A notable bunch of audience members outside of the intended (i.e., marketed) demographic.
This is very frequent when it comes to Western Animation that manages to overcome the Animation Age Ghetto and feature subtle humor that's often over the heads of youngsters. Then of course, there's the simple fact that despite the increasing presence of adult-oriented animation, there's still a severe lack of cartoons specifically directed towards teenagers. As a result, teens who are still into animation have no choice but to tack onto the viewership of one or the other.
A very noticeable instance of this occurs in the anime fansub community. Digital recorders/encoders, which effectively remove the timeslot and language constraints to a program, make it accessible to anyone, and the series audience is largely drawn only by the perceived quality of the show itself. For this reason, a show packed with girls is enough like "a show packed with girls" that may be enjoyed by the same fan, even if that fan is wildly different than the 'original' one. This likewise holds with male characters, who are often deliberately drawn as pretty boys in order to attract fangirls who were reading similar stories anyway (e.g., Bishonen Jump Syndrome, because Shonen Jump was infamous for it). Sometimes this is taken a step further and you get a Selective Squick-cleansed rough adapation of the premise marketed directly to them.
It is also common for a popular franchise that is marketed towards children to gain an older fanbase if it's been around for a while; many of these older fans enjoyed it when they were young and simply never outgrew it. The companies making such shows may give little nods to the older fans (and sometimes even make new installments that cater exclusively to older fans). Some fans, perhaps because of these nods, seem not to realize that these popular kids' series are still made mainly for kids, and that doesn't change just because the older viewers are not kids anymore. Unfortunately, fans like these may cause negative stereotypes about nerd fanbases.
A large portion of the periphery demographic also comes since media classifications are very often ignored and media intended for mature audiences (like First-Person Shooter games) also attracts teens and preteen audience.
Can also be due to many demographics simply having wider ranges of interest than they're given credit for.
Series with strong marketing sense usually profit from being at least slightly aware of these fans, if not outright creating Multiple Demographic Appeal. Unfortunately, this creates the danger of an annoying Periphery Demographic being viewed as a Misaimed Fandom, if not outright Fan Dumb.
Also some fans within a show's main demogrphic, may consider the work in question a guilty pleasure.
This Cracked article gives you a good sample of what you can expect from this trope.
Compare Germans Love David Hasselhoff. For specific example of Periphery Demographics see Periphery Hatedom (which inverts this relationship) and Estrogen Brigade.
Examples:
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In-universe examples
Anime
Ore Imo: Central to the premise. Kirino, a 14-year old girl, loves playing little sister-themed H-Games due to liking the incredibly cute character designs.
In one of the episodes of Vicky the Viking, the protagonist's father secretly listened to a children's story about a girl since he found it very touching.
Konata, the Otaku Surrogate from Lucky Star, is another underaged female anime character fond of Eroges aimed at an adult male demographic
Film
UHF uses this in-universe. Stanley Spudkowski's Funhouse, a typical Saturday morning kid's show, ends up with much more than kids wanting to see it.
Live Action TV
Dave Lister from the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf is a self professed fan of Spot The Dog
Jack Hodgins from Bones is revealed in the episode "The Bone in the Bounty" to be a fan of children's show and Bill Nyeexpy Bunsen Jude the Science Dude. When told "you're a bit older than my usual audience", he explains that it was a drinking game.
Videogames
Phoenix Wright chides his assistant Maya(17) for enjoying what is essentially a Sentai show that she readily admits is marketed for 10-year olds. Later games reveal that Edgeworth is as much of a rabid fan, if not moreso, than Maya, despite being in his mid-20's. Must be an attorney thing.
A Checkerboard Nightmare arc had the eponymous character create a children's show with the sole purpose of creating a fiercely loyal demographic and the prospect of selling merchandise. However, the show's blantant Merchandise Driven nature coupled with its 4 A.M. timeslot (the only one Chex could afford) makes it a hit with teenagers and young adults who mistake it for satire.
In Homestuck, Dirk, much like many people in real life, claims to watch My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic out of an outsider, scientific interest in popular culture and the way it reflects society, but secretly admits to being very fond of Rainbow Dash.
Rugrats: In one of the episodes, the whole family went to the cinema to watch a cartoon meant for children. At the end, only parents cared.
An episode of Arthur revolved around Arthur (a fourth grader, so, 10 years old or so) being both thrilled that Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood fame was going to visit the family and terrified that his classmates would make fun of him for still loving a "baby show". It turns out that the classmates also all still love the show.
Another episode showed Arthur developing an interest in the trippy children's show Love Ducks, and enduring the mockery of his classmates. However, they soon watched Love Ducks, and ended up liking it as well.
Phineas And Ferb has Candace, who is fifteen years old and a fan of "Ducky Momo" (thought to be a rough equivalent of Barney). She even gets a Tear Jerker of a song dedicated to her love of it and the fact that other people can't understand why a teenager likes it. By the end of episode— Nerds of a Feather— she's found out and realizes that it's not too big a deal to like something outside of her age range. This is something of a Fridge Brilliance, given the fact that Phineas and Ferb has been listed under the real world examples of this trope.
This usually applies to every anime and manga that falls into the seinen demographic that isn't something like Berserk or Black Lagoon. Series like Chobits, K-On, and Clannad are labeled for older men, but the majority of their fandoms seem to be made up of younger people.
Many seinen series are popular among female fans because of their greater focus on Character Development and similarity to shoujo in some series.
A surprising amount of crossover audience occurs between Moe and shojo's demographics when they emulate each other. Shojo Genre series often do well among older male audiences, and many shows from Sailor Moon to Futari wa Pretty Cure, are designed with Shōnen elements. Similarly, a reasonably cleanMoe show aimed at men, can do fairly well among fangirls looking for something different than the often romance-based selection of shoujo and who are attracted by the extremely cute designs. Case in point shows like Lucky Star and K-ON! despite being aimed at males have very large female fanbases who are as attracted to the Moe element as male fans.
Moe fandom can also have a much larger subset of females outside of Japan. Part of this is because fansubbedshoujo series are much scarcer, and fansubs remove the broadcast time constraints of shows. A show that manages to keep its fanservice at a tolerable level while using female characters who avoid annoying shoujo tropes is very likely to draw in female fans.
Slice of Life in general have been meant for Otakus, but also nowadays act as a means for Yuri Genre and Shoujo Ai to exist on broadcast TV while maintaining some popularity. Stuff like Saki and So Ra No Wo To are good examples.
A lot of yaoi anime videos on YouTube - be it the actual series, AMVs, music, etc. - are most popular with females age 13-17, females age 18-24, and... males age 45-54.
Many shows aimed mainly for children have sizable teenage and adult female fanbase since many of those shows will activate motherly instincts among them. One of the reasons is that they often contain lots of Ridiculously Cute Critters.
Several series fail to attract the originally targetted gender audience: Gensomaden Saiyuki failed so hard to attract a male audience that subsequent anime and manga series were switched from Shōnen to Josei, mostly due to the overwhelming amount of gay vibes. Likewise, Shonen Jump series Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro was fansubbed and scanlated in America with a very very low percentage of male fans. Other Shounen Jump series like Hunter × Hunter and Get Backers are split on gender attraction; the latter of the two acknowledges this.
The bishounen cast of Gundam Wing was created specifically to attract female viewers, something mecha series typically lacked at the time. It worked and nowadays it's rare for a mecha series not to have bishounen in the main cast. As for Gundam, with the exception of ∀ Gundam every show since Wing followed the "pretty boys in mecha" formula.
Loran Cehack, the protagonist of Turn A, crossdresses several times throughout, making a convincing enough girl.
In Universal Century Garma, Quattro and Kamille are just as bishounen as Gundam Wing's main cast.
Rose of Versailles has a substantial fanbase of men and older people who enjoy it for the drama of the 18th century and the charismatic Lady Oscar, though the original manga was aimed at teenage girls.
Sailor Moon, which was aimed at a young female demographic but had a large male fandom.
Kuroshitsuji is labeled as shonen but seemed to have more female fans due to the large amount of bishonen lurking among the crew.
In another strange example, the "main target" of Pretty Cure is said to be females ages 4-12... and males ages 16-35. It's telling that the director of the original series, Futari wa Pretty Cure, has Dragon Ball Z on his resume. There's also blatant Yuri Genre subtext between the two main characters that would go over the heads of younger viewers.
This is especially noticeable in the 2010 Heartcatch Pretty Cure. Every episode has magical girl kung-fu fighting that rivals some Shounen fighting anime aired at the same time.
There are, some Periphery Demographic outside those demographics. According to Youtube, the viewership of the intros of the series has significant portion of men aged 35-55, way above what it was originally meant to. According to Deviantart, large amount of fanart drawers for the series are adult women.
CLAMP's X1999 is a shoujo series, yet its themes of humanitarianism, environmentalism and dualism, as well as its heavy doses of action, violence, death and other dark themes makes it very often mistaken for shonen or even seinen, and is popular among boys as well as girls.
GaoGaiGar was the final entry of the Braves series by Sunrise, and as such, aimed at children. The show didn't do very well with the main demographic, but was a smash hit with the older otaku who had grown up with the likes of Getter Robo. The same happened in the U.S., where the fanbase is almost entirely adult mecha-lovers. Oddly enough, the sequel OVA series, Gao Gai Gar FINAL tried to bank on the older demographic with more fanservice and violence, and wasn't quite as well-received.
Cutey/ie Honey was a dyed-in-the-wool seinen superhero sci-fi series. The more tame TV series actually attracted younger female viewers, who by this time had equated her with their more familar Magical Girl, who themselves might have been inspired by her. Go Nagai admitted this side fandom surprised him, given the amount of racy humor is in the original work.
Dragon Ball Z is an old Shonen anime involving Ki Attacks, aliens, evil space overlords, and the occasional dinosaur. It has gained a massive American fanbase of women and girls from the ages of 14-25. This probably has something to do with the huge bulging muscles.
One Piece is really, really popular with girls and women. It might have something to do with the ludicrously masculine male characters. According to this chart◊, there are more 50+ year old than people aged under 18 reading it.
May also have to do with One Piece being remarkably progressive, gender-wise, for a Shonen series. While there are still some Unfortunate Implications (Brook, we're looking at you!), the show compares very favorably to the many more sexist anime out there.
It probably also has something to do with how well constructed and worldly the whole story is. Sure the main character is somewhat childish, but the world around him is well formed and very rich with history, and the whole thing feels like it's headed to one hell of a finale, even if the story has only just reached the halfway point.
Hetalia is officially a Seinen manga. Yet 99% of the fans are yaoi fangirls. So with Hetalia, the periphery demographic is the main demographic.
The anime for K-On, a moe series aimed at otaku, became so popular with young girls that it also airs on the Japanese Disney Channel, right alongside Hamtaro and Alice Academy.
Trigun (shonen) and Trigun Maximum (Seinen) is very popular with fujoshi over in Japan. Most doujinshi, and fan art on Pixiv and artists' personal sites, are either yaoi or a "cute guys doing cute and funny things" type deal.
Rurouni Kenshin owes much of its success to female fans, despite being an often-violent action series published in an anthology aimed squarely at boys. The show's title character, a soft-spoken, gentle bishonen with a hidden, more violent dark side, most likely helped. The well-written romance between him and the female lead most likely helped too, especially since it was one of the few shonen manga relationships that had real development and a definite resolution, while most shonen couples get bogged down in an eternal game of "will they or won't they?".
When the Kenshin movie premiered in Japan, something like 2/3rds of ticket-buyers were female — which was roughly the exact opposite of the gender split for a Shonen Jump film at the time.
While Azumanga Daioh is aimed at the high-school crowd, it has a fair number of fans who have been been out of school for quite a while, leading to confusion for seinen and What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? in some circles.
A fair number of guys like Fruits Basket. While they don't really care about the bishonen bunch, the story is well-structured enough for them to care, and its humor is pretty much universal. It doesn't hurt that the female characters are well developed, and cute to boot.
It's a good bet that most of the current YGO fanbase consists of fans of the Abridged Series.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is an interesting case, taking the usual Periphery Demographic for Magical Girl series (16-35 year old men) and creating the series to appeal to them specifically. Even so, there are quite a few younger girls who enjoy it. So the "normal" demographic for Magical Girl shows is the Periphery Demographic for this one? *head explodes*
Ranma 1/2 is a shonen series meaning it is supposed to be popular for teenage boys. In Japan, according to and surprising creator Rumiko Takahashi, it was more popular amongst girls than guys and Animerica in the year 2000 said that it increased the number of female readers in the American manga market.
Well, you can't make a show about a teenage boy who spends most of the first season running around in his underwear without atracting at least some female fans.
If you just look at the title of Kaichou wa Maid-sama! (Student Council President Is A Maid!), it sounds like a moe series aimed at the male otaku crowd. In fact, it's a shoujo series about the female student council president of a formerly all-boys school who has to work at a maid cafe to help her family put food on the table and attracts the attention of the school's resident bishounen. Doesn't stop guys from watching it for the sake of how good the Tsundere female lead looks in a maid costume.
Starting from about the same time as the Genre Shift, Ken Akamatsu, the creator, began adding little hints of Ho Yay to the series. Whether this was a result of the Periphery Demographic or the cause of it is extremely debatable.
Princess Tutu is about as girly as a shojo can get, but has nonetheless developed an adult male following that heralds it as an metafictional epic whose awesomeness can only be compared to ninjas engaged in a rock battle — Hence it's Fan Nickname: Guitar Ninjas.
Victorian Romance Emma is, rather surprisingly, a seinen series, but it enjoys attention from all the other demographics. A great deal of the interest in the show is in the fact that it's a show about a maid, but it's not a Meido show.
Maria-sama Ga Miteru was initially aimed at teenage girls, what's with its melodramatic story and dreamy atmosphere. But since it's Yuri Genre, it has strong male fanbase. The author herself have satirized this phenomenon many times in the story.
This even crosses into Multiple Demographic Appeal, as evident with the OVA release. The ending was performed by KOTOKO, who is known for performing opening and ending of Eroge aimed at men.
Hamtaro is a Kodomomuke series but it still has a significant teenage and adult female fanbase.
Nobuyuki Fukumoto, who writes series geared at adult men with a rather unusual artstyle, has a surprisingly big female fanbase. This may be due to the infamous lack of female characters in his work, which provides fodder for Yaoi Fangirls. And, of course, KaijiisMoe.
Viz recently mentioned that Tiger & Bunny is intended for 14-25-year old males. This brought on many laughs from the rather large, veryfemale fandom that's formed around it.
Speaking of the madness of female fans, Inazuma Eleven falls victim for this trope hard. How hard? Consider this: in Pixiv (kinda like deviantART, but Japanese), a separate tag was made just to separate the more risque, fujoshi-orientedInazuma Eleven pictures from the ones that the target audience can look at. Statistically speaking, the risque pictures comprise more than 20% of all Inazuma Eleven illustrations submitted to Pixiv.
Still on Pixiv, Nintama Rantarou, of all anime, also has its own separate tag for exactly the same reason. You'd never guess that from the content of the anime, which is day to day adventure of a band of goofy ninja kids. Maybe it's the women who watched it in their childhood.
Pani Poni Dash! was quite popular for children, despite aiming for the more cultural audience to get the pop culture reference. It does help how crazy and all over the place the anime is, though, which would guarantee tons of laughs.
Kanamemo has it's share of female fans appreciating the yuri context for the sake of cuteness.
Ouran High School Host Club, despite being a bishonen-ridden reverse-harem series, is well-written and hilarious enough to attract a sizeable male audience as well. Another appealing aspect is that the female protagonist is a cute but sensible girl who's refreshingly more realistic than most shoujo heroines and how much focus and development is given on the host club members.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a weird example. Like the Nanoha example above, it took the cutesy character designs (by Hidamari Sketch's own Ume Aoki) and marketed it to the usual Periphery Demographic (adult men) of the Magical Girl genre. Then episode 3 rolled around and fans realized that the creaters were doing something else altogether. However, this has not stopped the series from having both male and female fans. Mostly adults, though. This... really isn't a show for your little sister.
A notable portion of the Kimi ni Todoke fandom consists of older males. Reasons for this include the series in many ways breaking the shoujo mold, such as favoring Single Woman Seeks Good Man over All Girls Want Bad Boys and focusing a good portion of the story on the non-romantic relationships between characters. Plus, Sawako is pretty relatable to a lot of timid manga/anime fans of both genders, and when she's not unintentionally scary, she's actually really cute.
Pokémon Special is published in magazines aimed for elementary school kids, but its strong sense of character and continuity draws in older readers, especially those nostalgic for the games but got tired of the anime.
Comics
The MarvelTransformers Generation 1 comic would occasionally get letters from parents who admitted to reading their kids' comics after dropping the young 'uns off at school. One wonders how the kids would feel if their friends happened to read that letter.
For a line marketed mostly to 5-12 year old boys, the Marvel Adventures comics have a pretty decently-sized internet fanbase of mostly adults. This can be attributed almost entirely to the fact that the comics are both A) excellently written, and B) Fun.
Readers wanting an escape from the Romantic Plot Tumors and Kill 'Em All mentalities of the 616 and Ultimate continuities are also a factor here.
Chick Tractsmay or may not be an example — their target demographic is evangelical Christians, but said Christians are supposed to use them as witnessing tools to convert non-Christians... the very people who are the biggest "fans" of the tracts — but for otherreasons.
Tons of people who used Windows XP Professional edition were home users, instead of business users as originally intended.
This one can be blamed on Technology Marches On. In the early years, there were software houses that released software that outright refused to install if it detected that the version of Windows installed was not XP Professional (IBM with Rational Rose and DataStage comes to mind). Yes, there are people who take their work home, particularly if there's a looming dateline and they're not allowed to stay at the office overnight, and there are companies evil enough to not provide a laptop to the employee if they need to take their work home. Later, when multi-core CPUs hit the market, it was discovered that Windows XP Home was cripped to the point where it supported only one core in one CPU, nothing more. As far as Windows XP is concerned, each core is a separate CPU. Sure, Device Manager shows two CPUs on a dual core machine, but Task Manager shows only one CPU, and does not provide any options to map CPU affinity.
Because Windows ME was such a horribly buggy operating system, a lot of home users settled for Windows 2000 instead, which was similarly intended for business users.
Adobe Photoshop was originally targeted at the professional market segment only and was priced accordingly. But the vast number of home users pirating it for private use, like Fauxtivational Poster, made Adobe realize this marked potential and led to the release of the much more affordable Photoshop Elements line.
There is a recent trend for General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPU) aka tricking video chips into performing calculations on data other than images. Technology which was originally designed solely to create cool graphics for video gamers now becomes interesting for use in systems which usually don't even have video output, like high performance supercomputing clusters.
Operating systems based on the Unix kernel are often seen as intended for programmers and other geeks who have in-depth knowledge of how to use them, but are gaining in popularity among casual users who simply want an alternative to Microsoft and Apple, or for ideological reasons (open-source software).
Any software project will find a use other than what it was originally designed for.
Windows Movie Maker 2.6 is available for download on Microsoft's website, and is meant for people whose computers couldn't support 6.0, the version that came with Vista. However, there are Vista and 7 users who downloaded it because 2.6 is the version that came with XP, and they prefer it over Movie Maker 6.0 and Windows Live Movie Maker.
Film
General
Film producers know that even kids watch films intended for older crowd. That's why Misaimed Marketing happens a lot.
A special on The Terminator pointed out that the original movie was attracting a female audience simply because of the love story.
Star Wars is a story about The Hero fighting The EmpireIN SPACE, and clearly aimed at the Sci Fi crowd. It ended up appealing to, in one way or another, absolutely everyone.
Tyler Perry's movies are pretty popular with white Southerners, probably due to the Christian values promoted. Surprising because his target demographic is black church-going types.
Superbad was mainly targeted toward the 20-37-year old people who remember what high school was like, but it has also gained many 14-18-year old fans who enjoy the movie for its crazy and naughty humor, and the characters.
Ratatouille, as noted by The Onion AV Club, has gained a cult following among all artists because it is the best at showing what actually creating art feels like.
Literature
General
Old classics in the public domain like Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and L. Frank Baum's long Oz series find their most hardcore fans among adult women around the world.
Many books that are popular with precocious teenagers were originally written for adults (Kurt Vonnegut's books come to mind). Likewise, some of the more intellectual fare in the YA genre have a fair number of adult readers.
Some kids books were used to teach literacy to adults in the past.
This makes a great deal of logical sense, really: a child's book is going to have much simpler writing, which is easier to understand whether you're a young child just learning to read or an adult just learning to read. People who are learning a new language often read younger books in that language, again because the writing is simpler and easier to follow.
Specific
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is considered by many to be far too dark and depressing for children. It's essentially a dark comedy about different ways the author can torment children and the unusual ways supporting characters can be killed.
Harry Potter. The original series was intended for children and adolescents, but the series quickly caught on with adults as well. Different covers were created specifically to market the books toward adults. However, the author JK Rowling designed the series specifically to avoid alienating fans who had grown up by the time the it was completed. Each book grows progressively more mature, "growing up" with the reader.
The Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, aimed at teenage girls, have a significant overlap with the romance novel demographic of middle-aged women. And the Hatedom continues to buy books just so they can mock them, averting Complaining about Shows You Don't Watch.
It also has a hugegay fanbase. Many on the internet speculate that if Jacob and Edward had been the couple of the series instead, it would've been far more interesting.
Everyone who reads Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a Periphery Demographic according to either the author (who planned it as a The Wonder Years-type nostalgia trip for adults) or the publisher (whose idea it was to market it as a kids' book).
The Hunger Games is an interesting example of what happens when you ignore the periphery demographic. Marketed as a gritty dystopia, its romantic subplot attracted a large number of young female fans (particularly after Stephenie Meyer endorsed the series.) When the final book dropped most of the romance to focus in on the dystopian elements, fans still bought it - they just complained about it on the internet.
Live-Action TV
General
Daytime television has traditionally been aimed at children and housewives, who were the largest demographics expected to be home during the day. However, college kids, slackers, and other groups have catapulted certain shows into mainstream appreciation.
Merchandise DrivenTokusatsu is aimed squarely at kids. However, they cast a lot of pretty-boy actors to appeal to the mothers of the aforementioned kids, who often watch the show at home with their children. And if not the mothers, then it works well with the older sisters of these kids. And if the fathers stay around long enough to watch it at times, the actresses fill that niche nicely, along with the gravure to go with it. Not to mention the people overseas who grew up with Power Rangers.
Most shows aimed for tween girls can sometimes be this towards boys. Shows like Lizzie McGuire, iCarly, Sonny With A Chance, Victorious, Shake It Up, etc., would sometimes be watched by boys either because they like/have a crush on the lead/supporting girls in the show, to hear them sing, to enjoy their antics, or all of them.
The idea of the Sci-Fi Channel (or SyFy now) having a mostly young male demographic is increasingly fallacious, which the execs seem to have some difficulty recognizing; when confronted with the fact that many of their viewers are women, David Howe acknowledged that "almost half of our audience is women, thanks to shows such as Ghost Hunters that attract more women than men", completely ignoring the fact that many of their scripted shows (Farscape, The Invisible Man, the various Stargates, Battlestar Galactica (Reimagined), etc.) had/have significant (if not overwhelmingly, or at least more involved in online fandom) female audiences.
Kika, a German kid channel, has a mascot called Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread). The pessimistic bread became a cult favorite with young adults and teens in Germany. Kika started airing a looped program with Bernd instead of static after 9 P.M, attracting many insomniac young viewers.
The Price Is Right was obviously designed to appeal to housewives, who would do most of the shopping for household items. Over the show's long history, however, it has garnered interest from just about every viewer demographic.
Bob Barker noted that the show got a lot of college fans after he was featured in Happy Gilmore and beat up Adam Sandler.
In England, Deal or No Deal is the show of choice, possibly due to the presenter (Noel Edmonds) having presented 90's show Noel's House Party. Probably more down to the fact that he's able to make a show about someone opening boxes seem quite tense and nail-biting. Even when all the big prizes have gone.
The Food Network's initial run of Iron Chef carried advertisements generally aimed at over-40-housewives, who were Food Network's primary demographic at the time. When the show was adopted by younger viewers due to its competition aspect and the Narm Charm of its presentation, Food Network was caught flat-footed and took a lengthy period of time to properly capitalise on the show's success by making it a centerpiece of their lineup. Rapid Network Decay soon followed.
Anthony Bourdain's first show was also adopted by a younger demographic than originally intended.
Teletubbies is a show aimed at extremely young children, but it became famous for attracting the attention of college/uni students and druggies, all of whom were often watching television in the middle of the day. The show's baffling and surreal nature, combined with its bright colors and hypnotically repetitive nature, made the show enjoyable with the right amount of irony or chemistry.
In the Night Garden is arguably even more cutesy, surreal and coy than Teletubbies, and makes perfect hangover viewing, or if you are so inclined, watching it stoned or tranquillised is amazing.
Shows aimed at older children. Raven is surprisingly popular among adults, and The Sarah Jane Adventures is watched by many adult fans of parent show Doctor Who. When you consider that the show has Torchwood references, that may be intentional.
Speaking of Doctor Who that show itself probably belongs here; it was originally intended as a show that would teach history to kids, but when it started going more overtly science fiction (in it's second serial no less) it started to bring in a lot more adult fans who would watch with their children, not to mention the kids who grew up and yet stayed with the show into adulthood thanks to its Long Runner status. It's a matter of (at times quite heated and interminable) debate, however, whether the show is a 'family' show (i.e. intended for both kids and adults from the start), a kid's show that happens to claim a strong Periphery Demographic among adults, a kid's show which eventually became a family show or something else entirely.
Although Beakman's World was generally aimed at 9-to-14 year old school kids, high schoolers and college students liked it too. Maybe it was because they finally got what they couldn't get in middle school; maybe it was because the main character looked like someone who'd do drugs; maybe it was the assistants (no, not the rat); or even a combination of all three.
Similarly, Bill Nye the Science Guy still has a significant following among young men, which may have been a factor in creating a similar series more directly targeted at them.
In Seattle (where the show was filmed), a large part of the audience were older adults who really missed Almost Live, where the Science Guy and the other cast members got their start.
The children's TV show LazyTown is also known to be popular with teenagers and young adults as well as parents. At least some of this is due to entirely unwholesome reasons, though given Sportacus's and Robbie's tight pants we can be reasonably sure that some of the adult appeal is deliberate.
Though some of the songs are catchy as well. "You Are a Pirate" is the only reason some people have even heard of this show.
iCarly started off aimed at roughly the 8-14 market, but ended up being a massive hit in all the children and teen demographics (from young kids to mid teens). Since people caught on to the massive amounts of Getting Crap Past the Radar included, it's now a big hit with adults and college viewers as well.
While not to the same extent as the above two, Victorious and Big Time Rush are also good contenders with periphery demographics, given their Getting Crap Past the Radar (especially with the former) and music provided in most episodes.
Many parents and adults tend to view Yo Gabba Gabba as a Guilty Pleasure, although some of its appeal is from the show's baffling ability to somehow convince popular indie rock bands like Low, Mates of State, Hot Hot Heat, The Shins and Of Montreal to appear as musical guests.
It helps that the show was produced by a member of the Aquabats.
A growing number of Western fans in their 20-30's grew up watching Power Rangers. The fact that they brought back Jason David Frank (as a regular cast member for season 12) and Johnny Yong Bosch (in a guest spot for the 15th anniversary) would suggest that the producers are well aware of the older Power Ranger fans.
The Canadian TV series Trailer Park Boys is very popular with both criminals and police officers. The former are able to identify with the main characters (the producers even describe the show as "Cops from the criminal's point of view"), while the cops enjoy seeing depictions of what they have to deal with in their jobs.
It's also popular with both the lower-class demographic it depicts and more well-to-do people who find the portrayal of their lifestyle hilarious.
Word on the street has it that the live-action Dresden Files TV series was cancelled because, while it had an active fan following, said fan following was mostly older women who didn't mesh with the rest of The Sci-Fi Channel's young male demographic.
As for Sci-fi examples, Stargate Atlantis was cancelled to make way for Stargate Universe so TPTB could appeal to a younger male demographic instead of SGA's (very large) female fanbase.
Considering the copious amount of almost soap-operish melodrama (at least in the opening episodes), it seems that SyFy have decided to try for Multiple Demographic Appeal with the show.
TPTB claim that the cancellation of SGA and the launch of SGU weren't direct causation. They have not convinced many fans that this is true.
The Vision Ongallery theme tune, so iconic it penetrated a national consciousness, can only be intended for the periphery demographic, as the intended audience was deaf children.
Sesame Street intentionally invoked this trope, in order to create a show that kids and parents would watch and enjoy together. This kids show grew its following gradually; when the original kid viewers grew up to be adults, they would subsequently watch the show with their own children.
Choujinki Metalder, the sixth Metal Heroes show, attracted a primarily older fanbase instead of its intended young audience due to its dark and complex storyline compare to previous Metal Hero shows. As a result, it was canceled at the end of its third course, with only 39 episodes instead of the usual 50.
Top Gear is a Petrolhead Show, but there are plenty of people who watch it without knowing much about cars, simply cause it is that hilarious, and it doesn't hurt that the film crew is great at making everything look good.
Both the producers and the star, Jeremy Brett, were surprised to learn that their 1984-1994 Sherlock Holmes TV series adaptation was very popular with kids, who seemed to see the lead character as a Super Hero. As such, Brett got permission from the granddaughter of Arthur Conan Doyle to have Holmes beat his cocaine addiction and bury his needle.
It's a little hard to find The Golden Girls' original demographic. Even during its debut it was very popular with younger demographics (and still is). When asked why, I think Betty White said it best, "Because it's funny!"
In addition to The Golden Girls, several other sitcoms airing from the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's fit this trope. The Cosby Show, The Fresh Princeof Bel Air and Family Matters all had predominantly African-American casts, and were/still are enjoyed and appreciated by viewers of many backgrounds. Although Full House skewed more toward a female audience, the show was popular with males as well.
War miniseries like Band Of Brothers and The Pacific, in theory and according to mainstream media, are generally geared at middle-aged-to-older men (Seth Meyers, making fun of Eric Massa, accused of groping a staffer at his fiftieth birthday party: "That's not what happens on 50th birthdays. On my dad's 50th birthday, we got him a gift certificate to Morton's and a Band of Brothers DVD"), including those who possibly served. However, they tend to have very strong fanbases of young women in their teens and twenties, partially because of the wealth of young men in uniform and the many shipping possibilities. However, many seem to have genuine interest in the history as well
The British teen drama Skins has multigenerational appeal thanks to its excellent writing and acting. In fact, adult fans probably outnumber teen fans outside of Britain.
It's no secret that the DCLAU's primary fanbase is made up of older teens and young adults.
Wishbone was aimed towards kids seven to fourteen, but it gained a lot of popularity from teenagers and adults, as well as many literature fans.
Music
General
Classic rock stations, while generally marketed towards the generation that grew up on the music, tend to attract more than a good amount of younger listeners. Active rock stations (stations that play both classic and new rock) may be a response to this growing trend.
What we now consider "classic rock" was written with a teenage audience in mind. The fact that those original teenagers are now middle-aged doesn't change the fact that the songs are designed to appeal to teenagers, so it really shouldn't be strange that today's teenagers can also connect with it.
While classical music and opera concerts are generally seen as something "old people" like, and usually marketed as such, there is a strong Periphery Demographic of teenage band geeks who get into classical music via playing it in school/lessons. (And in fact, it often plays out a lot like the above picture: the teen musicians, who have studied the program music in depth, tend to get more out of it than elderly non-musicians do.) More and more symphonies, opera companies, etc. are beginning to recognize this and re-direct their marketing toward younger people, such as giving student/under-30 discounts.
Trailer music is normally marketed towards film companies. However, they often produce epic choral music which has gained interest in common public. A few producers finally noticed this and have started marketing their music in iTunes.
Specific
They Might Be Giants started out basically aiming at two separate audiences: New York hipsters and college-age alternative rock fans. But from the beginning, they've always managed to attract a huge cult following among teens. Then, when their original fans got older and started playing TMBG to their kids, the band was surprised to discover that they had a lot preteen fans too. Since then, they've started doing child-oriented work (albums, DVDs, kids-only concerts, even some stuff for Disney) alongside their usual stuff. However, they've made a point of making their children's music accessible to their adult fans too.
This, of course, hasn't stopped people from complaining.
The Beatles gained a large crop of child fans with the animated movie Yellow Submarine, an inversion of the usual Animation Age Ghetto situation. In fact, George Harrison claimed that was how his own son came to know of the Beatles, since Harrison hadn't yet informed his son that he'd been in one of the most popular bands of all time.
The Beatles' more innocent and silly songs have also been frequently recorded specifically as children's songs. "Octopus' Garden" is a major target, as is the iconic "Yellow Submarine" song itself.
Before Michael Jackson's death, his "This Is It" concerts were stated to be an oldies act by the news media who expected mostly people in their 40s and up to be buying tickets. However, most of the people who actually bought tickets to the concerts were people in their 20s who became fans long after Michael's heyday. In fact, Michael kept a relatively young audience, especially females, throughout his entire solo career. Which is very rare for an older act.
Madonna is another example. She is market towards a female audience, but her biggest market is largely in the gay community.
Cher is also inordinately popular with gay men, as is Barbara Streisand.
On that note, Lady Gaga may be considered the Gay Icon of the Oughts and New Tens.
Many fans in the western side of the world inexplicably fail to realize that Hello! Project fandom is meant to include both ninth-grade girls and college-age guys.
Emilie Autumn, despite probably, along with Otep, being the closest thing to riot grrrl today, has a rather large male fanbase.(according to a survey, as much as 60% of her fans were male). She has acknowledged this, calling them her "Asylum Boys".
Newspaper Comics
General
A number of legacy comic strips, whose target audience is now very old or aging, would be utterly without younger fans were it not for the ironic appreciation showered upon them by the author and readers of The Comics Curmudgeon.
Specific
The Far Side gained a substantial following among biologists and other scientists, most particularly for cartoonist Gary Larson's humorous yet accurate depictions of anthropomorphic animals. Larson, himself a wilderness buff, was especially gratified by this, especially when one of his fans arranged to have a species of chewing louse named after him.
And as a further Shout Out, when a paleontologist realized that no scientist had ever actually given a name to the bunch of bone spikes on a stegosaur's tail, he proceeded to start using the name given to them by the one guy who had thought about it: thus the growing usage of thagomizer in the paleontological community.
Following one cartoon that involved a female chimp accusing a male chimp of "hanging around with that Goodall tramp", Larson got a bunch of hate-mail from people who resented the implication on Jane Goodall's behalf - and a letter from Goodall herself telling him that she thought the cartoon was hilarious and that she was honored to have been featured. Goodall, who was a long time fan of The Far Side enjoyed the cartoon so much that she invited Larson to her nature reserve in Tanzania and wrote the preface for a collection of Far Side comics that included the cartoon. Her institute also recently began selling a T-shirt with that same cartoon on it.
And in the first known instance of interspecies Periphery Hatedom, Frodo, Goodall's alpha male chimp, proceeded to beat the snot out of poor Gary Larson. Jane Goodall recounted the experience in the preface she wrote to one of the Far Side collections.
Toys
General
The model kit hobby, be it planes, cars, military figures, trains, or sci-fi subjects. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, putting together plastic models was a common children's pastime, while at the same time being enjoyed by older hobbyists. For instance, just about every American car or plane from the '60s was available in kit form. Then kids from the '80s and '90s turned their attention to other hobbies and activities such as video games, and therefore built models less and less. Today, more kits are bought by older hobbyists (who were young in the '50s, '60s, and '70s and nostalgic for that era) than by young modelers.
Specific
Transformers is the absolute king of this. About 10% - 20% of toys are sold to adult collectors. Hasbro and Takara are only too pleased to appeal to these people, with homage-tastic toys, G1-centric comics, and general love. Plus, we have Transformers Animated, master of the Mythology Gag and much loved among fans for its own merits.
This relationship is inverted with the live-action movies: though primarily aimed towards older teenagers and adults (what with all the gratuitous swearing, violence andMythology Gags, the movies are more unanimously popular among children than amongadults, resulting in a fair bit of Misaimed Marketing.
It is certainly true that My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has developed the rather unexpected Brony Periphery Demographic. These fans praise the cartoon for many reasons, ranging from quality animation, to well developed characters, to great pop culture Shout Outs, and even the domination of the internet by Pony Memes. Much of the fandom for this show built its foundations on the internet, and many view the episodes on livestreams, YouTube, or download them via torrents. Some have chosen to support Hasbro's show with their hard earned cash to make up for their effective piracy of the show (which Hasbro doesn't seem to mind about, allowing episodes to be posted online). Others genuinely are into it for collecting. Regardless of the reasons though, an increasing number of these Brony fans have taken to browsing the pink aisle in their local department stores.
Some Bronies buy custom toys from other Bronies. The work put into these can be staggeringly amazing.
In the world of toys, there's Lego. While the iconic building bricks are marketed to kids, there's a number of adults who make a hobby of them as well. Lego has seemed to thoroughly embrace this demographic; scale Lego models and the people who design and build them are showcased in the Legoland theme parks, and there's a downloadable program for home model design and purchase. And then there's the Lego themes with nostalgia value, like Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones. Even the in-house BIONICLE line has its own Periphery Demographic. And then there's a host of online webcomics using Lego, such as Irregular Webcomic!.
Lego itself may be a sort of double-inversion, as the toys were originally intended as architectural tools to allow, well, architects to rough out a model of a prospective building in 3D in a rapid and efficient manner. To this day they're still used as this, and Lego has even spun-off a corporate consulting division which uses Lego bricks to help solve problems in similar ways. This went full circle when Lego started its Architecture line, Lego sets for architectually famous buildings.
Being an adult also has its advantages. For one thing, it's actually affordable to you, and adults have the skills to engineer much more complex sets (check out the author's creations here at Reasonably Clever, home of the famous Lego Minimizer).
Lego Mindworks has become popular as of late with early robotics engineering prototyping, lower level university mechanical engineering courses, and AI with robots (which hack out the default Mindworks instruction system for something more suitable like ROS).
A line of merchandise called 151 was released in Japan. What are they? Artistic Pokémon products for the series' large young adult fanbase, many of whom became fans when they themselves were children. As the name implies, it focuses on the first-generation Pokémon that the older fans started with.
American Girl, despite being a company aimed at girls between the ages of 8 and 12 mostly, has a very large fanbase of adult women, usually middle-aged or older with either children outside of the target age or no children of their own. There are at least three popular adult collector forums (with thousands of members each) and most of the secondary market is fueled by the demand from adult collectors.
If you go to a Barbie convention, you will not find many people there who are too young to buy the dolls with their own money, and only about half of them will be female. (despite how some of them dress.)
Even specific toys can get this. A Hot Wheels radar gun has become remarkably popular among geeks, presumably because it's cheap, durable enough to stand up to kids, and one of the few radar guns you can buy in the toy section of any store.
Video Games
General
First-person shooters are normally targeted towards the older male audience. However, they draw a teen and preteen crowd who want to appear more adult. Of course, anybody who uses Xbox Live knows that some of these preteens try to do this by cussing up storm of bigoted gibberish.
Many Xbox360 games have a Periphery Demographic in Achievement hunters, who only play the game because it has a reputation for an easy 1000G. Two well-known examples are Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (1000G just for playing through the game once, and cheat codes are allowed) and the Avatar: The Last Airbender game, in which you can literally get 1000G in less than a minute.
Specific
Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball is a fanservice-loaded video game series that has gotten some female fans, and even a few actual volleyball fans.
A great many Kirby fans are people who grew up playing said games. This qualifies because the series in general is and was designed to be for beginners. These people might have moved on in terms of skill but many of them gleefully return for each new installment, no matter how short or easy it is.
Kirby's Epic Yarn also attracted the viewers due to its unique visual presentation.
Many Pokémon fans continue to remain faithful to the games; the series is also one of the best RPGs out there that allow you to compete with other people, and so there's a significant crowd of hardcores and Stop Having Fun Guys.
Perhaps exemplified by the Periphery Demographic within a Periphery Demographic: older fans of the three cutePikachugames. These games are more or less pure Tastes Like Diabetes adventures meant for very young kids. Really fun if they're your thing, though.
The sheer amount of potential Fetish Fuel from the humans in the series also helps. The website Pokesho is known mostly for its large amounts of fanservice art of the female characters (usually with visible camel toe), but it does a plenty of illustrations of the actual monsters, too—and in both cases, the art is objectively great.
Super Mario Bros., although primarily marketed towards kids (at least for most of its life), has been a big hit with all ages and has become the best-selling game series of all time, with Mario arguably becoming the most recognized game character in the world. Similar to Pokémon above, it started going for Multiple Demographic Appeal at one point, and was marketed towards casual "non-gamer" audiences as well when it made its move to the Wii.
Is there a museum of Science and Industry or other applied sciences museum near where you live? Does it have any kind of an "interactivity" focus? Was it around in the late 70s? If you search, they probably have a Lunar Lander arcade machine somewhere in there set to free play.*
For those not in the know, Lander was a more or less accurate 2D simulation of what landing a Lunar Lander is like, inertia and all, making the museum the periphery demographic here.
Metal Gear Solid has its intended fanbase of teenage boys and college aged men, and its unintended fanbase of women of ages 16-25 who are in it for the men in skintight sneaking suits, and the heavy amounts ofHo Yay. Some of them like the explosions and giant robots as well, of course.
The Idolmaster is a pop star raising simulation game with an all female cast (That is, until DS and THE iDOLM@STER 2) that was intended for male otaku. However, due to it being very girly, with there being a focus on fashion and the virtual paper doll aspect, songs about girl power, and well, the fact that the cast is all female, there is quite a lot of female fans, especially in the west. Namco even acknowledged this and added three bishonen male idols as rivals in THE iDOLM@STER 2. Unfortunately, while the female fans were pleased, it provoked a massive backlash against the game from the male otaku audience, in part because some of the original cast didn't make it into the sequel and the Bishōnen males were seen to be "replacing" them.
Team Fortress 2 has a whole following that doesn't care about weapon balance or mini-crits or even, God Forbid, hats. They just love to shipthe all-male*
Besides some of the background characters, and the mystery of the Pyro
cast together, draw art and write slash fics about them. With in-game achievements like "Beaux And Arrows" (kill a Heavy-Medic duo with the Sniper's longbow), Valve are hardly discouraging this. "I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!"
Say, did you know that the Kingdom Hearts games (especially the first) are games to be enjoyed by children? And did you know that the majority of the fandom is composed by teenagers and young adults?
Or that it's more targetted at boys than girls for the most part but (like most shonen-based titles out there) its online fandom is mostly made up of Yaoi Fangirls?
Or Disney fans.
The Tokimeki MemorialDating Sim series, though very much aimed at a male audience, acquired a significant female fanbase. In fact, this led Konami to create the gender-flipped "Girl's Side" branch of the series.
In South Korea, Starcraft has a very large fanbase in terms of female audiences who like to watch pro-gaming a lot. Majority of the contestants are young men after all.
It may be rarer for a Touhou fan to have actually played the games, rather than be drawn to it by the setting, the massive, colourful cast (and equally massive amounts of fan art) and/or the awesome music (and equally awesome arranges).
For exactly the same reasons, the fanbase has a large margin of females as well, despite the Improbably Female Cast.
The Periphery Demographics are, in fact, the reason for most of the popularity the series has accumulated. The games themselves are fairly standard Bullet HellShoot Em Ups, however fanartists became obssessed with ZUN's (often conceptually brilliant, always technically flawed) character designs and sought to improve upon them, the doujin communities saw incredible potential in an elaborate setting with piles of Fanfic Fuel, Fanfic Magnets and OC Stand Ins, and the musical arrangers fell in love with the music, to the point where they managed to turn this into this.
Bully was created to appeal to the fans of the Grand Theft Auto series, but with its high school aged, mostly male cast, it has a very strong following in the slash fic writing community. The insane amount of gay jokes and Ho Yay present within the story also contribute to that.
Minecraft. Although official forum traffic tends to strongly imply that Minecraft's primary demographic is male and probably 13-17 years old, there is visible evidence on YouTube and other places, of the game having both a female and adult playerbase as well.
The Sega Mark III (or Master System) was designed primarily to compete with Nintendo's Family Computer (or NES), which was the dominant game console in Japan during the 1980's. While it never took off there, nor in America (due to the stranglehold Nintendo had with third-party developers with their strict licensing policies), it enjoyed great success in Europe and Brazil, where it saw numerous exclusive releases.
The Sonic the Hedgehog series has many teenage and adult followers as well as child fans, due to nostalgia from the Genesis/Saturn/Dreamcast days, and for the sexily-designed female characters like Rouge, Wave, and Blaze.
Also, for some reason it's extremely popular among autistic people.
The rather... complicated storylines, the dozens of Estrogen Brigade Baits and the buttloads of Ship Tease (either het or Ho Yay, as well as some bits of Les Yay) has made The King of Fightersextremely popular among female players. It does help that it's among the Long Runners, therefore many of the ladies who play it now likely grew up watching other people playing the earlier games.
Similarly, Guilty Gear also has a sizable female fanbase for similar reasons.
Catherine has a scene amongst, of all things, competitive gamers, thanks to its versus mode. It's become a staple at some fighting game tournament events, to the point where there are money matches.
Humongous Entertainment's games have gotten a lot of older fans, many from those who grew up on them. The large amount of Parental Bonuses helps quite a bit.
Western Animation
Cartoon Network is all about the Periphery Demographic. Recognizing this was what led them to create [adult swim] in 2001. Most Cartoon Network originals have scored a healthy Periphery Demographic, but just to name a few:
For older original Cartoon Network shows (or Cartoon Cartoons as they used to be called), The Powerpuff Girls intentionally invoked this trope in that, while being marketed to kids as a typical girl-superhero show, it was actually a parody of its genre intended for adult viewers, chock-full of High Octane Nightmare Fuel and Getting Crap Past the Radar.
The Superhero Squad Show is basically Adult Swim lite. It's got the same bizarre sense of humor and minimal animation style without the tits and gore. This, combined with plenty of MarvelFanservice, has gained it a small adult fanbase.
[adult swim] itself is an example of this, in that a larger number of its viewers are under 18. If you tell any kid they're not supposed to watch something, they're going to watch it.
Regular Show deals with a lot of stuff only teenagers and adults can truly relate to.
"They'll rock your 11 to 15-year old pants off! Yes, that's our demographic. GET OVER IT!"
Ed, Edd n' Eddy has a large following among kids, teenagers AND adults, mostly due to its overwhelming amount of Ho Yay, plus plenty of amusing stuff for those who aren't Yaoi Fangirls.
The infinitesimal but vocal Time Squad fandom is now composed almost entirely of slash fans, though this is about as surprising as Thomas the Tank Engine attracting railroad enthusiasts.
Teen Titans: popular among teens and college-age people, even though Sam Register didn't want it to become a "fanboy show".
Meanwhile, Raven, besides struggling with a horrible tragic past and destiny, and who deep down inside just want to be loved for who she is, was changed into a snarky, gothy, reclusive nerd, and shown as a busty teen girl who gets more than a few scenes (and whole episodes) dedicated to pointing out how curvy she is. Basically a package full of fanboy-bait.
Teen Titans really tread the line on Periphery Demographics, with tongue-in-cheek call outs to comic book plots and characters along the lines of obfuscating Robin's identity via episodes with characters like Red X and Larry, and of course "Control Freak" is pretty much a shout out and/or back-handed compliment to fanboys everywhere.
Total Drama Island: actually intended for children from the ages of 8 to 12, but with its truly amazing amounts of sex-related jokes, nudity and swearing it's no surprise that the fanbase is almost entirely made up of older teens and adults.
This also has to do with the series being made in Canada, which means that they can get past a lot more adult things in what is still marketed as a kids' show, at least compared to Cartoon Network. However, at some points it's hard to view it as one either way; see Getting Crap Past the Radar, Ho Yay, and Precision F-Strike for more.
My sister and I were shocked when we saw the episode in which the contestants are made to eat the TESTICLES of a certain animal. And the word "testicles" was used explicitly! My sister has gone on to become a fan of the show. Go figure.
Stoked and 6teen which, although marketed to teens, have a decent to substantial base in their 20's.
Codename: Kids Next Door While targeted for kids around age 7 to 12, is enjoyed by teens and collage-aged people, With Getting Crap Past the Radar moments, Affectionate Parody, surprisingly complex storylines, and Toy Ship moments, it's safe to say those outside the target audience can, and have, found something to enjoy in this show.
MAD has earned some older fans because of their references to movies and shows targeted towards teenagers and adults, their tendency to make jokes that feel naughtier than expected for children, and their connections to MAD magazine.
Rival network Nickelodeon also has this with its Nicktoons:
Teenage and college age viewers make up a surprisingly big percentage of Spongebob Squarepants viewership (so much that it sometimes airs on MTV) and, less surprisingly, Avatar The Last Airbender viewership. The latter can be easily explained by virtue of the anime fandom's presence on college campuses as well as the series' particularly well-done writing; the former is slightly less easily understood, but SpongeBob is a well-written series, greatly assisted by occasional audience chemical enhancement and the use of jokes and concepts that intentionally go over younger viewers' heads.
The creators of Avatar pretty much showed the most likely cause of this: they write something enjoyable to the target audience that they like too.
If you ever worked in fastfood like many teenagers and college students do you can relate to what Spongebob and Squidward go through at The Krusty Krab.
Iron Man: Armored Adventures has a surprisingly large female fanbase, which is usually unheard of for superhero shows, as well as a decent number of anime fans. This can probably be explained due to the series' heavy anime-influence which is popular with both unintended demographics.
Guess what age group (and what culture/subculture) made up half of the fanbase (and probably still does) of Invader Zim? Hint: It's not precisely the younglings. However, the fact that younger kids were not interested in it unlike the above three shows was part of its demise.
Danny Phantom. Intended for preteen boys, apparently, but the majority of fans tend to be female. And of the college age.
The show also enjoys a strong following amongst college/adult male cartoon fans who seem drawn to the female character's often buxom designs. And they don't call them Hartman Hips for nothing!
The Ren & Stimpy Show was originally rated as U (all ages), but the users of the commonsensemedia.com website rated it to be suitable for viewers above 13 years of age. The show is very popular among adult animation nerds, majority of which are aged 20+.
The Fairly OddParents is mainly targeted at kids in elementary school, but it has acquired popularity with young adults due to its extremely quirky characters, hilarious plots, celebrity guests (such as Jay Leno and Adam West), and numerous gags and pop-culture references that may go over kids' heads.
Doug was rather popular with adults during it's run on both Nick and ABC, mainly from parents who wanted their kids to watch it.
KaBlam! kind of inverts this. It had a pretty big audience of the usual seven to eleven demographic, though earlier, Nick was trying to target the show towards teenagers (while still keeping it TV-Y7). The show was also had a solid adult fanbase as well.
The intended audience of Totally Spies! was intended to be elementary and middle school age girls, but due to the show's fetishistic overtones, the show has found its primary audience among college age males.
Near the end of Bugs Bunny and Tweety's run on ABC, the show was still receiving a respectable total number of viewers, mainly outside the 2-11 audience. It was only cancelled because their contract ran up, and ABC by then switched to an all-Disney lineup.
Lots of people love Kim Possible, many of them parents themselves.
This is evidenced by its strong showing on fan-themed sites such as Fanfiction.net where, as of October 2010, it registered over 7,000 posted stories, one of the largest listings in the Cartoon category. (A good proportion of them being Les Yayslash fics. And the writers are well aware of the popularity of these pairings.)
As well as by Disney's 2007 "Everything Kim Possible" marathon aired over several days virtually non-stop, well outside its intended "tween/teen girl" demographic hours.
This was largely the downfall of many WB Saturday morning cartoons, including Freakazoid!: While older audiences would frequently tune in to watch the show on Saturday mornings, the younger audiences, towards whom the show's sponsors would try to advertise their products, weren't too interested, which lead to Freakazoid's demise only two seasons in.
Thomas the Tank Engine has a very large amount of adult and young adult fans, many of whom grew up with the shows and appreciate the realism and storylines of the earlier episodes. There are quite a few people that happily collect the train models too.
Arthur, despite being a show directed toward preteens, has a substantial teen and adult following. This is mainly due to some very smart writing that would go over most kids' heads (such as an entire episode based on Waiting For Godot).
It's a show for preteens and kids, on networks solely for kids and it gets an episode that parodies various Comedy Central(!) shows. Especially notable is the South Park segment.
Animaniacs intentionally invoked this trope; it was marketed to kids, but was also intended for adults, with Getting Crap Past the Radar and old pop culture references in nearly every episode. Yet, it had enough Slapstick and Toilet Humor alongside the Parental Bonus to keep the kiddies entertained, which is probably part of the reason it outlived many similar shows.
Same with Tiny Toon Adventures, which has a huge fanbase of both younger and older fans, and lasted about the same as Animaniacs did.
VeggieTales has fans who are neither children nor religious. The copious cultural-reference Parental Bonuses probably help.
Little Howard's Big Question is an example of this, possibly due to "Big Howard" Howard Read being a rather excellent "grown up" stand-up comedian.
Jane and the Dragon, which airs on cartoon blocks for elementary-schoolers, has a surprisingly broad demographic appeal. Well-developed characters, storylines that often dodge cliches, and sophisticated dialogue draw in viewers far older than the target audience. A lot of the comments for the Youtube videos say something to the effect of, "I'm [age way older than the target audience], and I love this show!"
The Magic Roundabout - Due to its short length and its position before the Six o'Clock News, there was a huge adult following, whom got into it just because they were waiting for the News to come on. So much so that when The BBC moved it away from the News there was an outcry from the adult audience.
South Park is extremely popular with Yaoi Fangirls, if the amount of Slash fanfiction and fanart featuring its characters is any indication.
Plus, just like with every (or almost every) Disney cartoon, there are many female characters that the male viewers find hot, like Vanessa, Candace, and Stacey for example.
This is the entire motto AND modus operandi of The Hub. Knowing they couldn't beat the other major kids' networks with just kids watching, it's a veritable fountain of fun Periphery Demographic. Their crown jewel in this regard is My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic; see the Toys section above.
WITCH, a comic/cartoon about five girls with magical powers, has no small number of male fans, in part due to its gorgeous art (and not just in a sexual sense, either; it's essentially a series that ascends Disney fairy-tale art Up to Eleven), and in part due to the way its characters, though predominantly female, are also very human. The show took its appeal to the opposite gender even farther; while Blunk was not so liked, Napoleon the talking cat was a big hit, to the point that it's sad his screen antics never ascended in the comics.
This trope goes all the way back to the late 1950s. Early Hanna-Barbera shows such as Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw were very popular amongst grown-ups when they first premiered.
Rocky and Bullwinkle had a large adult following during its original broadcast as well.
Recess, despite being a kid show, attracted many older fans, from teenagers to the parents of the kids who were in the target audience. The show is full of jokes that the target audiencewouldn'tunderstand and has a nostalgic feel for those who remember being in elementary school. This pretty muched caused it to be the Sleeper Hit that it is.
Many teenagers watch shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park, even though the shows were meant to be for adults only.
Cyberchase is enjoyed by many teenagers and adults who started watching it in the early 2000s.
The Magic School Bus has gained a large amount of older fans, many of whom grew up with it.
Adventures from the Book of Virtues, despite being targeted at families with children between the ages of two and nine, is enjoyed by many preteens, teenagers and young adults, particularly those who grew up with it.
Jem and Sailor Moon in their respective eras were both aimed at young girls but also had a male fanbase (which would later be revealed through the internet, because they wouldn't admit it as kids to their friends), the male fanbase having a crush on the lead female character (or another female character) of the respective show.
The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has a target audience of 9-14 year old boys, but has its fair share of adult fans as well. These include Marvel Comics readers who loved finding tough and relatively deep portrayals of their favorite characters, and even some likable re-interpretations of characters they had lukewarm or negative feelings about while reading the comics. The dynamic and well-animated action sequences also helped it earn older fans. Some people say this show boasts as many universally appeaing qualities as shows from the DCU.
Similarly, The Spectacular Spider-Man was aimed at young and pre-teen boys, but is quite popular with teens and adults, given its great character reinterprataions and development, awesome script and voice acting, wonderful tributes to classic Spidey stories and lore, and the surprisingly large amount of Getting Crap Past the Radar. It even holds a good following after its premature cancelation.
The song Puff The Magic Dragon and the classic European TV series The Magic Roundabout (known mostly to Americans through Doogal, the Macekred dub of the recent CGI movie) were both popular with children and with teen-to-college-age "sophisticates" who just "knew" that they were about drugs. The drug references didn't have to be genuine, the teens just had to convince themselves that they were cool enough to spot a hidden message. The English dub of Magic Roundabout did have a degree of satire aimed at the older viewers, a genuine case of Multiple Demographic Appeal, but the drug thing is an urban myth. The writers of Puff the Magic Dragon have stated point blank that the song does NOT have anything to do with drugs.
The Hello Kitty franchise appears to be aimed at young girls, but that doesn't explain the Hello Kitty vibrators.
What does explain them is that using a cartoon character lets them be sold as toys legally when selling them as sexual aids isn't.
There's also a love hotel in Osaka, Adonis, that has a Hello Kitty S&M room.
That, and Hello Kitty is on tons of things you wouldn't expect, anyway, so it was probably inevitable.
Yeah, like Machine Guns...
While in other parts of the world, Hello Kitty may seem like strictly kids' stuff, in Japan they've been marketing Hello Kitty to the teen/young adult crowd since the beginning.
You'd expect the primary market for guns in the U.S. to be either criminals or angry rednecks, right? Well, a lot of gun owners are young, urban adults and middle-aged women.
Actually inverted. Regular handguns and such are actually intended (with emphasis on the intended) to be sold to responsible citizens for self-defense, technically making the criminals and such the true Periphery Demographic.
Of course, the intended demographic usually only own one gun, or at least one at a time. The Periphery Demographic however usually owns (or has regular access to) at least two or more guns.
Elouai.com is a dollmaker website, directed at girls ages 4 to 14. However, due to the high quality of the art and the vast range of available "parts", it has attracted a large number of teenage-and-young-adult writers - people who tend to have little art skill, but want a quick visual representation of their characters, for showing off and for personal reference.
The Chevrolet Epica - image here◊, although aimed at older buyers and families, it was popular with younger buyers who appreciated it more.
The coin-operated rides outside of supermakets. Hope the place has no security guards (or that the guards are of the jobsworth type - those machines are normally not under their surveillance).
Linkara is an interesting example in that many of his fans don't read comics, and many people who do read comics don't like him.
Neopets Is a very odd case; although the site originated for college kids, the eponymous Ridiculously Cute Critters attracted a Periphery Demographic of kids, and the site became Lighter and Softer as a result. This wasn't a bad thing, as TNT still got a lot of crap past the radar, but after Viacom started meddling, the site became more focused to the kids and started neglecting the older fans, who had become a periphery demographic, and loyalists who started playing as kids but remained on the site through their teens. However, TNT started interacting with the new periphery demographic of older fans by setting up a facebook page, and The Faeries' Ruin did a great job of winning back older fans. Not only that, but said older fans are the ones who play the most on the site. They're the writers for the Neopian Times, plot participants, and are basically the ones who don't get bored and leave after a few months. TNT's trying to reach a happy medium between appeasing the "preteen girl" fans who only want cute things, the "tween boy" fanbase who just like the games, and the older fans who love writing for the Neopian Times and Poetry Gallery, drawing for the Art Gallery and Beauty Contest, and participate in plots.
Road sign creation software, like KeySIGN and SignPLOT have become popular with automobile geeks, roadgeeks and graphic designers. Strange, but true. Viral Marketing by a fan plays a part here.
The author of With Strings Attached has said that she wrote the book under the assumption that Baby Boomer Beatle fans would be its primary audience, and was quite surprised when she started getting letters from 16-year-old girls who were reading it. And this was back in 1997. Now it has readers as young as 12 and as old as 80, and she's given up trying to figure out where the periphery is.
Henry Jenkins, in his book Textual Poachers says this may be the primary driving force behind Fan Fic. The Girl Show Ghetto means that females aren't going to have their brothers or husbands watching shows that are aimed for them, or they find the female-aimed shows lacking in quality and they end up watching shows aimed at men and using fanfic to refocus the narrative.
