Infinity Train (Cartoon Network)

I mean, if zack sydner would get is cut, something minor could help.

and seen season four is.....yah is bland, I get they want something lighter and softer but most of infinity traine come from that seriousness and tense situation and most of the time it feel they wanted to avoid it, I feel they should be a little bit boldier next time.

Maybe S4 was originally meant to be a breather season because of how Season 3 was but then things got cut short

Owen Dennis pretty much confirmed in the AMA that was the intention, yes.

Here's the mock up still of what would be a Book 5.

https://mobile.twitter.com/OweeeeenDennis/status/1391030879263264769

I just found out that Infinity Train got canceled. That hurts my soul since that show was the 2nd main reason why I subscribe to HBO Max.

Not just canceled, ultra-canceled. Every bit of tie in merchandise planned was killed on the spot, and according to the series heads, there was apparently a lot of it.

This is apparently part of a larger scale reaction from Cartoon Network executives against shows that don’t target kids and don’t sell product after several years of shows whose viewers were primarily low income teenagers and cult viewership rather than the primary children’s demo or the 18-34 directly targeted by [adult swim].

What in the actual fuck!?

That makes me nervous about Genndy Tartakovsky's upcoming show Unicorn: Warriors Eternal. Judging from its blurb alone, it reminds me of Sym-Bionic Titan, a show that was canned by Cartoon Network for precisely the reasons you just described. It's supposedly intended to debut on both Cartoon Network and HBO Max, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up airing exclusively on the latter.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on May 9th 2021 at 9:29:29 AM

I'm irritated because for a lot of those shows, they didn't take merchandising opportunities the show itself gave them. Steven Universe, for one example had a concept that could have easily produced a decent amount of action figures. And the fact that they cancelled merch meant they weren't even going to try to see if Infinity Train merch made money.

Owen has an advantage here in that 1) the fan backlash against the cancellation was huge and 2) it's highly sucessful on HBO Max which has a metric based on subscribers vs. merch.

I thought the cancelled merch was because the Cartoon Network online shop was closed before any got made.

Edited by GamerSlyRatchet on May 9th 2021 at 7:08:00 AM

At least Steven Universe ran for a full five seasons, plus a movie and a miniseries, and was able to finish its story. And the network is still promoting it— today is Mother's Day, so they had a bunch of posts about the Crystal Gems on their social media.

Steven Universe may not have been Adored by the Network to the extent that, say, The Amazing World Of Gumball and Teen Titans Go are. But compared to Infinity Train? It was given downright preferential treatment.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on May 9th 2021 at 10:12:24 AM

My point isn't that SU got mistreated (the only real thing is that the show would have run longer if Sugar hadn't stood her ground in including the gay wedding) but that the marketers are being incredibly uncreative about working with what they got. Heck even in this show, even in Season 1 there were plenty of opportunities for playsets based on the various train cars, One-One, Samantha, and Atticus Plushes, etc.

At the heart of it deep down, I imagine there's an element of sexism here, shows about primarily female casts which don't go all in on "girly" escape the Girl-Show Ghetto, but in doing so no marketers want to touch them. Because apparently all girls want to play with are fashion dolls.

Steven Universe toys from everything told were a massive financial bomb.

TBH the fact that I barely remembered they existed might be a factor. But yeah I am embarassed I didn't look that up.

I think the nature of Infinity Train as an anthology series may have worked against it in this respect, too. If your show is going to tell a new story with a new main character in every season, toy companies are going to find it a hard sell. They aren't going to want to make toys for a character who's only going to be around for one season, and then completely revamp their Infinity Train toy line once a new season comes around.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on May 9th 2021 at 10:46:55 AM

Didn't like, Transformers do that kind of thing deliberately once? Yeah it backfired, but it's speculated that's because the plot point they used to make that happen turned kids off.

Well, Transformers can get away with it because it has a core group of characters who stay the same no matter what "version" you're watching/reading/playing with. There's always an Optimus Prime, a Bumblebee, a Megatron, a Starscream, you get the idea. Infinity Train didn't have anything like that, and I think that might have been what turned toy companies off of it.

This wouldn't be a problem, were it not for the fact that TV networks expect all cartoons— or the ones aimed at kids, at least— to justify their existence through merchandise. Again, this makes me nervous about some of Cartoon Network's upcoming projects, since I wonder if they will meet the same fate.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on May 9th 2021 at 10:58:11 AM

I guess I forgot what other demographic is supposed to be, but god, does it suck that this is still a thing. I just wish a show was canceled by its quality, not its merchandise.

Seriously. No adult shows have to deal with this bullshit.

And again, this has me concerned about some of Cartoon Network's upcoming shows.

Can you imagine if Rick & Morty got canceled because the merchandise wasn't selling well?

What a concept

Apparently toyetic is a thing again.

Give it a couple years for a repeat of CN Real, Maybe 3 years if they are particularly in denial about being wrong.

So the question is, what does this mean for shows similar to Infinity Train going forward?

Various Streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.), Other Channels, Possibly Adult Swim ironically, etc. What makes this decision even more foolish and self-destructive, is that there were no Streaming Services to nab various shows when CN Real was happening, it was still just Disney Channel (And the other Disney Channels.) and Nickelodeon. Now? There's a bunch of Streaming Services more than happy to nab animated shows (Animated shows in particular seem to be in demand on them in fact, Netflix for instance producing and grabbing as much anime as possible.), this is the era where there's a shitload of different people a creator can go to now to get a show greenlit instead of the original 3. I don't see a high chance of success with this move, and even if it somehow does, it will likely still end up giving their competition easier chances at getting more shows, which isn't a good thing for them.

Edited by KouTheMad on May 9th 2021 at 11:41:22 AM