Better toyatic cartoons: North American or Japan

T

thomasg453

New member
Which region produces the better toyatic animated shows? The United States / Canada or Japan?

Just to clearify, shows based on comics / mangas don't count. If they did, almost every anime would be considered toyatic.

The peak for toyatic cartoons in the west is the 1980's, while the peak for the toyatic cartoons for the east is late 90's - 00's, the way I see it.

IMO, I think the ceiling for great toyatic animes is higher, while the basement for toyatic animes is lower. I think the worst of the worst toyatic shows are animes from the past decade, while the best toyatic animes is better than the best toyatic cartoons in North America. Tell me a toyatic show form the 80's that is as bad as Yu Gi Oh and some others shows of its ilk.

The two best toyatic shows from each region IMO are Digimon and Transformers. They are the gold standard as far as I am concerned. We can debate it, but that is my opinion. I like Digimon just a bit more better than Transformers.

If Digimon is my number one favorite toyatic show, there is a whole bunch of North American toyatic shows just below, before another anime is on the list. Though Blue Dragon is somewhere near the top of my list, very underrated and underappricated show.

I notices the animes are more blandant about being a commercial for toys. I remember some shows I grow up in the 80's that toyatic, that I didn't know was based on a toy till later in my life. It is hard not to know with the latest animes.

As far as studios go, Sunbow and Toei Animation they are the kings of toyatic cartoons. Even a show like My Little Pony which I don't care for, the show was never intended for me, but I can see it being a good show for its intended audiance. Besides that, they had the triple crown of great shows based on Hasbro's toys, Transformers / GI Joe / Jem. Toei Animation enough said, they had Digimon, Pretty Cure, Sailer Moon. Though the later two weren't toyatic. But you get the point, they ruled at making great quality shows.

One pet peeve I have about these types of shows is how the success of the toys determains how long a show stays on the air. I think a show should succeed or fail on its own merits indepndent of the product they are trying to promote. It works both way, weather it is the premature cancelation of Jem (though it started to jump the shark with the introduction of the Stingers, and the songs quality really went down compared to the first season), or the fact the Pokemon will seemingly go on forever. Clearly the writers are out of ideas. Could they at least have a new cast of characters. Enough of Ash, Brock, and Team Rocket.

Overal, I give the edge to North America, especially the shows form the 80's comparied to the animes of 00's. Though I appreciate that the animes of 00's are not geared towards just boys or just girls as were the North American shows in the 80's. But still give North America the edge.

Anyway your opinions. Who does toyatic better? North America or Japan?
 
Beast Wars and Yu-Gi-Oh GX are two of my favorite shows. I suppose if I had to pick, Japan, since they have more experience with them. Most US toy shows were from the 80s where there was tons of bad writing and no-plot shows. Beast Wars is like the only exception I can think of.
 
ahh thats hard the U.S has G1 & Beast wars, not to mention G.I. Joe & AOSTH, but japan has Headmasters, BAYBLADE Sigma six, sonic X........But I'll go with US because even though I love anime nothing beats G1 & Beastwars! NOTHING!!!!:evil::p:sweat:
 
Back in the day I would have said the U.S, but as it stands today I would definatly say that it's Japan. YuGiOh, Bakugan, Pokemon and all those kinds of shows are juggernaugts when it comes to selling merchendise and whatnot, they have become "brands" onto their own.
 
Yu-Gi-Oh is actually one of the better toyetic (or in this case, cardetic) shows of this past decade. I mean, it'd be a better argument to bring up GX, but Yu-Gi-Oh DM actually had a pretty deep character-driven storyline.

Personally, yeah, I'd agree that it all depends on what decade we're talking about here. Pre-Pokemon, the US was the best at toyetic shows, but post-Pokemon, Japan has done a lot better in this regard. Though, I'd say the US is getting back on its feet with shows like Transformers Animated and Chaotic.

So difficult to decide...
 
Maybe there are worst shows than Yu Gi Oh, and maybe it was better in the early seasons. But I don't care for it, what can I say, that is my opinion. You are right, GX that it is the worse. I have to admit, I love the Yu Gi Oh abridged parody series. It is hillarous.

Which show had the school for playing the card game? That was one, I thought was the worst toyatic show ever. I thought it was Yu Gi Oh, maybe I confused with another show, that are so many of those card game animes these days.
 
Do you mean better to watch or better at selling products? I think the Japanese toy commercial cartoons I've seen are worse for watching and way better at selling toys, because they seem to be completely free of the self-imposed moral restrictions and limitations that even the some of the worst 1980s toy commercial cartoons had. They may have stories, incidentally, but the real purpose of them is to teach children how to play with what they are selling and instill a fevered desire to collect as much of it as possible. He-Man may have made a point of carefully introducing you to all of his dumbass friends, but at least the thinly concealed idea of buying them and collecting them all wasn't an integral part of the plot.
 
Even the worst Japanese toyetic toons seem to at least have some sort of character development, as well as conflicts other than "good guys vs bad guys" (like some kind of rivalry between the good guys). Few of the American 80's toyetc toons did, so my vote will have to go to Japan.
 
GX was great. The entire series was pretty character driven, and for the most part, the characters were far more developing, more interesting interesting and had more personality than the characters from the original DM series, the plot was a lot more interesting. The most interesting part was when the hero turned evil for a portion of the show and the side-characters had to take up the reigns half-way through the show and defeat him. Then again, I feel the same way you do about GX to 5D, which has no appeal to me whatsoever. So I guess everyone has their own preferences with the three series.
 
I disagree. The 80s had just as many toyetic cartoons in the East as it did in the West. Gundam, Macross and Voltron were all highly toy-based. They called the 80s the "Era of Mecha" for a reason.
 
Even though I love Digimon, I guess I'll have to go with America, since they make more "toyetic" shows that I like, such as the various animated Transformers series and, if it counts, the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.

The only "toyetic" shows from Japan that I like would be Digimon, Medabots, and, if it counts, Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
 
Yeah, I intentionally left off TMNT 2K3 when I mentioned Transformers and Chaotic, because I'm not quite sure if it should be categorized as a comic book cartoon or a toyetic cartoon.

IMO, I consider the first five seasons of TMNT 2K3 as a comic book cartoon, with Fast Forward and Back to the Sewers as toyetic cartoons.
 
I don't think that GX was that bad to the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I honestly do think that the first season wasn't that good, in fact I do consider that the weakest season that I've seen, but I thought that it got much better in seasons two and three with both the storyline, with character development and focusing on characters other than Jaden. The first season gave Jaden too much spotlight attention for my taste and it took them over twenty episodes just to get into that season's plot, which was pretty good at first, but then Jaden had too much attention again. I do think that season one had a good finale with Jaden dueling against Zane though.

Even with the improvements in the series in later seasons, I feel like the manga has done a better job in many aspects than the series and is overall better than the anime series in my opinion. I still love both though.

As much as I do love GX, I'm not sure if I would agree that all of the characters were better developed than in DM, but it would probably helped if I rewatched both series for that. In terms of character development, I thought that only Yugi, Atem, Joey and Kaiba had a satisfying amount of character development among the main cast in DM. In the case of GX, I thought that Jaden, Syrus, Zane, Aster and possibly Chazz had a good amount of development and screentime by the third season. I didn't count the fourth since I haven't seen that whole season yet. While I do think that GX had a bit more development among its main cast, I don't think that it made good use out of all of their characters, such as with Bastion, Alexis and pretty much all of the new characters introduced in season three. I think that the large main cast not having equal or close to equal treatment was one of the series' flaws, in retrospect.

I'm also not sure if I prefer 5D's over GX or not at the moment since I don't feel like its a fair comparsion since I've seen over 155 episodes of GX and only 29 episodes of 5D's. I do think that 5D's has a much better start, in terms of establishing the characters and the storyline, than GX did.

I respect your opinion though and I hope that we can agree to disagree, but I just wanted to express that.

As for the topic, I'll have to go with Japan for having better toyatic cartoons. I wasn't around for a lot of the 80s toyatic cartoons, but I feel that Japan has been doing a better job with toyetic cartoons since Pokemon came out compared to the toyatic shows of the 90s and early 00s. Though, it probably helps that some of my favorite shows, Pokemon, the three Yu-Gi-Oh! series and Digimon, are toyatic cartoons from Japan, but I feel like they have a more unique/special flare with the characters and/or storyline than most of the North American toyatic shows I've seen.
 
The only reason why they could do a better job about it in Japan is that the sponsors get to flaunt their products during the show! Something we can never see happen in America thanks to FCC restrictions!
 
I think America is better at it. Case in point- the Transformers Unicron Trilogy vs Transformers Animated. Animated was subtle with upgrades and made you want to buy the toys by strength of the story and characters. The Unicron Trilogy in contrast never really let up on pushing the toys, resulting in bland characters and drawn out story. A further side of that was the kid appeal characters. Sari had a role in the story, was put in her place alot and had to earn respect. In contrast, the UT kids were constantly hanging around for no good reason and were given 'honorary Autobot status' despite never really doing anything. One is natural story and character evolution, the other is poorly thought out wish fulfilment. There's even fan demand to see a toy made of Sari because of how well they handled her.
 
Well you could seperate comic book tie-in cartoons from toyetic ones but truthfully they're on and the same.

Considering toyetic cartoons (ie, shows intended to sell toys and other kids merchandise) in the US includes amazing shows along the lines of Justice League, Beast Wars and 2002 He-Man and 2003 TMNT I'm going to give the edge to North America.

Japan's toyetic shows of the 80s were a great deal more violent and perhaps "mature" than most of the toy selling cartoons in North America. Things started to even out in the 90s when Japan got stricter on what was allowed in youth entertainment and North America started producing shows along the lines of Batman the Animated Series. These days neither Japan nor NA is producing particularly worth while toyetic shows but I'd still give the edge to NA. Spectacular Spider-Man, Transformers Animated and Wolverine and the X-Men continue the tradition of making shows intended to sell toys that have more entertainment value to them than simply being a toy commerical but they still sell toys and lots of them.

While Japan's toyetic shows of today have become more and more of the same old formula along side long standing merchandise pushers like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, Dragonball, One Piece, Naruto, etc. They even brought back Beyblade recently. As much as I love Dragonball, One Piece and Naruto those 3 shows don't stand up to the vaster number of entertaining toy pushing shows being produced for North American airwaves.
 
Back
Top