode plots of merchandisable accessories such as a Trope Mobile. Often you've Gotta Catch Em All or you are a failure as a human being, or so the show informs your kids.

Merchandise Driven shows are not limited to a young audience either. Many anime are adapted from manga or video games only if there's an existing lucrative market, and older anime fans are known for their loyalty and willingness to part with cash. That so many late-night anime can maintain a decent budget is due to this small but vocal group of fans.

Can be halfheartedly avoided with the use of a Segregated Commercial.

Many musicals ensured that potential hit tunes were reprised a few times. This was as much for the sake of the song publishers as for dramatic opportunities like the Dark Reprise. The revues, which were formed around Sketch Comedy and had little to no plot, could get quite shameless: some of them explicitly introduced song reprises as a ploy to sell sheet music.

Note that a show can have a line of licensed merchandise without being Merchandise Driven, and once the requirements are met the writers are basically given free rein to script what they want. Peanuts creator Charles Schultz was famously quoted as saying there is nothing wrong with using characters in marketing, so long as the quality of one's work stays refined. That said, Bill Watterson has famously taken no chances, and limited Calvin And Hobbes to the print medium, to prevent any decay in quality. (Unfortunately, this caused people to just make offensive unauthorized merchandise...)

Compare Misaimed Marketing, where this sort of thinking is applied where it shouldn't be. See also Defictionalization, where the licensed merchandise is also merchandise inside the show. Contrast with The Merch, where the merchandise sales came after the work, in order to support it.

Examples

Anime

The Pokemon cartoon usually advertises for games, such as May getting bulbasaur for the Gen1 remakes, or recently, the Johto starters in the 12th movie for the Gen 2 remakes.
Yu-Gi-Oh! (although when it was originally created, the trading card game was not around) Its sequel series, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, is even more so, causing some fans of the original to complain. Ironically, there's a rumor going around stating that the cards were wiped of text not to eliminate the Japanese language from the dub, but because a rule in children's television prevented "in-show advertising" to be shown (which the executives felt the show would skirt if the cards were left untouched or translated). Evidence for this is seen in Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie, in which the cards look like the real cards, and are even translated into English.
Digimon. Notable as the marketers didn't care about anything except the merchandise and gave the writers a free hand.
Probably the most ludicrous example would be Beyblade, which focused on a wildly popular world dominating sport where competitors play with little spinning top toys and try to tip each others' toys over.
Though B-Daman had a similar premise, based on increasingly ludicrous games involving marble-shooting chibi robots.
In the same gamut, Bakugan. At least it has a better justification (parallel universe and all).
Ojamajo Doremi showcased magical accessories that were not only gaudy and colorful, but even in the anime looked like cheap plastic, and featured sounds, lights, and actions that were easy to replicate via the magic of mass production. This Dreamspinner◊, for example, is precisely as depicted in the show, right up to the point where it fails to spit out a magic wand and costume — they're sold separately.
Savagely attacked (both literally and figuratively) in the final episodes of the Humongous Mecha series Brave Express Might Gaine, which up until that point had been a fairly straightforward merchandise-driven show. The titular Brave Express team and their boy genius creator discover that their entire world is the creation of a malevolent alien... toy company and their entire lives up to this point have been one long commercial for the company's line of toy trains that turn into robots. Our heroes are understandably upset about this and go on to fight against their creators for control of their own destinies. This is said to be a case of Writer Revolt due to a breakdown in relations between Sunrise, the studio that produced the anime and the Takara toy company.
- The entire "Yuusha" series was heavily Merchandise Driven; the franchise was essentially an Expy for Transformers when Takara was having difficulty with its other contractors about that franchise and so turned to Sunrise, then already famous for Mobile Suit Gundam, and asked them to animate several toy-driven kid's shows. The brand never did as well as Takara had hoped it would and they eventually stopped caring, which led to both the above example and pretty much everything that ever happened in GaoGaiGar.
The "success" of a Gundam anime series is often considered to be measured by the number of Gunpla models it sells. The fact that many of these series are either good, great, or mind-blowing, seems completely unimportant to its production company.
- Ironically, Tomino made the original Gundam series in an attempt to make the Giant Robot genre something other than a toy commercial. It hasn't always worked. For example, the color scheme of the titular mech was drastically altered to be more visually appealing (even though it was much, much less realistic). And all of the other modifications to the original story.
- Gundam is usually better about this than most, though. Rather than trying to shoehorn more Mobile Suits into the story just to sell toys & models, Bandai has the MSV models, whose main selling point is that they're original designs that didn't appear anywhere else, usually given the in-universe explaination of being prototypes or specialized variants that only saw limited production. They occasionally show up in later anime or manga, usually only in the background during a major battle scene.
- It seems that merchandise reasons (to a certain degree) affected the writing for Gundam SEED: did you know that, apparently, Dearka's Heel Face Turn came because the Buster models were selling poorly, and they wanted to give the character more focus on?
- Generally, the merchanising angle has increased as time goes on with execs favouring as many marketable Gundams as possible (shows like GGundam were only saved by the actual production teams having the backbone do more than a year long toy commercial. Probably the ultimate extension of this is SD Gundam, where the robots are an entire living species of roughly human scale with various designs, power ups and gimmicks in more traditional 'heroes save the world' plots.
Zoids is unusual in this respect, as the original model line from the 80s had no supporting media, aside from a few video games and a comic series produced by Marvel. The second model line, however, had numerous anime and manga adaptations, though only the first three (Zoids: Chaotic Century, Zoids: New Century, and Zoids: Fuzors) saw distribution outside of Japan.

Comic Books

That Guy With The Glasses' Linkara reviewed a comic called "US-1" used to try and promote a line of toy trucks. It failed miserably.
Marvel's Micronauts comic book series was created specifically to sell the action figure toy line, but the writers successfully turned it into a well-written and sometimes deeply philosophical science fiction epic, while doing all they could to avoid some amazing similarities between the toy line and the recently-released Star Wars. The comics outlasted the toy line, but since Marvel doesn't own the trademark, the Micronauts have rarely reappeared in the Marvel Universe, and their more familiar aspects, and name, have been suspiciously absent when they did appear.

Film

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a feature length movie widely regarded as a classic. Quaker Oats Company agreed to underwrite the production in order to help the launch of a new line of candy.
Possibly the most blatant was the movie The Wizard which was basically a 90 minute infomercial for the Nintendo Entertainment System. They not only include showing characters playing popular video games at the time, they also showed the Nintendo hint line, and most (in)famously the Power Glove (which never worked as well as advertised, making one character's Totally Radical statement "it's so bad" more true in the literal sense). The climax of the movie has them going to a video game championship where it's revealed that they will be playing a secret game. The not released at the time SUPER! MARIO! BROTHERS! 3!. The climax of the movie is the new Super Mario Brothers game!
Singin' in the Rain is a rare example of a merchandise driven product that turned out beautifully. The studio had the rights to a catalog of songs, and asked some filmmakers to make a movie with those songs in it for promotional value. A more crass motive you could not imagine, and yet Singin' in the Rain is considered one of the best movie musicals of all time.

Live Action TV

Winky Dink, one of the earlier examples.
The degree to which Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future was merchandise-driven actually drove producer J Michael Straczynski off the show.
Super Sentai and Kamen Rider have devoted whole episodes to new merchandise, and Power Rangers takes it further. A particularly bad example is when, in Power Rangers Mystic Force, the debut of the Red Ranger's motorcycle overshadowed the debut of one of the show's staples — the team's Humongous Mecha.
- Notable examples of awkwardly introduced pieces of merchandise: the Accel Watch in Kamen Rider Faiz and the Zect Mizer in Kamen Rider Kabuto.
- And to be fair to Power Rangers, regardless of the quality or ratings of individual seasons the main reason the show has been on the air after all these years is because it's still a successful merchandising franchise for Disney. The American-made battlizers/future action figures are probably a fair price to pay.
Every single episode of Madan Senki Ryukendo is devoted to the introduction of some new toy. The main character has four different forms (with four different action figures) each with its own robot sidekick — that's eight episodes to introduce everything. Then towards the end of the series he gets a Super Mode that upgrades everything he has, meaning another eight episodes to introduce all of his new powers. And then at the end of that, he gets an Ultimate Form. With equally Ultimate robot sidekicks. This isn't counting the episodes where he gains a new piece of barely-useful equipment (Madan Dagger, anyone?) or one of the two other main heroes gets a new upgrade/robot sidekick/finisher. God forbid he use the powers he already has in a new and interesting way.
The show's Spiritual Successor, Tomica Hero Rescue Force, actually has a toy company's name in the title.

Video Games

Pokemon, which actually meets the definition more since PUSA brought the merchandise rights in-house a couple of years ago.

Web Original

Parodied in the Cheat Commandos in Homestar Runner. The show is not only blatantly market-driven, it doesn't even attempt to hide this fact. Buildings are routinely referred to as "playsets", "Cheap as Free" (the name of the fictional toy manufacturer) appears every time a new object appears, and the show's theme song includes "Buy all our playsets and toys!" They even sell figurines of several of the main characters in the shop (though all in one pack, and nowhere near as much real merchandise exists as the cartoons imply.)
For a concise description of the ultimate Merchandise Driven show, see this strip of Penny Arcade.

Western Animation

GI Joe. This is most blatant with scenes where the plot stops to have the team's bridge layer tank, piloted by Toll-Booth, appear out of nowhere to lay a hinged two-piece bridge on a gap that is always just the right size for it.
Transformers. An odd instance of the fandom embracing this. Toy reviews abound, fanfic tends to feature toy characters who weren't on the show, etc. Most notably, if a character doesn't have a toy made, you'll often hear fans clamoring for it... the Rule Of Cool applies here, and the Rule Of Fun even more so, but they're double-edged swords: a sub-standard figure tends to garner far more backlash than a sub-par episode. The Transformers Wiki has a whole page about this.
He Man And The Masters Of The Universe. Mattel originally intended the toys as part of a Conan line. However, focus groups determined that an alternative design was more popular with children. These were sold each with its own "mini-comic" to establish the He-Man mythos, and the television series followed a couple of years later, coincidentally throwing out most of the established backstory.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Interestingly, it was originally an indy comic created by two guys who were trying to push the genre as far as it would go, in order to make a not-entirely-serious point.
Jem And The Holograms existed solely to sell "Jem And The Holograms" dolls and playsets.
So did Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors, which were cancelled after the first season because the toys didn't sell well. That's why the show has no ending.
If Ben 10 automatically comes off as a toy deal series by first glance, wait till you see its sales.
The producers of Batman Beyond later confessed that they were ordered by their bosses to produce this series as simply a means to selling more Batman toys. However, the producers, creators of the Diniverse franchise, worked their talent and created a dynamite television series after all.
The same thing occurred with Spider Man The Animated Series and its story editor John Semper, who managed to sneak in compelling plot Story Arcs into the gregariously limited animation cartoon, which was specifically supposed to be designed to sell a line of action figures.
The entire Bionicle storyline exists for the sole purpose of selling Lego sets, since the company figured a line with a story would sell better than one without. They were right — no other Lego line sells better.
My Little Pony, of course, to the point where, because there were costumes and accessories as well as the Ponies in the toy line, there are entire episodes where the Ponies are dressed as cheerleaders and in bathing suits, apropos of nothing.
Anything having to do with The Real Ghostbusters cartoon that came out in the late '80s/early '90s. If anything, the toy lines weren't exploited enough. There were still several vehicles and ghosts from the series that never made it into toy form (for example, an episode where the team goes to Japan and drives the hovercar 'Ecto-Ichi'').
Two words: The Batman. There was even a toy that responded to the on screen appearance of the Batwave, which popped up at least Once Per Episode. Thankfully, it got a lot better with each passing season.
An excellent example would be the Dino-Riders cartoon, designed specifically to sell a line of Tyco dinosaur toys. The Home Video VHS tapes even had commercials during the show.
The Bratz doll line has managed to launch several straight-to-DVD disasters and a major motion picture, and a short-lived animated TV series that was actually pretty entertaining. Or So I Heard...
- The irony here is that they're selling toys that teach children how to dress up like prostitutes at the age of 5-10. And the parents buy it for them.
Since 2001, Barbie dolls have been the basis for a series of direct-to-DVD films. Because they are based on the idea of Barbie and the rest "playing" characters, each film (including those in the ongoing Fairytopia series) has its own line of tie-in products.
- I can't remember any of their titles, but there were Barbie movies before that. I'm older than twenty and I saw them as a small child. There was a comic book series, too.
Chaotic Researching online archives suggests that it was more merchandise-driven before it came to the Americas. Seriously, not even 4Kids Entertainment would license Yu-Gi-Oh roller skates.
Strawberry Shortcake.
- Parodied in Peanuts, with a short-lived character named Tapioca Pudding. Her father is a merchandiser who's determined to license her image on an infinite number of knickknacks, including lunchboxes.
A more recent example, the Canadian cartoon Ruby Gloom, despite its charm, was created to promote a line of clothing and stationery; given which, you'd think said clothing and stationery would be a lot easier to find.
The Merrie Melodies cartoons were originally designed to promote music owned by Warner Bros (as opposed to the Looney Tunes cartoons, for their regular starring characters). Eventually, however, that distinction was dropped, with the two names basically becoming interchangeable.
There was to be an Incredible Crash Dummies CGI animated series. The pilot was free with several action figures for sale. Sadly it never quite took off. Which is a pity, the show was fairly humorous. Product placement aside. And as they were crash dummies, dismemberment was not unheard of, and in fact was quite frequent, showing just how bad a crash could in fact be. This Troper actually has several of the Crash Dummy toys stashed away somewhere, and they are still epic.
- YouTube link here.
Visionaries. The characters in the show could undergo Voluntary Shapeshifting by projecting an image of their totem animal from their chest. The toys ... had 1980s hologram stickers on the chest where you could sort of make out the animal if you already knew what it was.
Parodied in an episode of Garfield and Friends in which Garfield wakes up in the wrong cartoon, one with giant robots. At one point, when Garfield is wreaking havoc with the giant robots, one of the robots says "The toy company will not like this."