{"id":5724,"date":"2009-04-30T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-28T03:07:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T03:07:23","slug":"toys-comics-and-irony-hasbros-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/30\/toys-comics-and-irony-hasbros-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Toys, comics, and irony: Hasbro’s TV network"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news today that Hasbro and Discovery Networks are teaming to create a new network<\/span><\/a> to showcase Hasbro properties recalled an earlier connection with comics \u2014 famously, Hasbro’s role in creating what was likely the most expensive advertising campaign for individual comic books, ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"In 1999’s Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies that Make Them<\/span><\/a>, G. Wayne Miller wrote of how Hasbro, contending with children’s television rules prohibiting the use of animation in toy ads, came up with a novel idea \u2014 one that affected comics quite a bit. The idea in the prohibition seems to have been fears that kids would think the toys in the commercials actually flew or did whatever they did in the animations \u2014 so you’d only ever see kids playing with the real toys.<\/p>\n

But with Hasbro licensing the syndicated G.I. Joe<\/span> cartoon \u2014 and Marvel producing the G.I. Joe<\/span> comics series since 1982 \u2014 Miller wrote that Hasbro hit on the idea of asking Marvel to advertise comic books on TV. Animated ads for comics were unheard of \u2014 and prohibitively expensive \u2014 but according to Miller, Hasbro put up several million dollars in the effort. Marvel, the happy recipient, ran several ads for individual Joe<\/span> issues \u2014 and saw the series go from a cellar dweller in sales \u2014 157,920 copies monthly in 1983 \u2014 to one of its strongest titles in 1986, averaging 331,475 copies monthly according to postal statements. The cartoon was a big part, of course, but the ads definitely played a role in helping the comics.<\/p>\n

Now, in the cable era, toymakers get entire networks. What’ll it take for a comics publisher to get one? Looking at what happened to Joe<\/span>‘s sales, it might be a good move!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news today that Hasbro and Discovery Networks are teaming to create a new network to showcase Hasbro properties recalled an earlier connection with comics \u2014 famously, Hasbro’s role in creating what was likely the most expensive advertising campaign for individual comic books, ever. In 1999’s Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110,35],"class_list":["post-5724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-g-i-joe","tag-marvel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5726,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5724\/revisions\/5726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}