First toy-based cartoon?

H

Heather (:

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Does anyone know what the first toy-based cartoon was (the actual first one was hot wheels from the 60s, but im talking about the 80s-present)? Everyone says it was He-Man, but i had toys of Blackstar characters growing up, and since Blackstar debuted in 1981, would that be the first?
 
I don't think Blackstar counts. In that case, the toys were based on the show and not the other way around. Honestly though, Filmation's He-Man series really is the earliest I can think of, although there was also the 5-part G.I. Joe mini-series that aired that same year (1983), but I don't know if it was a tie, or whatnot.

There was also another one: The Care Bears in the Land Without Feelings. This was a half-hour special that also aired in 1983. Wikipedia says it aired on April, but that date is unsourced, so I can't confirm the accuracy of that.
 
IIRC, The breakthrough show was Strawberry Shortcake. Produced by Nelvana for Mattel, c. 1980, it was the first to take advantage of a new FCC rule that allowed product based childrens' shows to exists, provided that product line was not advertised during that particular show's commercial breaks
 
Slight correction there: Nelvana didn't start making SSC specials until the fourth one; the first and third one were made by the company now known as "Fred Wolf Films" (1980s TMNT) in conjunction with Toei (an obscure company based in New York called "Perpetual Motion Pictures made the second one). Also, they were produced for American Greetings; Mattel (although I always thought it was Hasbro) simply made the dolls.

In any case, I typically don't think of the SSC specials as being based on a toyline per se; the toys were simply part of the "media mix" (which also included record albums, and books, etc) that was created around AG's Straberry Shortcake property which was created for use on AG's greeting cards.
 
Thanks for the correction. The Shirt Tales was another American Greetings property that got made into a cartoon, but I think that was a little later on.
 
I thought it was Strawberry Shortcake or maybe He-Man & The Masters of the Universe, mainly because of how strong the toy lines were with the masses and the creativity of the characters offered to consumers. Didn't MOTU cause some kind of mass hysteria when it came to airing their cartoon, something along the lines of congressmen calling it a 30 minute toy commercial?

It was a cool show though and the toys are decent looking.
 
Nope, Shirt Tales was originally created by Hallmark, another greeting card company. However, yeah H-B's Shirt Tales series did come later.
 
Speaking of Blackstar, he, John Blackstar, is actually Filmation's first Native-American astronaut character to be involved in a sword-and-sorcery series, and the one since Tonto (in the Lone Ranger series) to be the main hero (at least until fellow Native American cowboy hero Bravestarr, a Mattel character, came on the scene) in an animated series.

Kenny :D
 
He was actually supposed to be a black man, but i guess CBS worried about if the world would "accept" a black lead (despite having no problems with Fat Albert and Superstretch) and so he was made a Native American.
 
So true. I could see Blackstar as an African-American He-Man right now. Imagine all the female alien booty he would get, not to mention the Boondocks-style language that would permeate the series.

-or-

Blackstar could be a respectable, well-written sword-and-sorcery series about a black astronaut trapped on a world that he knows nothing about, while meeting all kinds of alien species who are united in battling a dark evil across their planet.

Kenny ;)
 
If you want to get technical, many of the super robot series from the 70s were toy based. Hell, even Mobile Suit Gundam was technically meant to sell toys.
 
I'm not sure you can really claim Gundam was really meant to toys, it was kind of a net affect.

Voltron certainly spawned toy sales when it came to the US.

That all being said, I can't believe no one has mentioned G.I. Joe yet, although that's a unique situation from everything else. G.I. Joe is a toy series that started in 1964 and had several media campaigns to help grow the toy line.

Of course the cartoon series itself didn't start till 1982, 18 years later.

It's probably fair to say it was the first media blitz to sell toys.

Superfriends might also qualify but as far as I know, the first DC Action Figures were the Super Powers Action Figures.

Same might go for Marvel Legends series. I dont remember a marvel action figure series before that.
 
If you want to get REALLY specific, the very first cartoon based on a toy would be Raggedy Ann. Johnny Gruelle created the character as a rag doll in 1915 for his daughter, which later spawned a series of children books and rag dolls in 1918.

The first Raggedy Ann cartoon came out in 1941, entitled "Raggedy Ann & Andy" by Fleischer Studios.

I know it wasn't what the OP was going for, but hey, fun fact!
 
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