Merchandise Driven / Western Animation

• Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) promoted both the video games and a tie-in action figure line by Bandai. In fact, one of the reasons it was canceled was due to strife between Bandai and Capcom about toy sales. It also overlaps with What Could Have Been, as the cancelled action figures included Proto Man in his Break Man outfit and Bass, suggesting these would have been status quo changes for the third season.
• Maxie's World: Hasbro introduced a line of dolls in 1988, and there also was an animated series that aired during the 1989-1990 season. (Indeed, the cartoon was largely DiC using what it could salvage when a proposed Barbie show with Mattel fell through)
• According to Rob Liefeld, he almost had a deal for a Youngblood (Image Comics) cartoon on Fox Kids, which would've been created for the sole purpose of promoting an action figure line from Mattel. When Fox signed an exclusive deal with Marvel (thus killing Liefeld's cartoon in the cradle), Mattel dropped the idea for the toy line.
• Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys was intended to be this trope but the action figures didn't sell, which led to its cancellation despite the fact that the show itself was well received. Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! met its doom after one season for the same reason.
• All the G.I. Joe cartoons. This is most blatant with scenes where the plot stops to have the team's bridge layer tank, piloted by Toll-Booth, appear out of nowhere to lay a hinged two-piece bridge down, extending the size of the bridge to fit larger gaps (something the toy couldn't actually do).
• Transformers. An odd instance of the fandom embracing this. Toy reviews abound, fanfic tends to feature toy characters who weren't on the show, etc. Most notably, if a character doesn't have a toy made, you'll often hear fans clamoring for it... the Rule of Cool applies here, and the Rule of Fun even more so, but they're double-edged swords: a sub-standard figure tends to garner far more backlash than a sub-par episode. The Transformers Wiki has a whole page about this.
  
  The original 1984 cartoon had its canon (or the closest thing a relatively episodic series can have to a canon) more or less entirely shaped according to corporate whims. Hasbro and Takara wanted to showcase so many characters, often at the same time, that episode premises were usually written without any specific characters in mind (aside from big names like Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream, etc.) so that they could be slotted in later once they knew which toys the companies wanted them to push. Since this left very little time for character development, especially for teams like the Combaticons and Aerialbots, it resulted in the show's characteristic "introdumps"—sequences where four or five characters would be introduced in rapid succession with one or two lines of dialogue to establish their names, personalities, and occasionally special abilities before rushing back to the plot. (The Grand Finale "The Rebirth" is by far the worst as a result of being edited down from five parts to three; by the writer's own math, the absolute most time that passes without a new character showing up is a minute and a half.) Later, more experienced incarnations of the franchise are much better about this, although the toy companies' influence occasionally still results in unorthodox plotting.
  
  It's a good thing that Transformers works both ways — the shows are always based on toys, but if the characters are popular enough, they may get toys made of them long after their cartoon has ended. That way, Hasbro can rectify the occasional bothersome dissonances between what the toy and the on-show model looked like, and get more money for themselves.
  
  In fact, the adult Transformers fandom has embraced this to such an extent, that a number of third party companies exist by producing unofficial Transformers toys. They typically make high quality figures of Generation One characters which Hasbro / Takara (the licence holders) never created, which can retail for up to four times the cost of an official figure of the same size, due to higher production costs and niche market power.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983). Mattel originally made the toys first. These were sold each with its own "mini-comic" to establish the Masters of the Universe franchise, and the television series followed a couple of years later, coincidentally throwing out most of the established backstory. The toy-based version of He-Man appeared in a few DC Comics, teaming up with Superman, before getting his own series from Marvel Comics. According to J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote some of the episodes, He-Man was the Trope Codifier for the Merchandise-Driven cartoon.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), was a short-lived attempt at a relatively more serious revival. Despite the show being well-received by fans, it was short-lived largely because of its poorly executed toy line. (Near non-existent promotion and inconsistent timeslots didn't help, but the flop of the toy line was the killing blow.) Glutting the shelves with virtually nothing but He-Man and Skeletor (often in the form of ill-conceived variants rather than their usual on-screen outfits to boot) and making it near-impossible to buy any of the supporting heroes and villains turned out to be a poor strategy.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Interestingly, it was originally an indie comic created by two guys who were trying to push the genre as far as it would go, in order to make a not-entirely-serious point. In fact, the series was created because Playmates Toys, who the two guys approached for toys, (after many other companies passed on the property entirely) would only take a chance on making toys relating to the comics if there was a cartoon to give further promotion\exposure. Hence Comic Book Raphael calling his 1987 counterparts "sellouts" in Turtles Forever.
  • Though it originally didn't start out this way, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) wound up falling into this trope by the last few seasons especially with Playmates Toys still having a good amount of control on the franchise, particularly with the Fast Forward and Back to the Sewers seasons.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) owes a lot to the merch as well, hence why nearly every episode is a Monster of the Week one with new mutations, and even ones that aren't usually still involve one - that way there's more monster toys for the kids to buy and pit them against their turtle figures.
  • Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sadly wound up demonstrating just how important toy sales are to action series, as it was cancelled under Nickelodeon's orders before the production of its second season due to low toy sales, with most remaining plot points having been quickly discarded, much to the dismay of diehard fans.
• A short-lived British animated series called Child's Farm was made to sell shampoo. Although the shampoo is still being made, it is more popular than the show and so the show was cancelled.
• Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, which was cancelled after the first season because the toys didn't sell well, as none the characters were in the Wheeled Warriors toyline — only the vehicles were. (Action figures of the characters were planned, but never released.) That's why the show has No Ending — the plot would have been resolved in a movie that died along with the series.
• Ben 10: The original series didn't start out this way, as the first toyline didn't sell all that well and the network had more faith in The Secret Saturdays as their toy-selling cash-cow... but then The Secret Saturdays failed to gain much popularity, while the Ben 10: Alien Force line was a huge hit that outsold the Power Rangers line one year. Which is a big accomplishment. The entire series became much more toyetic as a result.
  • Ben 10 (2016) appears to be even more toyetic than the original show it serves as a reboot of, especially with its redesigns of Stinkfly and Wildvine to look like superheros in costumes rather than a huge bug and a Plant Person.
• The whole point of Winky Dink is that the title character asks the viewers to draw props on the screen, which he uses. To do this without damaging or dirtying your TV, you had to use "Winky Dink Kits", consisting of clear plastic overlays that stuck onto the screen and crayons for drawing on it, for which the show conveniently provided ordering instructions.
• The producers of Batman Beyond later confessed that they were ordered by their bosses to produce this series as simply a means to selling more Batman toys. However, the producers, creators of the DC Animated Universe, worked their talent and created a dynamite television series after all. Ironically you would've been hard pressed to find any Batman Beyond toys even when the show was still on the air.
• The same thing occurred with Spider-Man: The Animated Series and its story editor John Semper, who managed to sneak in compelling plot Story Arcs into the limited animation cartoon, which was specifically supposed to be designed to sell a line of action figures.
• Redakai was made in an attempt to support a card game of the same name, with the characters "Unlocking new X-drives" (read: opening a booster pack of cards and listing them off) at the end of each episode.
  • A glaring example of this is a comment made when Ky unveils his "Gold Metanoid":
  Boomer: I've got to get me one of those!
• Pryde of the X-Men was conceived as an attempt to chase the success of similar cartoon and toy combos like He-Man, G.I. Joe and Transformers. The pilot was originally going to be a simpler story involving the Sentinels as the villains, but the toy company insisted that Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants be used instead, so that all of the major characters in the show's potential action figure line would be introduced as quickly as possible.
• Iron Man: The Animated Series primarily existed to sell toys, which is why there was such a heavy emphasis on Iron Man's Environment Specific Armors. The first season's overall premise of Iron Man leading a team of colorful superheroes into battle against a team of equally-colorful supervillains led by the Mandarin was also very obviously conceived with the action figures in mind. When the show got cancelled, the remaining toys were ReTooled and sold as Spider-Man and X-Men figures.
• The Fantastic Four: The Animated Series also had a pretty heavy emphasis on the more merchandisable aspects of the comics, such as the the Fantasticar. There was even some initial resistance to the heavy Retool that took place during the second season, as the ToyBiz execs disliked the fact that the new FF costumes did not look like the ones featured in the show's action figure line.
• My Little Pony, to the point where, because there were costumes and accessories as well as the ponies in the toy line, there were entire episodes in some installments where the ponies are dressed as cheerleaders and in bathing suits, apropos of nothing.
  • In response to the unexpectedly massive Periphery Demographic for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Hasbro switched gears extremely quickly (by toyline standards), rapidly introducing new/recoloured/retooled ponies and minifigs over the course of 2012. They still devote entire episodes to specific toy lines, but they're mostly the season premieres or finales, downplaying this trope somewhat.
  • As with Transformers, there are numerous instances of toys being made specifically to appeal to fan demand. In particular, G4 is the first generation of My Little Pony to release toys based on antagonists; characters like Trixie, Nightmare Moon, and Chrysalis would almost certainly have never gotten toys if not for the fanbase. The most extreme example is probably "Derpy Hooves", who ended up getting a limited edition Comic-con figure (among other toys and merchandise) despite most of her popularity stemming from the fact that she had a goofy expression in her initial appearance.
  • And then there was Equestria Girls — dropping the pivotal part of the title solely to create new versions of the characters so Hasbro can have a line of dolls to compete with the trend of fantasy 'alternative' doll lines, such as Monster High and Ever After High, both being made by Hasbro's rival Mattel.
  • Parodied by Mr. Poniator's "What I learned today" and "What I Learned This Time", where the lessons of the season finales and openers of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are usually variations of "BUY OUR TOYS!"
• The Filly toy line that was popular in Europe had Filly Funtasia. Unfortunately, the brand started to fade out in popularity by the time the TV show eventually released, and it didn't help to bring Filly back into relevancy much, if at all.
• Anything having to do with The Real Ghostbusters cartoon that came out in the late '80s/early '90s. If anything, the toy lines weren't exploited enough. There were still several vehicles and ghosts from the series that never made it into toy form.
• The Batman: There was even a toy that responded to the on screen appearance of the Batwave, which popped up at least Once per Episode. Thankfully, it got a lot better with each passing season.
• An excellent example would be the Dino-Riders cartoon, designed specifically to sell a line of Tyco dinosaur toys. The VHS tapes even had commercials during the show.
• The Bratz doll line has managed to launch several direct to DVD animated movies and a major motion picture, and a short-lived animated TV series.
• Barbie dolls have been the basis for a series of direct-to-DVD (or VHS) films. Because they are based on the idea of Barbie and the rest "playing" characters, each film (including those in the ongoing Fairytopia series) has its own line of tie-in products. They even sold a plush doll of a cat from Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper that interacted with said film via a special box-like object.
• Chaotic: Researching online archives suggests that it was more merchandise-driven before it came to the Americas.
• Strawberry Shortcake. Cue dolls, houses, makeup.. the whole works.
  • Parodied in Peanuts, with a short-lived character named Tapioca Pudding. Her father is a merchandiser who's determined to license her image on an infinite number of knickknacks, including lunch boxes.
• Ruby Gloom, despite its charm, was created to promote a line of clothing and stationery; given which, you'd think said clothing and stationery would be a lot easier to find.
• Care Bears: Originally created to appear on greeting cards, according to The Other Wiki, it was spun off into a toyline, with the main reason of existence of the cartoons and movies being a shill to market the toys.
• The Merrie Melodies cartoons were originally designed to promote music owned by Warner Bros. Eventually, however, that distinction was dropped, with the names Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes becoming interchangeable. I Love to Singa, a Whole-Plot Reference to The Jazz Singer (which starred Al Jolson), was a cartoon made to promote the title song, which was used in a soon-to-released Al Jolson film.
• Most of the shows created by Giochi Preziosi, an Italian toy manufacturing company. The biggest ones being Gormiti: The Lords of Nature Return and Dinofroz.
• There was to be an Incredible Crash Dummies CGI animated series. The pilot was free with several action figures for sale. Sadly, it never quite took off. Which is a pity, the show was fairly humorous, Product Placement aside. And as they were crash dummies, dismemberment was not unheard of, and in fact was quite frequent, showing just how bad a crash could in fact be.
  • The toyline originally spun off from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Crash Dummy PSAs, starring dummies Vince and Larry. They were licensed to Tyco for the toyline, which was initially known as "Vince & Larry, the Crash Dummies", and the packaging included a U.S. Department of Transportation trademark for their names (as well as the PSA slogan, "You could learn a lot from a dummy; buckle your safety belt!"). However, the PSAs ended up getting pulled for fear of being misconstrued as toy commercials (even though neither the toyline nor Tyco were mentioned). At that time, Tyco rebranded the line as "The Incredible Crash Dummies," and Vince and Larry were replaced with original characters Slick and Spin.
• Visionaries: The main characters in the show could undergo Voluntary Shapeshifting by projecting an image of their totem animal from their chest. The action figures had 1980s hologram stickers on their chests where you could sort of make out the animal if you already knew what it was.
• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers was screwed by this trope. Series creator Robert Mandell and crew launched the show first, then planned on negotiating a toy deal, exactly the opposite on how it was done in The '80s. The show got pretty good ratings, but the more serious tone attracted an audience of teenagers and college students who were a little old for toy marketing. Because the show was more popular in Europe, the toys were released there. However, it was too late by then, as the show was already cancelled.
• Parodied in an episode of Garfield and Friends in which Garfield wakes up in the wrong cartoon, one with giant robots. At one point, when Garfield is wreaking havoc with the giant robots, one of the robots says "The toy company will not like this."
• Parodied in The Simpsons episode "Girly Edition" when Bart and Lisa's news show gets canceled in favor of the "Mattel and Mars Bar Quick-Energy Choc-O-Bot Hour", a Sentai Super Robot show designed to sell action figures, chocolate, and "Entertaining Mattel Products" (ironically, said show was mentioned in the beginning of the episode as being "barely legal"). And again, with Trans-Clown-O-Morphs. In the episode "The Front", an episode of Action Figure Man titled "How to Buy Action Figure Man" is somehow nominated for a Best Writing award despite being indistinguishable from a toy commercial. Doubly ironically, Mattel was the first company to make Simpsons toys, making these jokes examples of Biting-the-Hand Humor.
• Parodied in Johnny Bravo with Clam League 9000, a bizarre cross between Pokémon and Dragon Ball where the main character breaks the fourth wall to demand the viewer "BUY OUR TOYS!"
• The creators of Batman: The Brave and the Bold stated that the entire Starro storyline was pushed upon them by Mattel in order to sell toys. The writers were also usually forbidden from doing solo episodes about female heroes, as they did not have figures in the tie-in toyline.
  • Lampshaded in-story when Booster Gold sarcastically remarks that "The toy company" won't like the idea of him changing into civilian clothes.
  • It also gets parodied in the final episode, "Mitefall!": Reality Warper Bat-Mite tries to make the show jump the shark; one of the things he does is insert obvious toy product placements, such as the "Neon-talking Super-Street Bat Luge".
• Hot Wheels has had three series (Hot Wheels: World Race, Hot Wheels: AcceleRacers, and Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5) under this trope, all in the same overall storyline.
• Very evident in The Avengers: United They Stand, where the heroes wore brightly colored, Animesque battle armor for no apparent reason other than to shill toys.
• Welcome to Tonka Town was made by Hasbro as a way to promote Tonka toy trucks, although it didn’t end up working.
• In its final season, Super Friends was renamed The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians in order to tie-in to Kenner's popular Super Powers Collection line of toys. Accordingly, Cyborg and Firestorm were added to the cast due to their prominence in the toy line.
  • Averted by the Seventies episodes, however. While there was a line of DC superhero action figures on sale from Mego at the time, the World's Greatest Super Heroes line had its own branding and also included Marvel characters like Spider-Man and the Hulk.
• Freakazoid! did a famous parody of this trope in an episode that showcased the Freakmobile, even lampshading the goings on by using and defining the term "toyetic"^note The suitability of a vehicle, character, or franchise to be merchandised as toys onscreen. Series producer Steven Spielberg popularized the term "toyetic" after a Kenner Toys executive warned him that Close Encounters of the Third Kind wasn't suitable for merchandising. Spielberg told the executive to license Star Wars instead... However, as toyetic as it was, Freakazoid never had a toy line.
• Although it never was made, in the early 90s Mattel planned to make a Wonder Woman toyline and cartoon. The popularity of Sailor Moon in Japan at the time inspired them to create a similar series for America called Wonder Woman and the Star Riders. The series would have been about the exploits of a teenage Wonder Woman as she fought evil alongside four Magical Girls. Then suddenly the plan was dropped without a word. The only material that ever reached the public was a tie-in comic DC wrote as part of a promotional deal with Kelloggs.
  • While promoting Green Lantern: The Animated Series at Comic Con, Bruce Timm stated that Wonder Woman has not yet gotten her own animated show because toy companies shy away from female superheroes, and most modern action cartoons depend on toy sales to make up their budgets.
• The Oblongs spoofed this to hell and back with Velva (a Show Within a Show parody of Xena: Warrior Princess), where the characters actually pull out the toys during the show and use them to diagram a rescue plan.
• The Nicktoons series Zevo-3, as the show's shoe-themed superhero premise arises from a series of Sketchers commercials. It got to the point that parent groups tried to have the show taken off the air for what they viewed as such blatant marketing towards children. Despite this, however, the shoes were rarely, if ever, mentioned in the show itself; instead, it focused on telling an actual story, hinting at darker plots and a vast conspiracy.
• Candyland
• Pound Puppies. The version from the 1980s is more prominent in peoples minds, though the newer version has toys as well.
• Littlest Pet Shop has had three cartoons.
• The Wuzzles
• Sky Dancers and its Spear Counterpart, Dragon Flyz.
• When you get down to it, Captain N: The Game Master was more or less a vehicle for advertising NES and Game Boy games, even though the show rarely portrayed the games accurately. Frequently they would actually name the game world after the game it came from, even when that was very wrong, (apparently Metroid is a place instead of an energy-sucking jellyfish creature) possibly just for the sake of this trope.
• Street Sharks, plus being a (good-hearted) ripoff of a few then-popular cartoons.
• In an inversion, the series ThunderCats (1985) was created before the toy line but due to issues wasn't aired until after the first wave of toys were released.
• Sadly not the case with Thunder Cats 2011, which is officially "in the air" because while the show was massively popular, the toys didn't sell as well as expected.
• This was also the reason Sym-Bionic Titan was cancelled as Cartoon Network was trying to get a toy deal for it. No company was willing however and they pulled the plug on the show despite a small dedicated fan base, a growing story arc and none of the loose ends being tied up due to a dispute between Cartoon Network and Genndy Tartakovsky as the former wanted the latter to retool the show into being more toyetic like Ben 10, so they could get those toy deals. Why it was so hard to get a toy deal for a series based around Humongous Mecha fighting Kaiju is anyone's guess.
• Mighty Max (a sort of Spear Counterpart of Polly Pocket) was made for this reason.
• Popples. There's even a website listing every piece of Popples merchandise ever!
• M.A.S.K. was created to sell a toyline of the same name by Kenner, which combined elements of the aforementioned Transformers and G.I. Joe.
  • Centurions was another show based on a Kenner toyline that combined the same elements in a different way.
• In the early 1960s, many TV cartoon shows were tied in with a cereal company sponsor (Jay Ward with General Mills, Hanna-Barbera with Kellogg's, Looney Tunes with Post), often with said characters in cereal ads and on boxes. Post then had new mascots created for their cereals, and they all became characters on the Linus the Lionhearted show. This proved too much of a blur between programming and commercials to regulators, and the show was canned. The only current remnant of the series is Sugar Bear for Sugar/Super/Golden Crisps.
• Rescue Heroes, both the show and the accompanying Fisher-Price toyline.
• One of the chief complaints about Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) was that the toy promotion was obvious and sometimes illogical (such as the Spider-Cycle). It proved successful enough for Disney and Hasbro that the show ran for four seasons.
• While not as blatant or illogical as the United They Stand or Ultimate Spider-Man examples, Avengers Assemble has the Aven-Jet Prime, a massive, transforming CGI airship. Especially notable since it replaces the Quinjet, the Avengers' comparatively Boring, but Practical plane from the comics (and the beloved but less toyetic The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes that Assemble replaced).
• Bruce Timm attributed the failure of Green Lantern: The Animated Series to the lack of merchandise. Apparently a toy line for the show was in the works, but retailers scoffed at it due to the poor performance of the toy line from the live-action Green Lantern (2011) movie, seemingly unaware that this was because no one liked the movie.
• Several LEGO series have been the subject of such cartoons.
  • BIONICLE had several Direct to Video (later DVD) movies, and the later Hero Factory got a TV series on Nicktoons.
  • Cartoon Network had a TV show based on the Ninjago line, likewise for its Spiritual Successor, Legends of Chima. Ninjago is actually so story-driven that a large portion of fans consider it the successor to Bionicle. Which, seeing as Bionicle was featured in about half the possible media types and every type of merchandise, says a lot about it. In fact Ninjago proved to be popular and profitable enough that LEGO and Warner Bros. decided to do a theatrical movie based on the series and toyline^note Sadly, that movie actually failed financial.
  • Meanwhile, Mixels is a direct collaboration between Cartoon Network and LEGO, with LEGO handling the toy portion and CN the shorts.
• Sylvanian Families. It's hard to imagine any reason beyond advertising the toys, that this was given an animated show.
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - the clubhouse itself is blatantly a toy.
• Young Justice (2010), like its sister show Green Lantern, was formerly canceled due to the toy line selling poorly (the fact that the toys were low-quality compared to Mattel's other DC-based toys is another story entirely). The toy line was itself canceled before the second season aired but after they displayed prototypes and box art of Batgirl, Blue Beetle, and others. Ironically, the second (and for a time final) season added a few dozen marketable characters.
• Parodied on the Futurama episode "Futurama and Friends Saturday Morning Fun Pit" with Purpleberry Pond, a Strawberry Shortcake spoof interrupted by ads for Purpleberry Cereal. At one point, the show itself becomes a commercial.
• Parodied on the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters episode "Monsters Don't Dance" with Murray The Monster, a Barney & Friends spoof where Murray the Monster sings, dances, and performs skits while frequently advertising all sorts of products featuring his visage.
• Chuggington in SPADES. Even the buildings' architecture (especially in the first 3 seasons) feel like they were built to be toys!
• The entire point of Jingle All the Way and its sequel is to tug your heartstrings hard enough so you'll end up buying more Jingle and Bell stuff from Hallmark. The special also requires you to own a version 2 Jingle Interactive Story Buddy for the full experience (see, the toy responds to the dialog and narration in the special). The sequel to the special ups the requirements to both a version 2 Jingle and version 2 Bell.
• The concept of dinosaurs crossed with construction vehicles seemed so lucrative, DreamWorks Animation picked up the license for Dinotrux before the first book was even published and started taking pre-orders for the toyline the day the show premiered.
• Super 4 is based on the Playmobil toyline. A series of toys based on the characters was later released to little fanfare.
• This seems to be the main reason for The Powerpuff Girls (2016), as they made the toys months before the show even aired.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Shiro, the pilot of the Black Lion, was initially slated to die at the end of Season 2, mirroring his fate in the original GoLion anime. However, he was quickly brought back in Season 3, as the toy company execs were worried that killing off Shiro would jeopardize his action figure sales.
• While Pocoyo wasn't going to be this at first, Executive Meddling caused some changes to be made in order to help sell toys, such as removing the titular character's pacifier, changing the appearances of Pato and Ellie, and the introduction of a vehicle called the Vamoosh.
• The Disney Junior show T.O.T.S. appears to be this, as it has a collectible line mainly consisting of baby animal figurines and playsets for them, as well as other versions of the baby animals like plushies.
• PAW Patrol, being made by Canadian company Spin Master, is this, being The New '10s' answer to the Thomas & Friends toy line, with a whole line of toy dogs, playsets and vehicles.
• The Get Along Gang was made to sell a line of greeting cards.
• Obscure '90s French cartoon La famille Glady (The Glady Family) was vaguely based on a line of dolls from 1987, which in turn were spawned from an earlier 1980s doll named Sonia.
• The obscure Canadian series Will and Dewitt was made to sell not toys, but children's hygiene products.
• Affectionately parodied with OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes. The characters are deliberately designed to be based on one of several templates (mimicking character designs made to match toy molds), the highly-collectible POW Cards are a frequent plot point, and their world operates on game logic, implying it's also promoting a video game. One of the original concepts for the show had it be an in-universe promotion for G.U.Y.S., a series of capsule toys in Steven Universe. Despite how toyetic it was, no toys were ever made for the series.
• All four of the segments featured on the 1985 anthology series Super Sunday were made to promote a toyline by Hasbro or one of its subsidiaries. They all consisted of miniseries each lasting several six-minute episodes before being edited into movie-length features, but only half of them lasted beyond the original miniseries versions.
  • Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines existed to promote toys that Playskool made of the real-life vehicles that appeared in the cartoon.
  • Jem, which ended up running for three seasons after being picked up for a full-fledged series, existed solely to sell dolls and playsets. The dolls were a hit at first, but as the show gained more fans, sales paradoxically started to wane, so the show was canceled despite the big ratings.
  • Robotix was made to promote the Robotix line of motorized model kits, which Hasbro eventually sold to Learning Curve Brands and is now owned by Robotic Rice LLC.
  • Inhumanoids, the only one of the miniseries besides Jem to be picked up for an ongoing series, ended up cancelled after just one season because sales suffered from how expensive the large figures of the Inhumanoids were.
• Miraculous Ladybug: While the show idea existed before toys, merchandising designs appeared very early in concepts arts, while characters designs were not finished yet.◊ Networks bought the concept once the series was clearly defined as toyetic, and aimed at little girls. Today, the series is intended to last as long as possible, to support sales. The studio behind the show, granted, is young and can still only count on Miraculous Ladybug as its main spearhead, and source of profits.
• Thomas & Friends: although the original The Railway Series had some tie-in toys and merchandise, the TV show amped up the merchandise appeal in the early 90's with the wooden railway line being a staple of every Barnes & Noble children's section with a massive dedicated display in every store. The ERTL die cast line was no slouch either, and the popularity of these toy lines began pushing for the TV show writters to include more and MOAR new characters that suffered from Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. Eventually the rights to the show were sold to Mattel, and the toy appeal was dialed up to 11, as not only were new characters being thrown in left and right but outlandish locations with walking train bridges and other absurd contraptions too. Ironically the Bachmann tie-in model train line has remained succesful even after the cancellation of the TV show, by focusing primarily on the original grounded Railway Series characters (with some TV original characters thrown in for good measure) that would be recognizable to adult collectors.
• Gargoyles largely averted this trope. However, Word of God has stated that the motorcycle and helicopter used in season one were demanded by Kenner, and the writers had trouble fitting them in organically, which is why they were never used again.

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