My Summer Lair Chapter #270: Just How Powerful Is He-Man, Anyways?
How do we balance nostalgia with capitalism?
With The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood Brian reveals how our childish attention has been bought and sold by mass media, entertainment and most especially the toy industry.
He writes on page 197: “He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Transformers represented the first wave of characters in this new unregulated toy media landscape . . . Deregulation ripped the market wide open. Hasbro and Mattel had gotten the jump on the competition, but the cat was out of the bag now. The market became robust and competitive. It was a feeding frenzy for children’s imagination.”
There’s a fascinating tension because the things we grew up with, the toys we delighted in were basically designed to turn us into permanent consumers. Zombies hungry for nostalgia.
The Barbie movie was a massive hit; nostalgia instantly overcame decades of legitimate Barbie criticism about women’s bodies, female roles in the workplace and all the other things Barbie the doll has been slagged for. Nostalgia was the explosive catalyst that erased and overcame all of that Barbie criticism.
Star Wars is so fun, the light sabers and Darth Vader and death stars but Star Wars is also a billion dollar business of t-shirts and video games and action figures and comic books and novels and more.
All of this is what Brian is exploring in The He-Man Effect. It’s not just a non-fiction book; rather it’s a well researched historical graphic novel published by First Second. (Oh and it’s loaded with many Simpsons easter eggs.)
If you watched The Toys That Made Us on Netflix this is the part of the joyful story they told that they left out.
You’ll revel in this My Summer Lair conversation with Brian where we’re playfully irked because He-Man’s arms never stay on, yes capitalism comes up and it all starts with the old school Dungeons & Dragons cartoon which ran from 1983 to 1985.
Only the fans of that classic cartoon are not based in North America. Wanna guess which country a corny ‘80s cartoon is super popular in? I was surprised and guessed wrong.
Brian “Box” Brown @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Tuesday December 19, 2023 at 2:00 pm EST
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