July 2, 2026 • 42 mins
In the economic boom of a post-World War II United States the sudden affordability of television fundamentally rocked the nation. From the 1950s on, millions of kids in America grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons... yet, as it turns out, these shows were often light on the writing -- and heavy on selling toys. In the first part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max discover how Saturday morning cartoons became full-on, half-hour commercials for toys. And, of course, how the adults in the room started to fight back.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's hear it for uh Max the young
man Williams, and you'll see why that's appropriate for this series.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's true. Does that make us the olds? Ben?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh, geez, well that's an old brown they do? You
call me Ben Bullen Ed Noel. We've both got a
little bit of gray in our hairs.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
We do, but not a hair falling out, not a
receding hairline to be seen. Both fabulous heads of hair.
That's how it's going to remain. But what we do
have is a pretty rich and h and layered memory
of the past.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, history is a palimp sayst And this is going
to be just so you all know, folks. This is
something we discussed as a series back in a few
episodes ago, and we were both I think galvanized by
the sheer gravity of our nostalgia for Saturday mornings. You know,
(01:37):
it's the one time where you're growing up in your
your parents maybe are not at work so they're sleeping in,
but you're a kid. You wake up in the morning
for a specific appointment of destination TA television for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And you know what's funny, Ben, I don't. I did
the research for this, and I didn't mention what I
actually remember even a little more in my formative years,
which was Sunday Morning on Nickelodeon Nicktoons. But we will
get to that and how it ultimately kind of ate
the lunch of what you're describing, Ben, traditional broadcast television
(02:13):
Saturday morning cartoons, because I think when those were really
in their heyday, me and you were truly like little
tykes with our bulls of cereal, you know, sitting in
front of the comforting glow of the TV, like you said, Ben,
maybe while your parents were out. It's something that's just
absolutely exploded during the second half of the twentieth century
in the US, particularly Saturday Morning has been synonymous with
(02:36):
a couple of things that kind of operated hand in hand,
cartoons and advertising.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
There we go, and yes, folks, you heard it right.
Noel Brown is our research associate for this series, and
I can't thank you enough. Man. I'm excited to learn
more with you on this. Can you paint the picture
(03:04):
of the providence or the origin story for us, your
research shows that it dates back to like the nineteen fifties,
just after World War Two.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah, even earlier than the fifties, I mean you had
a lot of animation being used in commercials, and of course,
like even earlier than the fifties, you had black and
white cartoons like the Flintstones that were one hundred percent
they were well, Sima Willie was more of a thing
that you would have seen in theaters, but you did
start to see the Flintstones and stuff like that. It
(03:37):
was meant to be family programming, but it would have like,
you know, cigarette ads in it, like it's like Fred
Flintstones smoking Winston's. And then you started to see animation
really being incorporated into commercials. But it wasn't until the
fifties that the big three networks nbcabc's, CBS realized that
they kind of had kids on lock like during the weekends,
(04:00):
captive audience that advertisers and particularly serial and toy brands
really wanted to get their hooks into.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, yeah, and we could we could look back at
this time, as you were saying, and we could see
that there were, you know, the the repackaged stuff that,
as you said, used to be in a theater like
Steamboat Willie. They were they were targeting something that advertisers
still target today. Wu tang is right when they say
(04:32):
Wu tang is for the children. They would have these
They would have these live action characters like Bozo the
Clown or Cowboys, introduce different animated shorts. They would have giveaways.
You tell your parents to what drink war Oval team?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Oh no, I know.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think we both immediately thought of the Little Orphan Annie,
which we did a whole episode on, By the way,
the Little Fanny Comics decoder ring. This was a radio
thing though in Christmas story. But it's the same rules
apply where you think it's this magical, you know, being
part of the story, and you're following every week to
get the cipher, and then it turns out that it
(05:15):
translates to drink more ovaltine. And you had these studios,
many of which were making shorts that were screened theatrically
as like the opening act for you know, the feature film,
start to make stuff exclusively for television. Studios like Terry
Toons and Walter Lance. They had back catalog stuff that
(05:36):
they were now kind of repurposing for television. And then
you started to have some of these early TV animation
pioneers like Hanna Barbera really going towards some cost saving
methods in the way that they made animation a little
less precious than the Walt Disneys of the world.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Let's just say, yeah, at this time, this is new technology.
Legislation is reactive always, right, so they're not being pressing it.
The buffins and the legal beagles have yet to catch
up to this new phenomenon. They don't yet regulate how
(06:22):
many commercials you can have in any show.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
All voluntary. We know how that goes, like self reporting,
you know, right. It wasn't until the eighties that the
National Association of Broadcasters or NAB enforced these voluntary guidelines.
So again, up to that point, it was up to
the broadcasters and these limited ad times. They went on
to limit ad times to nine and a half minutes
per hour on weekends and twelve minutes per hour on
(06:49):
the weekdays. By as early as nineteen fifty two, though,
you started to see parents groups getting up in arms
about this early brain rot you know, I mean, you know,
his brain rod is kind of a throwback term. All
these parents have been saying, this is going to rot
your brain. Sure, right, once old is thou new again?
People used to hate Gregorian chant also true, and I
(07:09):
think we are both huge fans and we should do
an episode on Gregorian chance.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, I believe we've done the Gregorian Calendar.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, we were kind of curmudgedly about it too.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, you know me and my leapier phobia, so that
sort of figures into that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
But it wasn't. You know, it's early in the fifties.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
After this sort of new TV animation thing is kicking off.
In nineteen fifty two, you started to see parents groups
getting up in arms and reaching out and lobbying the
Federal Communications Commission as well as the Federal Trade Commission
to impose limits on violence and sexual innuendo for any
programming that might have been aimed at young younger folks.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. A big part of this, by the way, folks,
is that animation was heavily weaponized in the propaganda of
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What a good point.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know, there were a lot of evil things that
were hacking the minds of children to make them hate
German people or Japanese. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Well, and you can see some of those, like I mean,
Walt Disney Company has been around so long they'd rather
we forgot.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
That they did a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
But if you go to the I think I've screamed
about this place on the pod before, but the Walt
Disney Family Museum, which is not affiliated with the Walt
Disney Company.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
It's owned and run by the Walt Disney.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Family Trust, and in it you will see some of
these posters and animations, like you know, if Zifioro says
VI is zimmasta race and all that, as well as
some you know, depicting Asian you know, Asians in very
very offensive and stereotypical ways and all the stuff that
you're talking about. So if you're interested, that stuff exists
and you can still check it out. But it's a
(08:49):
good point. I mean, it is a way of kind
of hijacking the minds of young people. But also it
comes from that tradition of like political cartoons. And you know,
you can say all of a lot with cartoons, and therefore,
what is an animation if not just a more robust
and hypnotic form of a cartoon.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Right right, Yeah, very well said. And I love the
idea of protest museums dude. Back when I was in
Brussels a few years back, they had this awesome problematic
comic book museum with a lot of tent tins and stuff,
and right across the street they have another non affiliated,
(09:29):
non official comic strip museum, fight Museum. It's Yeah, Protests
five museum, where they pretty much say, the guys across
the street are evil and colonialists and bonkers, so we're
I don't want to derail us, but we're painting a
picture here. It's as you said, no nineteen fifty two,
(09:51):
concerned citizens are having an outbreak of moral panic.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And I was there want to do right.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
As they're want to do. And now we have the
origin story or the genesis of programs that seek to
not just entertain but also.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Educate, stuff like Captain Kangaroo and of course the ever
beloved Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which combined education with entertainment. But
moving into the sixties, you really started to see the
beginning of the Saturday morning cartoon kind of boom when
the Big three again ABC, CBS and NBC really decided
to go all in on this and carved out multi
(10:35):
hour blocks of TV on Saturday and filled them with
animated half hours of programming from folks again like Hanna
Barbara Filmation, which I believe brought us he Man eventually,
and you started to see you know, iconic animated shows
like Scooby Doo, where are You Yep Yep Archie, which
of course had its origins as a comic strip. They
(10:58):
incorporated these you know, belovable ensemble casts. They would sometimes
have musical numbers, like with Scooby Doo, it's like a
Monster of the Week situation. And all of these early
formats sort of like the Twilight Zone Ben, were just
endlessly aped, you know, copied.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, templatized. Right, this is a situation, folks where your
faithful correspondents Noel, Max and Ben would have a meeting
where some of our top rast says, well, this show worked,
can we not do it one hundred times?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
No, it's tails all the time, whether it's in music,
record executives, broadcasts, something hits, They're like, we want the
next that thing, you know, whatever, do whatever it takes
to get us the next that thing. Started to see
superhero shows and adventure shows. Again, a lot of this
stuff coming from more traditional medium like comic books popping
(11:58):
up they often times we're sort of it was like
you could tell it was the early days because they
were still sort of treating them like sitcoms with laugh
tracks and mega mega cost efficient aggressive production schedules.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, they're grinding stuff out. It's really tough for the
animators at this point to be honest, folks. And now
we again have our concerned parent groups, our watchdogs, several
of whom are low key funded by network rivals, and
they start telling the FCC, you gotta get rid of
(12:35):
all this violence, you gotta get rid of all this
commercialism you're targeting children. This is where we see things
like the Action for Children's Television or.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
ACT, which was founded in nineteen sixty eight and worked
alongside the FCC to help impose some more strict regulations
surrounding television advertising during children's programming.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, because they were like, you were disguising these things
as shows, as entertainment, but what they really are technically
will be, you know, twenty three to thirty minute advertisements.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Ben I think this is a really interesting trajectory that
we're going to get into because it kind of mirrors
a lot of what's going on right now with like
all of the massive insane deregulation that we're seeing, you know,
from this current administration, and like comparing it to you know,
the environmental rollbacks and things like that. Like it's just
an interesting way of sort of plotting those kind of
changes and how like the differences in administrations can make
(13:36):
all the difference in what is okay and what is
not okay, you know, culturally speaking, because that's what we're
about to see here.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And a particularly.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Memorable example, Act argued that Mattel's nineteen sixty nine cartoon
Hot Wheels, was essentially just a commercial for toy cars.
And this is coming from a great article on history
dot com how toy promotions took over eighties cartoons.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Really good source there.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And let's see the writer, or David Owen rather is
quoted in this piece, the author of the man who
invented Saturday Morning. And he said, the FCC agreed and
asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, that's the thing, folks. They agreed with Action for
Children's Television, and they said, we have to go on
record and note that this is an advertisement disguised as
a show.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
For sure. And it wasn't only about the ads.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It was also just about how much time kids were
spending in front of their TVs.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were studies being done into the long term effects
of exposure to these kind of binge early binge watches.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Wait what brain rut? Brain right again? Yes?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yes, yes, yes, of course and that's yeah, what's what's
what's old is now? Well once was old is now
knew again, And parents and teachers were really concerned about this.
We started to see again results coming out of these
more now you've got a little time, you know, longitudinally speaking,
showing that direct marketing associated with these shows and the
time spent front of the shows could cause kids to
(15:17):
have a tough time differentiating between the shows themselves and
the advertisements run within them. And they also just were
not equipped to understand how manipulative these particular tactics were.
As far as they were concerned, they just really liked
the cars, and therefore why wouldn't they want to own
them without thinking that maybe they were being taken advantage
(15:38):
of a little bit, a lot of bit.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
A lot of bit, a bit of a lot, a
lot of move.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And there's another great source we've found that I just
want to mention from the Saturday Evening post The Rise
and Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons by Charles Moss.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yeah, do check it out, folks. If we fast forward
a bit to the nineteen seventies, we'll see that these producers,
these ad clients, and of course, as you mentioned earlier,
in all the big three networks, they responded to these concerns.
(16:19):
These concerns are cyclical. We're experiencing the same stuff now
in twenty twenty six, with people worried about short form
social media content and how old a person should be
before they can own a cell phone or check in
with YouTube.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, That's part of what I was teasing earlier and
even beyond that. But like now, instead of the TV
networks getting sued or taking a task, it's the social
media proprietors like Mark Zuckerberg and all of those cats
that are kind of being accused of. Well, I think
it was found to be absolutely the case that they
knew how much this was messing with kids' mind.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's one hundred percent, dude. And so all these folks
realize there is a well spring of money and they
have to play nice with government regulation and citizens groups.
So they say Okay, we'll make stuff a little bit
less violent, which is why you don't see somebody's head
(17:21):
getting blown off by a bullet.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Right or even with he Man, it was to point
it out on this podcast that I think we both
have enjoyed blank check with Griffin and David. Griffin pointed
out that one thing that you'll see you'll never see
he Man do in he Man cartoons.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Is sword fight.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
He's always using the sword to deflect stuff or to
like maybe cut down a tree or something, but never
like stabbing or slicing or even going sword to sword
with another character.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, he's summoning the power of Gray Skull.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Sure, whatever that is.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Whatever that is, dude, check out the film. We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
We'll get that. The hey Man part of it is
a lot of fun, but it's huge.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
But we also have to, like to your point, we
have to acknowledge that the big dogs didn't just bend
the knee to these demands to soften action and violence.
They went a step further and they said, we're going
to start doing public service announcements.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Well, in nineteen seventy eight, the FTC actually had attempted
to try to ban all direct advertisement to kids under
the age of six. Lobbying groups prevented that from happening, associated,
of course, with the toy companies, the ad agencies, serial industries,
all of that stuff. But rather than you know, poke
the bear, I guess they knew they were sort of
(18:41):
being targeted. That's when they made those decisions to start
essentially voluntarily making this kind of content, stuff like Schoolhouse Rock.
I'm just a bill, just a little low bill. You're
sitting there on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. And then you have stuff like NBC's One to
Grow from nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
The Bod Squad, which I don't know personally, but I
can imagine that it was about like biology and probably
sort of like slim good body kind of stuff. Or
The Magic school Bus.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh, which, by the way, I'm still divided over whether
whether that teacher in the school bus.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Was Miss Frizz.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. I don't know whether Miss Friz was amazing or
evil or possibly both. There's a diagram.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
There is an episode of The Magic school Bus where
they go into the bodies of salmon and essentially get
like ejaculated out of fish's bodies right.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Right, because they're learning about salmon migration and spawning and all.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Of that stuff. It gets a little icky.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Schoolhouse Rock taught about grammar and civics and things like that.
Fat Albert was another kind of an example of inclusivity
and represented representation and also had a moral kind of
lessons that it through this ensemble character driven kind of
you know, cass. You also had started to see costumed
(20:07):
kind of things like the Banana Splits, the sid and
Marty Croft company that made hr puff and stuff. And
we're the kind of psychedelic like pre Barney, a little
more edgy kind of kids shows. But it's public service
announcements and news shorts that start getting kind of interesting.
I would love to play an example of each of
these really quickly.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh time for comer. Do you ever get that hungry
feeling after school? Oh? I do. I'm so hungry I
could eat a wagon wheel when I'm slow in the
draw and I need something to chaw. Hanker for a
good cheese.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
This guy's like a Is he a piece of cheese?
Is he a piece of corn? Is he one to
eat himself?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
You know?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's like our grimmest question earlier, isn't it's kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Hole in his hat?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I imagine, just just for the folks at home, he
is like a cowboy talking about he's standing next to
a wagon in front of an old saloon. He has
a acaine, but the hole in his hat seems like
that would imply previous violence.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I'm just putting that out there.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
He's also got a you know, he's got a neckerchief,
a bandana. Uh, he's got boots but no pants.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
No he is, I think he is. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
He's meant to be a cheese or some weird horrific monstrosity.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
The cheese guy.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
He's the cheese guy.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
So he is talking about wanting to eat himself, which
is a little odd and also been I know you
were thinking this too, like is this from Big Dairy?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Is this and not? I mean, this is meant to
be a psa.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
At the end of it, he shows you how to
make a nice snack, a healthy snack. But we know
now that a grilled cheese sandwich ain't the healthiest of snacks.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
You know this mild actual public service at best, in
the pocket of Big Cheese at worst.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And then you also have these little news shorts. Think
like oh with Lynda Ellerby.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Remember that from when we were kids, it was like
nick News or something like that. There was, it was
very much a precursor to that. And that's the closest
analog that I could have, like kinda sometimes anchored by kids,
you know, definitely giving kids a kind of current event
thing in sort of.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Kids speak, or a feeling of agency.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
And maybe even a feeling of kind of being like
the grown ups watching the news, you.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to wonder shows and.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Beat kids, beat kids, Kids on the Beat, kids on
the street. Right, and all of this, you know, kind
of ushered in a new arrow of Saturday mornings blending
entertainment and you know, admittedly, like we're saying, pretty light education.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's kind of like the window dressing,
oh of education. Hey, everybody in a box, yes, right right,
everybody remember that crosswalks exist for a reason. But also
so buy all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Always leave a note.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
But of course, the you know, steady march of capitalism,
along with some pretty clever loopholes that the toy industry
along with the animation studios kind of figured out, would
change a lot of this sort of more you know,
idyllic animation landscape quite a bit, and that all started
with Star.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Wars nineteen seventy seven. Folks, you remember where you were
if you're at a certain age in life. This was
Oh gosh, this could be the subject of its own
ridiculous history episode or series. There are a lot of
podcasts about the Star Wars universe, some of which feature
(23:44):
our own big sister, Holly Fry that.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, he's the ultimate Star Wars Fani.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
She very much is. We love we love you, Holley,
We love hanging out. So this, this Star Wars thing,
audiences around the world loved its box office breaking numbers. Uh.
The the big money that they made was not just
in airing the film in your typical theatrical system of
(24:15):
the big studios. They monetized and commodified this stuff by
teaming up with people who were already good at making.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Toys, for sure, But a lot of these toymakers didn't
really take the bait at first. They did not believe
that Star Wars was going to be a success. Big
established you know titans in the in the industry, like
Mattel and Mago.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
What happened to mego, I.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Don't think any they don't think they stood the test
of time like Mattel. But they originally passed on licensing
Star Wars toys because again they thought that this was
going to be a flop and not have any cultural significance.
So a small, kind of much more upstart company based
in Ohio Kenner was able to get the deal and
(25:02):
they got that licensing thing, but they actually weren't able
to release any toys until nearly a year after the
movie premiere. But thankfully it was going to be a trilogy,
it was ongoing and and it was a massive, massive SMAs.
So when Kenner released these Star Wars action figures, the
demand had been brewing this whole time, and they just absolutely,
you know, rocketed off the shelves in nineteen seventy eight,
(25:27):
and a lot of these, as we know, as you know,
are worth a whole lot of money to this very day.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh are you kidding? I still have some of my
some of my always I did. Nobody tried to rob me. No.
Kenner had released these figures that you you're probably familiar with,
so you can see them. They're about three point seven
five inches toll. They sold millions and millions of these.
(25:55):
They sold the atat vehicles, these play sets the job
of the thing.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
They also set the tone for the scale of all
as they Yeah, you know, like G I Joe et
cetera were kind of like, you know, following suit.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, the original G I. Joe's were more like your
typical dolls. You know. Star Wars was doing something really interesting,
or Kenner was doing something really interesting by rephrasing these
not as dolls but as action figures, and all of
the sudden, all the other toy companies, the big dogs
(26:33):
you mentioned, like Mattel and Mago, they're they're looking around right.
We can only imagine they're chomping their bubblegum cigars and
they say, wait, we can make money by taking shows
and making toys from them.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
No, it's a good point, Ben about the ged Joe's
originally being much more doll like, because it was not.
It was not until success of the Star Wars and
the scale of those three point seventy five inch mini figures.
I guess comparatively that that really was sort of codified
because of how damn successful they were. So even the
some of these legacy toys changed the course and decided
(27:16):
to go in that direction, and they realized they needed
to either link up with some pre existing intellectual properties
or create some from scratch with the express purpose of
selling these little plastic figs to kids.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, they were saying, you know, we don't even have
to spend that much money on the writing. Who respects writers.
We just we got to sell these toys. Guys. We
got some great designs from our graphics department. We don't
have to spend too much time on the names of
the characters. We've got a guy, let's pull him.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
He may right, you know, man, it's so funny you
say that.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Another great little conversation on the Griffin and David episode
was just about how this was such a mashup of like,
let's do let's have wizards and sci fi space.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
Aliens and swords and you know, vehicles, lasers, guns on
top of them and all of the names and with
a very very vague, incredibly vague mythology. It's like he man,
he holds his magic sort of lofts and all of
a sudden he said the words, how do you notice
say the words by the power of Gray Skull, I
(28:30):
have the power?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
What power? You know? Talking about the babe with the power?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
No, and it's so funny, man, because another thing they
mentioned in some of the dossier stuff that they did
was that the focus groups showed that kids really.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Loved the idea of having power.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And you'll notice that the turtles were also turtle power,
and it was just like they were off to the races.
You didn't have to even have that much of a story,
and he man Mattel's Masters of the Universe nineteen seventy,
those executives landed on that winning formula.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
They created a little slightly.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Different scales, it pretty close, a little taller five point
five inch figures, and they cooperated with a network television
program that was already in the pipeline in order. So
this wasn't exactly them making the cartoon for the toys,
but it was might as well have been.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, this is our inflection point because these guys are
talking to each other, These folks are talking to each
other in the toy making world and the network TV world,
and the network TV producers are saying, well, we're working
on an animation thing that's been very hot since nineteen
fifties on Saturday mornings, and Mattel says, Okay, we don't
(29:50):
want to have another Star Wars opportunity pass us by Kenner.
Really ate our lunch, but maybe we can get it
on the ground floor. To your point about power and agency,
a show called He Man and the Masters of the Universe.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
He's the most powerful man in the universe and also
a fabulous singer and with great style and a great bob. Well,
it wasn't necessarily them making the cartoon to serve the figures.
There was a conversation going on because again how nimble
the animation was and how quick the production turnaround was.
They could work with the toy manufacturers to tweak the
(30:29):
show to make it make more sense for the toys
they could manufacture and the time that they had and
get things to market. And then they could you introduce
new characters and immediately have the figure So obviously this
was a smashing success. And then when old, that old
wiley bastard Ronald Reagan entered the White House in eighty one,
(30:50):
much like we're seeing now, he brought along with him
in just an absolute wave of deregulation surrounding all kinds
of aspects of and this really did a number on
the FCC's ability to exercise the same kind of level
of control that they had previously been doing.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, and this is where we see a resurgence of
a political pattern that occurs in the United States today,
a lot of what we would call patronage hires, right
or hiring your henchmen and your sycophants. President Reagan maybe
(31:30):
he was awake enough or aware enough at this point
to do it. Probably one of his masters told him
to do it. He appointed a new chairman of the FTC.
And this chairman is a hitman, right, He's hired to
do the deregulation stuff I got talking about.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And so this guy passes the FTC Improvements Act of
nineteen eighty which says, hey, we're the FDC. We know
our job is to protect what the public sees and consumers,
but we also are passing this law that makes it
(32:15):
very difficult for us to regulate children's propaganda and advertising.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And this directly affect the Gen X era kids and
how much TV and advertising they are consuming on those
precious Saturday mornings. So this deregulation really opened the door
to a kind of a new wave of toy driven
cartoons following that same he man blueprint, just taking it
to the next level. We've got Gi Joe again more
(32:42):
of a legacy brand. Then we've got newer ones like Transformers,
My Little Pony gem and the Holograms. They also kind
of had the power care Bears, the care Bear stare.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I love ThunderCats. ThunderCats was my jam.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
ThunderCats is great.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Start Thundercatter, you know what I mean. Like ThunderCats was
like had a little more story to it. I don't know,
that's how it feels like.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You say that when we're hanging out off air.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Oh, I do. Yeah, I think it's got cool.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, well, then I.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Think about it. There's a lot of similarities. I mean,
Lionel holds his sword aloft, I mean the Mamra, the
Dead Carrier version of Skeletor. It's just like it's a
little more sinister. Hey man, is goofy? You know it's
it's and then you know, they really did start to
get a little edgier.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Oh and then we again we have a star Hawk.
We also have Silver Frocks silver Hawks, thank you. We
also have full length animated adaptations of these things of
g I Joe and care Bears. Of course, has that
really creepy feature link that with the face in the book.
You remember, Oh, freaked me.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Out when I was a kid, big time.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah, and Witch, it's like a demonic force inside this
book that takes over the mind of the hapless magician's assistance.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
It makes the kids all like sunken eye and they're
they're bad at being friendly.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Ben, I think there were actually two, and it creepy
stuff happens in both of them. Because I think you're
describing the plot of the first one. I can't remember,
but definitely, Oh, there are two, but I'm miss I'm
kind of misconstruing what happens in which because I'm remembering
some of what you're describing. But then the one that
I'm describing, I think took place in like a traveling
circus kind of thing, and like it was almost like
(34:21):
a carnival kind.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Of situation there, something wicked. This way comes exactly.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
But like we said, we've got critics now calling this
new wave of shows that we were talking about essentially
program length commercials, the thing the very thing they were trying.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
To avoid back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, I got loop pulled back in. Uh, this is
where we see a retisance of other cartoons like pac Man.
Check out our episodes on the early days of video games.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Apparently had a cartoon right right, And.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
It's all these are all designed not some deep aesthetic purpose.
They're designed to expose children to games that already exist.
Like the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series was amazing, but
it's because they wanted kids to play D and D
(35:16):
or play pac Man, or you know, get their parents
to buy them. Or Rubiks.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I'm fascinated by what a Rubik's Cube cartoon could have
possibly been.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
We also as.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Was there also a Magic eight Ball cartoon? I can't imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
But we then saw some that I think we all remember,
or the two of us remember, some of these movie
tie ins pre existing and kind of more like, okay,
new things coming out, let's have a tie in cartoon
things like The Real Ghostbusters, which was had to be
called the Real Ghostbuster because there was already a cartoon
called Ghostbusters, completely unrelated to the Ghostbusters movies, Rambo The
(35:53):
Force of Freedom, which if we can imagine, I mean,
these are gonna be a little violence, you know, Chuck
Norris Karate come with.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
K's with Ks Karate Commandos.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And I do believe that they got around some of it.
I mean there were still beholden to some of these
you know FCC guidelines, but there were more little loopholes,
Like I said, with he Man not stabbing anybody or slicing.
Same thing with Rambo and gid Joe. They couldn't fire bullets.
I think it had to be lasers, and yeah, pewp pew, right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had to be lasers. People could
fall if they were bad guys, but couldn't show them dying. Right,
And now we have to go to experts like Selma Perak,
professor of Information Media Studies at Western University, and Professor
Purak points out something that I think we've already clocked here,
(36:48):
which is you've got what we call latch key children.
They come home when school, unless they are in extracurriculars
or after school programs. They take the bus, the Bluebird
bus hold like three point thirty or what have you.
Their parents don't get off until five. They turn on
the TV, and as Professor Perak says, the TV is
(37:11):
the babysitter. And explosion of cartoons can be fast food,
junk food.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
But now that's of course more like what happens with
the iPad. So while kids loved these shows and we're
super you know, just thrilled to be babysat by the
idiot Box, the parents once again began growing more concerned.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Some of these parenting.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Groups were really worried about how much time their kids
were spending in front of the TV, especially on Saturday mornings,
and so they continued to you know, lobby the FCC
and lawmakers, and the federal government did ultimately step in
and set some stricter regulations about what networks could not
show on Saturday mornings because you know, obviously not wanting
(37:57):
to run a foul of some of these groups as
they had run ins within the past, and jeopardize these
incredibly massive profits that they were making. The toy companies
and the networks they were kind of leaked up with.
This was like a golden age for them. They were
just raking it in. So they started to voluntarily put
some of these nineteen seventies style PSAs and educational messages
(38:20):
at the end of shows like he Man, which was
the first to kind of include these. So let's hear
one of the he Man ones, all.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Right, folks, to get this is sort of like an
Aesop's parable. This is your big takeaway today.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
He Man had to decide whether or not to chop
down the tree. Now, the trees around you probably won't
speak the way Skytree did, or if they do, we
haven't learned to hear them yet. The trees are living things,
and when you respect to treat, you show that you care.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
About all life. Goodbye.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Indeed, it's a weird total shift for the he Man universe.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
It's a little weird, and I don't think we're going
to play.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
But there was one that was sort of like, if
you ever meet a stranger and they look at you funny,
make sure to tell a parent.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I'm softening it a bit. If you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
It's big, very special episode energy, which we'll see later.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Cautionary after school specials.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Right just so, and we know that this PSA public
service announcement trend created a title wave of other things,
most famously probably g I. Joe's knowing is half the battle.
We see this replicated. Know what I'm thinking from your
(39:37):
research here is that what we're seeing is honestly a
bunch of very wealthy companies chasing money.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Chasing money and playcating the Standards and Practices Department and
you know, the lobbies and the FCC and the parenting groups.
As you said earlier, Ben, in a way of kind
of checking the boxes but without having to really alter
the main story, aka the the selling point exactly. And
(40:09):
it was at the end, you know, the kids didn't
want to see it. They could flip. I mean, it
wasn't like right in the middle or incorporated. I mean,
I guess there were certainly some shows that kind of
had a little bit more of a moralistic kind of
through line, you know, but it really was kind of
shoehorned at the end for most of them.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, And I wish they spent more on the mythos
and more time on the mythos and the writing, because
one thing that always gets me is, like, you know,
you watch, uh, you watch Star Wars, for instance, right
before it becomes an animated offshoot, or you watch he
Man to your earlier example, what do the bad guys want? Dude?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Why wower?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
But why?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
What are the power do? What even is the power?
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Skeletor's pissed at Gray School. He wants the power of grace.
What are you gonna do.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Man, he doesn't know, he doesn't know what he'd do
if he got it.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
He's like Roadrunner, or rather he's like Wiley coyote chasing Roadrunner.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
If he got it, it would be the end of
the show too. He's never gonna get it. We don't
want him to get it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And we want you to get this. NOL, thank you
again for the phenomenal research here.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Oh thanks for the fun conversation.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I think this is something that we both remember, and
we're gonna follow this up with the era that we
all remember for sure, as we got a little older
and started to see the kind of gradual decline of
Saturday Morning cartoons and the evolution of it into other stuff,
we're going to start to see, you know, new forms
of animation, edgier forms of animation, things like MTV. Really,
(41:44):
what enters the chat here is cable that changes everything.
But that is going to be covered in Part two
of the Ridiculously Commercial History of Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
And of course we'll be able to hear our our
friend and colleague, Max the Beachhead Williams chiming in. He's
got some locked and loaded stuff there. For Part two
of this series, big big thanks to our super producer,
mister Max Williams, our research associate, Old Brown, Big big
thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, as well as our very
(42:19):
own Skeletor Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
That's a great impression, isn't it though? Oh Man, this
is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's hear it for uh Max the young
man Williams, and you'll see why that's appropriate for this series.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's true. Does that make us the olds? Ben?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh, geez, well that's an old brown they do? You
call me Ben Bullen Ed Noel. We've both got a
little bit of gray in our hairs.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
We do, but not a hair falling out, not a
receding hairline to be seen. Both fabulous heads of hair.
That's how it's going to remain. But what we do
have is a pretty rich and h and layered memory
of the past.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, history is a palimp sayst And this is going
to be just so you all know, folks. This is
something we discussed as a series back in a few
episodes ago, and we were both I think galvanized by
the sheer gravity of our nostalgia for Saturday mornings. You know,
(01:37):
it's the one time where you're growing up in your
your parents maybe are not at work so they're sleeping in,
but you're a kid. You wake up in the morning
for a specific appointment of destination TA television for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And you know what's funny, Ben, I don't. I did
the research for this, and I didn't mention what I
actually remember even a little more in my formative years,
which was Sunday Morning on Nickelodeon Nicktoons. But we will
get to that and how it ultimately kind of ate
the lunch of what you're describing, Ben, traditional broadcast television
(02:13):
Saturday morning cartoons, because I think when those were really
in their heyday, me and you were truly like little
tykes with our bulls of cereal, you know, sitting in
front of the comforting glow of the TV, like you said, Ben,
maybe while your parents were out. It's something that's just
absolutely exploded during the second half of the twentieth century
in the US, particularly Saturday Morning has been synonymous with
(02:36):
a couple of things that kind of operated hand in hand,
cartoons and advertising.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
There we go, and yes, folks, you heard it right.
Noel Brown is our research associate for this series, and
I can't thank you enough. Man. I'm excited to learn
more with you on this. Can you paint the picture
(03:04):
of the providence or the origin story for us, your
research shows that it dates back to like the nineteen fifties,
just after World War Two.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah, even earlier than the fifties, I mean you had
a lot of animation being used in commercials, and of course,
like even earlier than the fifties, you had black and
white cartoons like the Flintstones that were one hundred percent
they were well, Sima Willie was more of a thing
that you would have seen in theaters, but you did
start to see the Flintstones and stuff like that. It
(03:37):
was meant to be family programming, but it would have like,
you know, cigarette ads in it, like it's like Fred
Flintstones smoking Winston's. And then you started to see animation
really being incorporated into commercials. But it wasn't until the
fifties that the big three networks nbcabc's, CBS realized that
they kind of had kids on lock like during the weekends,
(04:00):
captive audience that advertisers and particularly serial and toy brands
really wanted to get their hooks into.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, yeah, and we could we could look back at
this time, as you were saying, and we could see
that there were, you know, the the repackaged stuff that,
as you said, used to be in a theater like
Steamboat Willie. They were they were targeting something that advertisers
still target today. Wu tang is right when they say
(04:32):
Wu tang is for the children. They would have these
They would have these live action characters like Bozo the
Clown or Cowboys, introduce different animated shorts. They would have giveaways.
You tell your parents to what drink war Oval team?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Oh no, I know.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think we both immediately thought of the Little Orphan Annie,
which we did a whole episode on, By the way,
the Little Fanny Comics decoder ring. This was a radio
thing though in Christmas story. But it's the same rules
apply where you think it's this magical, you know, being
part of the story, and you're following every week to
get the cipher, and then it turns out that it
(05:15):
translates to drink more ovaltine. And you had these studios,
many of which were making shorts that were screened theatrically
as like the opening act for you know, the feature film,
start to make stuff exclusively for television. Studios like Terry
Toons and Walter Lance. They had back catalog stuff that
(05:36):
they were now kind of repurposing for television. And then
you started to have some of these early TV animation
pioneers like Hanna Barbera really going towards some cost saving
methods in the way that they made animation a little
less precious than the Walt Disneys of the world.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Let's just say, yeah, at this time, this is new technology.
Legislation is reactive always, right, so they're not being pressing it.
The buffins and the legal beagles have yet to catch
up to this new phenomenon. They don't yet regulate how
(06:22):
many commercials you can have in any show.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
All voluntary. We know how that goes, like self reporting,
you know, right. It wasn't until the eighties that the
National Association of Broadcasters or NAB enforced these voluntary guidelines.
So again, up to that point, it was up to
the broadcasters and these limited ad times. They went on
to limit ad times to nine and a half minutes
per hour on weekends and twelve minutes per hour on
(06:49):
the weekdays. By as early as nineteen fifty two, though,
you started to see parents groups getting up in arms
about this early brain rot you know, I mean, you know,
his brain rod is kind of a throwback term. All
these parents have been saying, this is going to rot
your brain. Sure, right, once old is thou new again?
People used to hate Gregorian chant also true, and I
(07:09):
think we are both huge fans and we should do
an episode on Gregorian chance.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, I believe we've done the Gregorian Calendar.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, we were kind of curmudgedly about it too.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, you know me and my leapier phobia, so that
sort of figures into that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
But it wasn't. You know, it's early in the fifties.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
After this sort of new TV animation thing is kicking off.
In nineteen fifty two, you started to see parents groups
getting up in arms and reaching out and lobbying the
Federal Communications Commission as well as the Federal Trade Commission
to impose limits on violence and sexual innuendo for any
programming that might have been aimed at young younger folks.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. A big part of this, by the way, folks,
is that animation was heavily weaponized in the propaganda of
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What a good point.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know, there were a lot of evil things that
were hacking the minds of children to make them hate
German people or Japanese. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Well, and you can see some of those, like I mean,
Walt Disney Company has been around so long they'd rather
we forgot.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
That they did a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
But if you go to the I think I've screamed
about this place on the pod before, but the Walt
Disney Family Museum, which is not affiliated with the Walt
Disney Company.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
It's owned and run by the Walt Disney.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Family Trust, and in it you will see some of
these posters and animations, like you know, if Zifioro says
VI is zimmasta race and all that, as well as
some you know, depicting Asian you know, Asians in very
very offensive and stereotypical ways and all the stuff that
you're talking about. So if you're interested, that stuff exists
and you can still check it out. But it's a
(08:49):
good point. I mean, it is a way of kind
of hijacking the minds of young people. But also it
comes from that tradition of like political cartoons. And you know,
you can say all of a lot with cartoons, and therefore,
what is an animation if not just a more robust
and hypnotic form of a cartoon.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Right right, Yeah, very well said. And I love the
idea of protest museums dude. Back when I was in
Brussels a few years back, they had this awesome problematic
comic book museum with a lot of tent tins and stuff,
and right across the street they have another non affiliated,
(09:29):
non official comic strip museum, fight Museum. It's Yeah, Protests
five museum, where they pretty much say, the guys across
the street are evil and colonialists and bonkers, so we're
I don't want to derail us, but we're painting a
picture here. It's as you said, no nineteen fifty two,
(09:51):
concerned citizens are having an outbreak of moral panic.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And I was there want to do right.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
As they're want to do. And now we have the
origin story or the genesis of programs that seek to
not just entertain but also.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Educate, stuff like Captain Kangaroo and of course the ever
beloved Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which combined education with entertainment. But
moving into the sixties, you really started to see the
beginning of the Saturday morning cartoon kind of boom when
the Big three again ABC, CBS and NBC really decided
to go all in on this and carved out multi
(10:35):
hour blocks of TV on Saturday and filled them with
animated half hours of programming from folks again like Hanna
Barbara Filmation, which I believe brought us he Man eventually,
and you started to see you know, iconic animated shows
like Scooby Doo, where are You Yep Yep Archie, which
of course had its origins as a comic strip. They
(10:58):
incorporated these you know, belovable ensemble casts. They would sometimes
have musical numbers, like with Scooby Doo, it's like a
Monster of the Week situation. And all of these early
formats sort of like the Twilight Zone Ben, were just
endlessly aped, you know, copied.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, templatized. Right, this is a situation, folks where your
faithful correspondents Noel, Max and Ben would have a meeting
where some of our top rast says, well, this show worked,
can we not do it one hundred times?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
No, it's tails all the time, whether it's in music,
record executives, broadcasts, something hits, They're like, we want the
next that thing, you know, whatever, do whatever it takes
to get us the next that thing. Started to see
superhero shows and adventure shows. Again, a lot of this
stuff coming from more traditional medium like comic books popping
(11:58):
up they often times we're sort of it was like
you could tell it was the early days because they
were still sort of treating them like sitcoms with laugh
tracks and mega mega cost efficient aggressive production schedules.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, they're grinding stuff out. It's really tough for the
animators at this point to be honest, folks. And now
we again have our concerned parent groups, our watchdogs, several
of whom are low key funded by network rivals, and
they start telling the FCC, you gotta get rid of
(12:35):
all this violence, you gotta get rid of all this
commercialism you're targeting children. This is where we see things
like the Action for Children's Television or.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
ACT, which was founded in nineteen sixty eight and worked
alongside the FCC to help impose some more strict regulations
surrounding television advertising during children's programming.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, because they were like, you were disguising these things
as shows, as entertainment, but what they really are technically
will be, you know, twenty three to thirty minute advertisements.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Ben I think this is a really interesting trajectory that
we're going to get into because it kind of mirrors
a lot of what's going on right now with like
all of the massive insane deregulation that we're seeing, you know,
from this current administration, and like comparing it to you know,
the environmental rollbacks and things like that. Like it's just
an interesting way of sort of plotting those kind of
changes and how like the differences in administrations can make
(13:36):
all the difference in what is okay and what is
not okay, you know, culturally speaking, because that's what we're
about to see here.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And a particularly.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Memorable example, Act argued that Mattel's nineteen sixty nine cartoon
Hot Wheels, was essentially just a commercial for toy cars.
And this is coming from a great article on history
dot com how toy promotions took over eighties cartoons.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Really good source there.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And let's see the writer, or David Owen rather is
quoted in this piece, the author of the man who
invented Saturday Morning. And he said, the FCC agreed and
asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, that's the thing, folks. They agreed with Action for
Children's Television, and they said, we have to go on
record and note that this is an advertisement disguised as
a show.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
For sure. And it wasn't only about the ads.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It was also just about how much time kids were
spending in front of their TVs.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were studies being done into the long term effects
of exposure to these kind of binge early binge watches.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Wait what brain rut? Brain right again? Yes?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yes, yes, yes, of course and that's yeah, what's what's
what's old is now? Well once was old is now
knew again, And parents and teachers were really concerned about this.
We started to see again results coming out of these
more now you've got a little time, you know, longitudinally speaking,
showing that direct marketing associated with these shows and the
time spent front of the shows could cause kids to
(15:17):
have a tough time differentiating between the shows themselves and
the advertisements run within them. And they also just were
not equipped to understand how manipulative these particular tactics were.
As far as they were concerned, they just really liked
the cars, and therefore why wouldn't they want to own
them without thinking that maybe they were being taken advantage
(15:38):
of a little bit, a lot of bit.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
A lot of bit, a bit of a lot, a
lot of move.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And there's another great source we've found that I just
want to mention from the Saturday Evening post The Rise
and Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons by Charles Moss.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yeah, do check it out, folks. If we fast forward
a bit to the nineteen seventies, we'll see that these producers,
these ad clients, and of course, as you mentioned earlier,
in all the big three networks, they responded to these concerns.
(16:19):
These concerns are cyclical. We're experiencing the same stuff now
in twenty twenty six, with people worried about short form
social media content and how old a person should be
before they can own a cell phone or check in
with YouTube.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, That's part of what I was teasing earlier and
even beyond that. But like now, instead of the TV
networks getting sued or taking a task, it's the social
media proprietors like Mark Zuckerberg and all of those cats
that are kind of being accused of. Well, I think
it was found to be absolutely the case that they
knew how much this was messing with kids' mind.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's one hundred percent, dude. And so all these folks
realize there is a well spring of money and they
have to play nice with government regulation and citizens groups.
So they say Okay, we'll make stuff a little bit
less violent, which is why you don't see somebody's head
(17:21):
getting blown off by a bullet.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Right or even with he Man, it was to point
it out on this podcast that I think we both
have enjoyed blank check with Griffin and David. Griffin pointed
out that one thing that you'll see you'll never see
he Man do in he Man cartoons.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Is sword fight.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
He's always using the sword to deflect stuff or to
like maybe cut down a tree or something, but never
like stabbing or slicing or even going sword to sword
with another character.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, he's summoning the power of Gray Skull.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Sure, whatever that is.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Whatever that is, dude, check out the film. We'll get there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
We'll get that. The hey Man part of it is
a lot of fun, but it's huge.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
But we also have to, like to your point, we
have to acknowledge that the big dogs didn't just bend
the knee to these demands to soften action and violence.
They went a step further and they said, we're going
to start doing public service announcements.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Well, in nineteen seventy eight, the FTC actually had attempted
to try to ban all direct advertisement to kids under
the age of six. Lobbying groups prevented that from happening, associated,
of course, with the toy companies, the ad agencies, serial industries,
all of that stuff. But rather than you know, poke
the bear, I guess they knew they were sort of
(18:41):
being targeted. That's when they made those decisions to start
essentially voluntarily making this kind of content, stuff like Schoolhouse Rock.
I'm just a bill, just a little low bill. You're
sitting there on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. And then you have stuff like NBC's One to
Grow from nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
The Bod Squad, which I don't know personally, but I
can imagine that it was about like biology and probably
sort of like slim good body kind of stuff. Or
The Magic school Bus.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh, which, by the way, I'm still divided over whether
whether that teacher in the school bus.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Was Miss Frizz.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. I don't know whether Miss Friz was amazing or
evil or possibly both. There's a diagram.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
There is an episode of The Magic school Bus where
they go into the bodies of salmon and essentially get
like ejaculated out of fish's bodies right.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Right, because they're learning about salmon migration and spawning and all.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Of that stuff. It gets a little icky.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Schoolhouse Rock taught about grammar and civics and things like that.
Fat Albert was another kind of an example of inclusivity
and represented representation and also had a moral kind of
lessons that it through this ensemble character driven kind of
you know, cass. You also had started to see costumed
(20:07):
kind of things like the Banana Splits, the sid and
Marty Croft company that made hr puff and stuff. And
we're the kind of psychedelic like pre Barney, a little
more edgy kind of kids shows. But it's public service
announcements and news shorts that start getting kind of interesting.
I would love to play an example of each of
these really quickly.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh time for comer. Do you ever get that hungry
feeling after school? Oh? I do. I'm so hungry I
could eat a wagon wheel when I'm slow in the
draw and I need something to chaw. Hanker for a
good cheese.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
This guy's like a Is he a piece of cheese?
Is he a piece of corn? Is he one to
eat himself?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
You know?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's like our grimmest question earlier, isn't it's kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Hole in his hat?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I imagine, just just for the folks at home, he
is like a cowboy talking about he's standing next to
a wagon in front of an old saloon. He has
a acaine, but the hole in his hat seems like
that would imply previous violence.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I'm just putting that out there.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
He's also got a you know, he's got a neckerchief,
a bandana. Uh, he's got boots but no pants.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
No he is, I think he is. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
He's meant to be a cheese or some weird horrific monstrosity.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
The cheese guy.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
He's the cheese guy.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
So he is talking about wanting to eat himself, which
is a little odd and also been I know you
were thinking this too, like is this from Big Dairy?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Is this and not? I mean, this is meant to
be a psa.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
At the end of it, he shows you how to
make a nice snack, a healthy snack. But we know
now that a grilled cheese sandwich ain't the healthiest of snacks.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
You know this mild actual public service at best, in
the pocket of Big Cheese at worst.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And then you also have these little news shorts. Think
like oh with Lynda Ellerby.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Remember that from when we were kids, it was like
nick News or something like that. There was, it was
very much a precursor to that. And that's the closest
analog that I could have, like kinda sometimes anchored by kids,
you know, definitely giving kids a kind of current event
thing in sort of.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Kids speak, or a feeling of agency.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
And maybe even a feeling of kind of being like
the grown ups watching the news, you.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to wonder shows and.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Beat kids, beat kids, Kids on the Beat, kids on
the street. Right, and all of this, you know, kind
of ushered in a new arrow of Saturday mornings blending
entertainment and you know, admittedly, like we're saying, pretty light education.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's kind of like the window dressing,
oh of education. Hey, everybody in a box, yes, right right,
everybody remember that crosswalks exist for a reason. But also
so buy all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Always leave a note.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
But of course, the you know, steady march of capitalism,
along with some pretty clever loopholes that the toy industry
along with the animation studios kind of figured out, would
change a lot of this sort of more you know,
idyllic animation landscape quite a bit, and that all started
with Star.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Wars nineteen seventy seven. Folks, you remember where you were
if you're at a certain age in life. This was
Oh gosh, this could be the subject of its own
ridiculous history episode or series. There are a lot of
podcasts about the Star Wars universe, some of which feature
(23:44):
our own big sister, Holly Fry that.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, he's the ultimate Star Wars Fani.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
She very much is. We love we love you, Holley,
We love hanging out. So this, this Star Wars thing,
audiences around the world loved its box office breaking numbers. Uh.
The the big money that they made was not just
in airing the film in your typical theatrical system of
(24:15):
the big studios. They monetized and commodified this stuff by
teaming up with people who were already good at making.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Toys, for sure, But a lot of these toymakers didn't
really take the bait at first. They did not believe
that Star Wars was going to be a success. Big
established you know titans in the in the industry, like
Mattel and Mago.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
What happened to mego, I.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Don't think any they don't think they stood the test
of time like Mattel. But they originally passed on licensing
Star Wars toys because again they thought that this was
going to be a flop and not have any cultural significance.
So a small, kind of much more upstart company based
in Ohio Kenner was able to get the deal and
(25:02):
they got that licensing thing, but they actually weren't able
to release any toys until nearly a year after the
movie premiere. But thankfully it was going to be a trilogy,
it was ongoing and and it was a massive, massive SMAs.
So when Kenner released these Star Wars action figures, the
demand had been brewing this whole time, and they just absolutely,
you know, rocketed off the shelves in nineteen seventy eight,
(25:27):
and a lot of these, as we know, as you know,
are worth a whole lot of money to this very day.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh are you kidding? I still have some of my
some of my always I did. Nobody tried to rob me. No.
Kenner had released these figures that you you're probably familiar with,
so you can see them. They're about three point seven
five inches toll. They sold millions and millions of these.
(25:55):
They sold the atat vehicles, these play sets the job
of the thing.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
They also set the tone for the scale of all
as they Yeah, you know, like G I Joe et
cetera were kind of like, you know, following suit.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, the original G I. Joe's were more like your
typical dolls. You know. Star Wars was doing something really interesting,
or Kenner was doing something really interesting by rephrasing these
not as dolls but as action figures, and all of
the sudden, all the other toy companies, the big dogs
(26:33):
you mentioned, like Mattel and Mago, they're they're looking around right.
We can only imagine they're chomping their bubblegum cigars and
they say, wait, we can make money by taking shows
and making toys from them.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
No, it's a good point, Ben about the ged Joe's
originally being much more doll like, because it was not.
It was not until success of the Star Wars and
the scale of those three point seventy five inch mini figures.
I guess comparatively that that really was sort of codified
because of how damn successful they were. So even the
some of these legacy toys changed the course and decided
(27:16):
to go in that direction, and they realized they needed
to either link up with some pre existing intellectual properties
or create some from scratch with the express purpose of
selling these little plastic figs to kids.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, they were saying, you know, we don't even have
to spend that much money on the writing. Who respects writers.
We just we got to sell these toys. Guys. We
got some great designs from our graphics department. We don't
have to spend too much time on the names of
the characters. We've got a guy, let's pull him.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
He may right, you know, man, it's so funny you
say that.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Another great little conversation on the Griffin and David episode
was just about how this was such a mashup of like,
let's do let's have wizards and sci fi space.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
Aliens and swords and you know, vehicles, lasers, guns on
top of them and all of the names and with
a very very vague, incredibly vague mythology. It's like he man,
he holds his magic sort of lofts and all of
a sudden he said the words, how do you notice
say the words by the power of Gray Skull, I
(28:30):
have the power?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
What power? You know? Talking about the babe with the power?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
No, and it's so funny, man, because another thing they
mentioned in some of the dossier stuff that they did
was that the focus groups showed that kids really.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Loved the idea of having power.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And you'll notice that the turtles were also turtle power,
and it was just like they were off to the races.
You didn't have to even have that much of a story,
and he man Mattel's Masters of the Universe nineteen seventy,
those executives landed on that winning formula.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
They created a little slightly.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Different scales, it pretty close, a little taller five point
five inch figures, and they cooperated with a network television
program that was already in the pipeline in order. So
this wasn't exactly them making the cartoon for the toys,
but it was might as well have been.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, this is our inflection point because these guys are
talking to each other, These folks are talking to each
other in the toy making world and the network TV world,
and the network TV producers are saying, well, we're working
on an animation thing that's been very hot since nineteen
fifties on Saturday mornings, and Mattel says, Okay, we don't
(29:50):
want to have another Star Wars opportunity pass us by Kenner.
Really ate our lunch, but maybe we can get it
on the ground floor. To your point about power and agency,
a show called He Man and the Masters of the Universe.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
He's the most powerful man in the universe and also
a fabulous singer and with great style and a great bob. Well,
it wasn't necessarily them making the cartoon to serve the figures.
There was a conversation going on because again how nimble
the animation was and how quick the production turnaround was.
They could work with the toy manufacturers to tweak the
(30:29):
show to make it make more sense for the toys
they could manufacture and the time that they had and
get things to market. And then they could you introduce
new characters and immediately have the figure So obviously this
was a smashing success. And then when old, that old
wiley bastard Ronald Reagan entered the White House in eighty one,
(30:50):
much like we're seeing now, he brought along with him
in just an absolute wave of deregulation surrounding all kinds
of aspects of and this really did a number on
the FCC's ability to exercise the same kind of level
of control that they had previously been doing.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, and this is where we see a resurgence of
a political pattern that occurs in the United States today,
a lot of what we would call patronage hires, right
or hiring your henchmen and your sycophants. President Reagan maybe
(31:30):
he was awake enough or aware enough at this point
to do it. Probably one of his masters told him
to do it. He appointed a new chairman of the FTC.
And this chairman is a hitman, right, He's hired to
do the deregulation stuff I got talking about.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And so this guy passes the FTC Improvements Act of
nineteen eighty which says, hey, we're the FDC. We know
our job is to protect what the public sees and consumers,
but we also are passing this law that makes it
(32:15):
very difficult for us to regulate children's propaganda and advertising.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And this directly affect the Gen X era kids and
how much TV and advertising they are consuming on those
precious Saturday mornings. So this deregulation really opened the door
to a kind of a new wave of toy driven
cartoons following that same he man blueprint, just taking it
to the next level. We've got Gi Joe again more
(32:42):
of a legacy brand. Then we've got newer ones like Transformers,
My Little Pony gem and the Holograms. They also kind
of had the power care Bears, the care Bear stare.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And I love ThunderCats. ThunderCats was my jam.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
ThunderCats is great.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Start Thundercatter, you know what I mean. Like ThunderCats was
like had a little more story to it. I don't know,
that's how it feels like.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You say that when we're hanging out off air.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Oh, I do. Yeah, I think it's got cool.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, well, then I.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Think about it. There's a lot of similarities. I mean,
Lionel holds his sword aloft, I mean the Mamra, the
Dead Carrier version of Skeletor. It's just like it's a
little more sinister. Hey man, is goofy? You know it's
it's and then you know, they really did start to
get a little edgier.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Oh and then we again we have a star Hawk.
We also have Silver Frocks silver Hawks, thank you. We
also have full length animated adaptations of these things of
g I Joe and care Bears. Of course, has that
really creepy feature link that with the face in the book.
You remember, Oh, freaked me.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Out when I was a kid, big time.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah, and Witch, it's like a demonic force inside this
book that takes over the mind of the hapless magician's assistance.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
It makes the kids all like sunken eye and they're
they're bad at being friendly.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Ben, I think there were actually two, and it creepy
stuff happens in both of them. Because I think you're
describing the plot of the first one. I can't remember,
but definitely, Oh, there are two, but I'm miss I'm
kind of misconstruing what happens in which because I'm remembering
some of what you're describing. But then the one that
I'm describing, I think took place in like a traveling
circus kind of thing, and like it was almost like
(34:21):
a carnival kind.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Of situation there, something wicked. This way comes exactly.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
But like we said, we've got critics now calling this
new wave of shows that we were talking about essentially
program length commercials, the thing the very thing they were trying.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
To avoid back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, I got loop pulled back in. Uh, this is
where we see a retisance of other cartoons like pac Man.
Check out our episodes on the early days of video games.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Apparently had a cartoon right right, And.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
It's all these are all designed not some deep aesthetic purpose.
They're designed to expose children to games that already exist.
Like the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series was amazing, but
it's because they wanted kids to play D and D
(35:16):
or play pac Man, or you know, get their parents
to buy them. Or Rubiks.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I'm fascinated by what a Rubik's Cube cartoon could have
possibly been.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
We also as.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Was there also a Magic eight Ball cartoon? I can't imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
But we then saw some that I think we all remember,
or the two of us remember, some of these movie
tie ins pre existing and kind of more like, okay,
new things coming out, let's have a tie in cartoon
things like The Real Ghostbusters, which was had to be
called the Real Ghostbuster because there was already a cartoon
called Ghostbusters, completely unrelated to the Ghostbusters movies, Rambo The
(35:53):
Force of Freedom, which if we can imagine, I mean,
these are gonna be a little violence, you know, Chuck
Norris Karate come with.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
K's with Ks Karate Commandos.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
And I do believe that they got around some of it.
I mean there were still beholden to some of these
you know FCC guidelines, but there were more little loopholes,
Like I said, with he Man not stabbing anybody or slicing.
Same thing with Rambo and gid Joe. They couldn't fire bullets.
I think it had to be lasers, and yeah, pewp pew, right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they had to be lasers. People could
fall if they were bad guys, but couldn't show them dying. Right,
And now we have to go to experts like Selma Perak,
professor of Information Media Studies at Western University, and Professor
Purak points out something that I think we've already clocked here,
(36:48):
which is you've got what we call latch key children.
They come home when school, unless they are in extracurriculars
or after school programs. They take the bus, the Bluebird
bus hold like three point thirty or what have you.
Their parents don't get off until five. They turn on
the TV, and as Professor Perak says, the TV is
(37:11):
the babysitter. And explosion of cartoons can be fast food,
junk food.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
But now that's of course more like what happens with
the iPad. So while kids loved these shows and we're
super you know, just thrilled to be babysat by the
idiot Box, the parents once again began growing more concerned.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Some of these parenting.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Groups were really worried about how much time their kids
were spending in front of the TV, especially on Saturday mornings,
and so they continued to you know, lobby the FCC
and lawmakers, and the federal government did ultimately step in
and set some stricter regulations about what networks could not
show on Saturday mornings because you know, obviously not wanting
(37:57):
to run a foul of some of these groups as
they had run ins within the past, and jeopardize these
incredibly massive profits that they were making. The toy companies
and the networks they were kind of leaked up with.
This was like a golden age for them. They were
just raking it in. So they started to voluntarily put
some of these nineteen seventies style PSAs and educational messages
(38:20):
at the end of shows like he Man, which was
the first to kind of include these. So let's hear
one of the he Man ones, all.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Right, folks, to get this is sort of like an
Aesop's parable. This is your big takeaway today.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
He Man had to decide whether or not to chop
down the tree. Now, the trees around you probably won't
speak the way Skytree did, or if they do, we
haven't learned to hear them yet. The trees are living things,
and when you respect to treat, you show that you care.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
About all life. Goodbye.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Indeed, it's a weird total shift for the he Man universe.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
It's a little weird, and I don't think we're going
to play.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
But there was one that was sort of like, if
you ever meet a stranger and they look at you funny,
make sure to tell a parent.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I'm softening it a bit. If you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
It's big, very special episode energy, which we'll see later.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Cautionary after school specials.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Right just so, and we know that this PSA public
service announcement trend created a title wave of other things,
most famously probably g I. Joe's knowing is half the battle.
We see this replicated. Know what I'm thinking from your
(39:37):
research here is that what we're seeing is honestly a
bunch of very wealthy companies chasing money.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Chasing money and playcating the Standards and Practices Department and
you know, the lobbies and the FCC and the parenting groups.
As you said earlier, Ben, in a way of kind
of checking the boxes but without having to really alter
the main story, aka the the selling point exactly. And
(40:09):
it was at the end, you know, the kids didn't
want to see it. They could flip. I mean, it
wasn't like right in the middle or incorporated. I mean,
I guess there were certainly some shows that kind of
had a little bit more of a moralistic kind of
through line, you know, but it really was kind of
shoehorned at the end for most of them.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, And I wish they spent more on the mythos
and more time on the mythos and the writing, because
one thing that always gets me is, like, you know,
you watch, uh, you watch Star Wars, for instance, right
before it becomes an animated offshoot, or you watch he
Man to your earlier example, what do the bad guys want? Dude?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Why wower?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
But why?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
What are the power do? What even is the power?
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Skeletor's pissed at Gray School. He wants the power of grace.
What are you gonna do.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Man, he doesn't know, he doesn't know what he'd do
if he got it.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
He's like Roadrunner, or rather he's like Wiley coyote chasing Roadrunner.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
If he got it, it would be the end of
the show too. He's never gonna get it. We don't
want him to get it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And we want you to get this. NOL, thank you
again for the phenomenal research here.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Oh thanks for the fun conversation.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I think this is something that we both remember, and
we're gonna follow this up with the era that we
all remember for sure, as we got a little older
and started to see the kind of gradual decline of
Saturday Morning cartoons and the evolution of it into other stuff,
we're going to start to see, you know, new forms
of animation, edgier forms of animation, things like MTV. Really,
(41:44):
what enters the chat here is cable that changes everything.
But that is going to be covered in Part two
of the Ridiculously Commercial History of Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
And of course we'll be able to hear our our
friend and colleague, Max the Beachhead Williams chiming in. He's
got some locked and loaded stuff there. For Part two
of this series, big big thanks to our super producer,
mister Max Williams, our research associate, Old Brown, Big big
thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, as well as our very
(42:19):
own Skeletor Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
That's a great impression, isn't it though? Oh Man, this
is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.