Periphery Demographic - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Justice League is awesome and Samurai Jack is awesome and we buy a lot of anime shows that're great, but those shows really are directed more towards the nine to fourteen age group, and the six and seven and eight year olds we're not gelling with the Justice League and some of the more fanboy shows... The main mission was making a good superhero show for kids. Now if the fanboys happen to like the Teen Titans also, that's great, but that was not our mission."

—Executive Producer and Former Cartoon Network V.P. Sam Register

"Do I still like comic books? Muscular guys in spandex fighting crime? Cool!"

—Timmy Turner, Fairly Odd Parents, after becoming a girl in the episode "The Boy Who Would Be Queen"

A notable bunch of audience members outside of the intended (i.e., marketed) demographic.

This has become increasingly more frequent in American cartoons that manage 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 (and despite what you might see, there's quite a few of us) 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., Shounen 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.

One other common occurrence of this is a popular franchise that is marketed towards children, and that has been around for a decade or more. A lot of fans, who were children when this franchise's earlier installments were released, have grown up and become adults. Unfortunately the fans of these shows can sometimes get a rather blatant superiority complex and are not afraid to show it. The companies usually give little nods to the older fans (and sometimes even make new installments that cater exclusively to older fans). However, these franchises were always meant for children. Fans often don't realize that these popular kids franchises are popular, exactly because they are well marketed to kids. That doesn't change just because the older viewers are not kids anymore. (Unfortunately this has lead into negative stereotypes about nerd fanbases.)

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.

Compare Germans Love David Hasselhoff. For a Periphery Demographic of female fans, see the Estrogen Brigade. The Barney inverts this relationship.

Examples:

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Anime

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 Turn A Gundam every show since Wing followed the "pretty boys in mecha" formula.
- To be fair, Loran Cehack, the protagonist of Turn A, crossdresses several times throughout, making a convincing enough girl. This may be due to the fact that he was intended to be a girl, if not for certain people.
Roseof 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.
A surprising amount of crossover audience occurs between Moe and shojo's demographics when they emulate each other. Shojo series often do well among older male audiences, and many shows from Sailor Moon to Futari Wa Pretty Cure, are designed with Shonen elements partly in response to this. Similarly, a reasonably clean Moe 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.
When Sailor Moon originally aired in the U.S., it didn't quite catch on with the young female demographic it was intended for despite "well-intended" edits and it was soon cancelled. A huge Internet petition campaign (Save Our Sailors) quickly cropped up to have the show put back on the air, at which point the executives started to notice a huge amount of its fandom was male. Indeed, even in its country of origin its slightly less unexpected popularity with boys probably explains the show's incredibly long run.
- The English dub is partly to blame for this. It took an anime aimed at kids in their early teens and tried to shoehorn it into a show for 5 year olds, which were a Periphery Demographic in Japan (Though a large one).
- In another strange example, the "main target" of Pretty Cure is said to be females ages 4-12... and males ages 16-35.
CLAMP's X/1999 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.
An anime series of Grimms' Fairy Tales on Youtube has developed quite a significant teenaged and young adult fanbase — the demographic that has outgrown finding Happily Ever After satisfying but grown into finding the prince climbing out of the princess' bed fully-dressed hilarious.
In a more general sense, Moe fandom has a much larger subset of females outside its country of origin. Part of this is because fansubbed shoujo 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.
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.
Dragonball 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.
- Something, undoubtedly. But for a few of us, at least, the rare combination of endearing characters and big stinkin' explosions is also a major attraction.
One Piece is really, really popular with girls and women. It might have something to do with the ludicrously masculine male characters.
- May also have to do with One Piece being remarkably progressive, gender-wise, for a Shonen series. While there are still some Unfortunate Implications along those lines here and there, the show compares very favorably to the many more sexist anime out there.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a weird example in that (possibly because of production team and copious amounts of Fan Service and suspiciously sexual things) a large number of people don't even realize that it was targeted to a younger audience with an early Sunday timeslot. There's also the fact that the American broadcast wasn't as it aired at 11 PM Pacific time on Mondays and the dub had a moderate amount of profanity.
One of the biggest foundations of Axis Powers Hetalia is the Ho Yay among the Moe Anthropomorphisms of several countries, which the more history-based fans often find... weird. However, there's a sort-of agreement between both groups in regards to the heterosexual Official Couple formed by the aristocrat Austria and his ex-maid, later wife Hungary: it's just So. Damn. CUTE!
- Also when you consider the author is male, the sheer amount of canon Ho Yay is... strange.
  - Not really. As well as female, there are more than a few male writers for BL material. Possibly because of the pay of a relatively popular genre? Or something. Though Himaruya began Hetalia merely for the awesome (but now its fandom is spectacularly huge).
  - Also, "fudanshi," (usually straight) men who like BL do exist.
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 premièred 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.
- Wait, you mean Hana is not awesome?
Lolicon series Kodomo No Jikan has actually quite a few female fans, some of whom say they identify with one or more of the three main girls (let's not try and analyze that too hard). Keep in mind that it was created by a woman.
- Mind you, calling it a "lolicon" series may not be explicitly accurate... it's really more of a Moe series with sex humor. None of the "loli" girls ever have sex in the series, or anything even close to it. The creator doesn't think there's anything inappropriate about the series, and was baffled when it's US release was dropped.
  - You mean, masturbating or trying to suck a dick isn't close to sex ?
- Yosh, agreed. It's like said no UST exist in a Romance Manga.
Since it's been out of style with little kids since about 2004, Yu-Gi-Oh's current fandom is compromised almost entirely of teenage girls.
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.

Film

Literature

Music

Live Action TV

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.
- 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.
- 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.
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 campiness 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.
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. Or So I Heard.
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.
Although Beakmans 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).
- 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.
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 of us have even heard of this show.
  - Scary thought: As the girl who plays Stephanie was born in 1991, she was not only 13 when she started, she's 19 now - and legal?
  - There wasn't any LazyTown filmed last year (last filming was in 2008, shortly before her 17th birthday) so the body on the screen is that of a 13-to-16-year-old, regardless of the actress's current age.
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.
Who didn't watch Blues Clues? Ya'know, up until Joe showed up.
Kamen Rider, like most Merchandise Driven Tokusatsu, 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.
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.
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.
- 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, the new Battlestar Galactica, etc.) had/have significant (if not overwhelmingly, or at least more involved in online fandom) female audiences.
Queer As Folk was intended for gay men to watch, but ended up largely drawing in straight women.
I know a great number of teenagers who enjoy watching Hannah Montana, despite it being targeted at nine-year-olds.
- Pretty much any Disney or Nickelodeon live show will wind up drawing a certain demographic it supposedly wasn't aimed at.
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.
- Bernd das Brot is both Nightmare Fuel and a byword for "weird foreign TV" in this household, after we encountered him while late-night channel surfing on holiday... Brrr.
The Vision On gallery 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.
Choujinki Metalder was cancelled because more teens and adults watched it than kids due to the fact it had a more complex story and less flashy action scenes.
Merlin is primarily a family show, but with liberal application of Ho Yay, Ship Tease and Estrogen Brigade Bait, the fandom is largely made up of women who like to write slash fiction.
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.

Toys

Long Runners that are intended for a young Fleeting Demographic tend to wind up with dedicated, long-term fans who simply never outgrow it. The grand king of this is, of course, Transformers, but Power Rangers also qualifies.
- Let's back up and talk about Transformers for a bit; Hasbro is actively feeding the periphery demographic here 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.
- The "mechanical puzzle" aspect of transforming the toy appeals to many, as does the amazing amount of articulation most of the modern toys have. Toy reviews are a staple of most fan communities.
My Little Pony. That is all.
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 let's not forget 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 ~~Legos~~ Lego bricks to help solve problems in similar ways.
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. It apparently didn't work that well, and the site was shut down with only 5 Pokémon shirts made.
- They started up again, though apparently they don't care about the "151" in their title any more, since the new shirts feature Ho-Oh and Lugia.
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.
The model kit hobby, be it planes, cars, military figures, 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.

Video Games

Dead Or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball is a fanservice-loaded video game series that has gotten some female fans.
Thanks to their large arsenal of classic rock songs and The Tetris Effect, Guitar Hero and Rock Band has fans older than the typical 15-25 videogame demographic.
Pop'n Music was initially a game intended to be played for couples on dates (Or So I Heard, at least from That Other Wiki). It ended up being as hardcore of a Rhythm Game as its sister series beatmania IIDX and Dance Dance Revolution, with most of its current fanbase playing it by themselves instead of with another person, all while retaining the cute and colorful graphics that may lead the uninitiated to believe that it's an easy game for kids.
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.
- Similar to the Kirby example, many Pokémon fans remain faithful to the series, sometimes as a borderline Guilty Pleasure that they can be deathly afraid of getting out. The series is also one of the best RPG's out there that allow you to compete with other people, and so there's a significant crowd of hardcores and Stop Having Fun Guys.
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 hot men with great asses in skintight sneaking suits - ahem - and the heavy amounts of Ho Yay. Some of them like the explosions and giant robots as well, of course, let us not be prejudiced.
- Now, now. Men can be in it for the asses, too.
- Unintentional? You don't put a blonde bishie doing naked cartwheels in a game aimed at 15-25 year old males.
The Legend Of Zelda games, mainly OOT and TP, have large female fanbases, due to the fact that the main character is a handsome Bishonen. Link's not the only one either, as there are female followings for Shad, Vaati, Ganondorf, and I'm sure several others
- Apparently, the entire videogame industry has ALWAYS had at least some female players (with, again, a good deal of them playing for the Bishonen factor) but it's only relatively recently that anyone figured that out, including game developers.
Team Fortress 2 has a good following of Yaoi Fangirls who love to ship the all-male^*
^{Besides some of the background characters, and the mystery of the Pyro}
cast together, even if they don't actually play the game.

Western Animation

Cartoon Network is all about the Periphery Demographic. Recognizing this was what led them to create Adult Swim in 2001. Recent Cartoon Network Originals that scored a healthy Periphery Demographic include:
- The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy is known for it's heavy amount of Dead Baby Comedy and Getting Crap Past The Radar.
- Chowder, nearly to the point of "Billy and Mandy".
- The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack To the point of Thurop joking about a Spin Off simply titled "K'nuckles" for the specific purpose of including more "adult" jokes.
- 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.
- Marvel Super Squad 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 Marvel Fan Service has gained it a small adult fanbase.
- Walk into any Hot Topic, and you'll find half of the stuff is Cartoon Network related.
- Adult Swim itself is an example of this, in that a larger number of its viewers are under 18.
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' particular 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.
- Rugrats, most likely thanks to a heaping serving of Parental Bonus.
- Guess what age group (and what culture/subculture) made up half of 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.
The DC Animated Universe has some of the most intelligent, mature writing in Western Animation. So it's no surprise Batman The Animated Series, Superman The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and Justice League have huge teen and adult fanbases. Including the comic book geeks who watch these out of sheer obligation.
And even Teen Titans is 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, has also been changed into a snarky, gothy, reclusive nerd. If that's not a package full of fanboy-bait, I don't know what is.
  - It also helps Raven is shown here as a busty teen girl who gets more than a few scenes (and whole episodes) dedicated to pointing out how curvy she is. Remember the episode where Slade practically strips her... yeah. Fanservice. It's funtastic!
- Please note that there were a lot of fans of the comic complaining that the cartoon was Lighter And Softer.
- 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.
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... but the network was trying to market its Saturday morning schedule on the basis of viewers age 2 to 11, while the Looney Tunes had much of their viewership from teens and adults.
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 September 2009, it registered over 6,400 posted stories, one of the largest listings in the Cartoon category.
  - As well as by Disney's 2007 "Everything Kim Possible" marathon aired over several days virtually non-stop, well outside it's 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.
Disney's Gargoyles eventually succumbed thanks to this effect. Disney wanted to sell the show to 6-11 boys, but the writing and plots attracted 13-30 sci fi fans. Executive Meddling kicked in and fans (and the Comic Adaptation) ignored the third season.
Many dog lovers, fans of cartoon dogs or members of the Furry Fandom enjoy shows like Balto, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Lady And The Tramp, Road Rovers, etc. which were initially intended for kids.
Danny Phantom. Intended for preteen boys, apparently, but the majority of fans tend to be female. And of the college age.
- This is probably due to the show's presentations of strong and varied female characters (Many of Danny's villains are female Ghosts).
- The show, for the above reasons, also enjoys a strong following amongst college/adult male cartoon fans who seem drawn to the female character's often buxom designs.
"Aren't you a little old to be watching Phineas And Ferb?" Yes, yes I am.
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.
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).
This (and the fact it was not Merchandise Driven) was what killed Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. Gaylord (one of the production companies) wanted to attract the 7-12 year old demographic, but the show's more mature tone and character development attracted an audience of teenagers and young adults.
Animaniacs intentionally invoked this trope; it was marketed to kids, but was really more intended for adults, with Getting Crap Past The Radar and old pop culture references in nearly every episode.
Veggie Tales 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 blocs 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!"

Other

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.
- As would you, if your primary market was parents.
The newspaper comic strip The Far Side gained a substantial following among biologists and other scientists, most particularly for cartoonist Gary Larson's humorous 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 carton 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.
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.
  - Pick any two words out of a dictionary and there's likely to be a love hotel for it.
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.

Opening A Can Of Clones

Unexpected Reactions To This Index

Power Perversion Potential

Multiple Demographic Appeal

Script Speak

Ratings

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples: