BW Media Spotlight

We’re near the end of the production notes before finally seeing the second sales pitch to bring the Transformers to CBS.

Last time we saw Hasbro’s notes, and for obvious reasons (which I also stated flat out) they didn’t like the complete reimagine of the very concept of the line. For CBS it’s a different story. Between parent groups and the Federal Communication Commission (usually bossed around by the parent groups), there were less things you could get away with on Saturday morning than you could in syndication. Granted, the only reason a Transformers cartoon was made was due to deregulation, as then-President Ronald Reagan was a hawk about reducing the scope and power of the Federal government. This led to a change in the rules that forbid TV shows based on toys. This rule hurt Hot Wheels when they tried to make a Saturday morning cartoon, ironically about a car club given that was a potential idea for this show.

I don’t care if the show was created by a toy company or if the toy company is pushing for new toys of an existing show. You’d be surprised how many shows were NOT based on a toyline but had a toyline as a bonus source of income. This would be really important for first-run syndication, but with a Saturday morning show the network would be doing some of the funding, making it more profitable for Sunbow, Marvel Productions, and even Hasbro. Transformers were a hot property, as robots that turned into vehicles and other machines were something new. That was before we got dinosaurs and all of the later gimmicks like combination and triple changers.

Meanwhile the show has to be good in order to push the toys. This was already true for toys based on existing shows. Megatron’s Japanese counterpart was inspired by role-play toys for The Man From UNCLE, an American show that was surprisingly popular in Japan. I had toys based on Star Trek, Adam-12, Emergency–well, a play fireman’s hat with branding, Star Wars, and a talking fake CB radio based on a show called Moving On. You can blame my parents for the stuff not based on a sci-fi franchise. I didn’t watch the first two until I was older and Moving On came on when I had moved to bed. The show has to be good, whether selling toys is the main goal or not, so writing off a “30 minute toy commercial” is lame because if it wasn’t a good show that we would fondly remember years later if only for nostalgia, those toys aren’t moving.

So we already saw what Hasbro wanted. What were CBS’s suggestions for making this new idea work?

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