http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MerchandiseDriven

started as a twenty-minute toy commercial." Ethan, Shortpacked! "How can Transformers possibly 'sell out'? Itas a twenty-minute toy commercial."

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The Merchandise-Driven show, otherwise known as the "half-hour toy commercial", is not merely a television show (or other work) with a line of toys licensed on the side, but a television show created from a line of toys. The program exists largely to sell these products to the audience, and this is most commonly associated with cartoons and anime targeted at a younger audience.

Note that there are very few instances of the Merchandise Driven cartoons of today that predate the deregulation of children's television in the Reagan years . The FCC classified 1969's Hot Wheels cartoon as "a thirty-minute toy commercial", which pretty well killed the show (along with reruns of Linus the Lionhearted , a show starring the cartoon Mascots of the Post Cereal line).

(Conversely, it was rare that a popular show would spawn action figures and toys when it was actually on the air in the US. Throughout The '60s and The '70s, the only reliable source for the various Cool Cars and Cool Ships from various science fiction and superhero shows were the Corgi line, imported from the UK. Mego's Star Trek: The Original Series figures didn't appear until well after the show was in reruns.)

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Today, there is a full symbiotic relationship between the show's production and the toy company (or other manufacturer licensed, show-themed products), which is usually the primary (or even only) sponsor of the show. But the key difference between this and normal licensed merchandising is that here, it is the toy manufacturer who dictates the show's canon. They may be able to demand addition or removal of characters from the series based on the actual toys in their production line, or that new characters must be something that they can design a toy version for on demand (military or paramilitary-themed shows and Humongous Mecha anime are particularly prone to this). Another sign of a toy manufacturer exerting influence is the blatant structuring of episode plots solely around the newest merchandisable toy accessories, often where the characters Gotta Catch 'Em All or be declared a failure as a human being ... yeah, something like that. Meanwhile, in Tokusatsu works, it has become common for the production staff to use weapons and Transformation Trinkets from the show's toyline in the actual show itself.

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Merchandise Driven shows are not limited to a young audience either. Many works are adapted from manga, video games, toys, etc. only if there's an existing lucrative market, and older fans are often targeted for their potential loyalty and deeper wallets. That so many comic books and late-night anime can maintain a decent budget is due to this small but vocal group of fans.

Can be halfheartedly avoided with the use of a Segregated Commercial. Still, this sometimes produces a Franchise Zombie. However, Tropes Are Not Bad — some fandoms like the merchandise more so than the show itself.

Many musicals ensured that potential hit tunes were reprised a few times. This was as much for the sake of the song publishers as for dramatic opportunities like the Dark Reprise. The revues, which were formed around Sketch Comedy and had little to no plot, could get quite shameless: some of them explicitly introduced song reprises as a ploy to sell sheet music.

Note that a show can have a line of licensed merchandise without being Merchandise Driven, and once the requirements are met the writers are basically given free rein to script what they want. See The Merch for that. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was famously quoted as saying there is nothing wrong with using characters in marketing, so long as the quality of one's work stays refined. That said, Bill Watterson has, equally famously, taken no chances and limited Calvin and Hobbes to the print medium to prevent any decay in quality. (Unfortunately, this caused people to just make offensive unauthorized merchandise...)

Also note while advertising can often be the main reason for a show's existence, it is never the only reason, that's what actual commercials are for. Shows of this nature always do their best to tell a story and to keep the viewers hooked with said story. Keep that in mind whenever viewing a show that falls under this trope.

It's also notable that, when the series is particularly well-done, it may outlive the product that inspired it. This seems to be particularly true of comic books, such as ROM: Space Knight and Micronauts. It's also common for merchandise driven shows to develop a cult following that long outlasts the original merchandise; such a fanbase may result in its eventually being Un-Canceled (usually with accompanying new merchandise), as the current incarnations of Transformers, G.I. Joe, and others can attest.

Compare Misaimed Marketing, where this sort of thinking is applied where it shouldn't be. See also Defictionalization, where the licensed merchandise is also merchandise inside the show; and Breakaway Advertisement. In some instances, this can also be intertwined with Off-the-Shelf FX. Contrast with The Merch, where the merchandise sales came after the work, in order to support it. For derivative works that are (usually) not metatextual focus of the original work, see Tie-In Novel, Licensed Game, and Advertisement Game.

See also Product-Promotion Parade, a common occurrence in Merchandise Driven works, and Cash Cow Franchise, and Toyline-Exclusive Character, where the merchandise includes characters that don't actually appear in the work made to promote the merchandise. See the Analysis page for a list of tropes enforced in these works as ways to sell more merchandise.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Comic Strips

Garfield, as its creator Jim Davis would eventually reveal, was created specifically with this kind of marketability in mind. Maybe not as a toy per se (the character was dramatically less toyetic in appearance in the beginning), but definitely as a line of merchandise. Garfield and Friends frequently lampshaded this. In one episode, another cat named Gabriel performs a Hostile Show Takeover, eventually leading Garfield to complain that "He's got my merchandising!"

Robotman, created by United Feature Syndicate in the '80s to be a marketing icon — a rare instance of a character actually being created by a syndicate and handed over to a cartoonist instead of the other way around, and an excellent example of how Merchandise Driven the comic strip industry in general had become by this point. After looking over a comic submitted for syndication by a young Bill Watterson and recommending that he spin off two of its minor characters into their own strip, they asked him to incorporate Robotman into the resulting product. Watterson, unsurprisingly, refused, and wound up not getting the gig. He moved on to rival Universal Press Syndicate, and the rest is history. And what became of Robotman, you ask? He eventually did get his own comic strip, but it never became the marketing boom the syndicate hoped, and was eventually renamed Monty after the eponymous character was written out at the syndicate's own recommendation when they discovered it was hard to market a strip called Robotman.

Calvin and Hobbes: A repeating gag is that Calvin, for all his artistic pretension, definitely wants in on the market share. Calvin: Look at the dopey clay tiger Hobbes made.

Calvin's Mom: Gee Calvin, I think this is good.

Calvin: You LIKE it?? Where's the marketabiity?

Calvin's Mom: Ask Hobbes if we can put it on the coffee table.

Calvin: But look what I made! A hundred shrunken heads of popular cartoon characters!

Calvin's Mom: Eww, you stitched their mouths shut?!

[beat]

Calvin: Gloat now, 'cause some day I'll be a lot richer than you.

Hobbes: I call it "Symphony in Orange, No. 1". Calvin's dad especially rails against the consumerism of mass media, a viewpoint that mirror's Watterson's own. Calvin's Dad: Our lives are filled with machines designed to reduce work and increase leisure. We have more leisure than any man has ever had. And what do we do with this leisure? Educate ourselves? Take up new interests? Explore? Invent? Create?

Calvin: Dad, I can't hear this commercial.

[Calvin is thrown outside]

Calvin: If it were up to my dad, leisure would be as bad as work.



Calvin's Dad: How can you stand these cartoons? They're just half-hour commercials for toys. And when they're not boring, they're preachy. And these characters don't even MOVE. They just stand around blinking! What kind of cartoon is THAT?

Calvin: Meet my dad, the



Calvin's Dad: Watching a Christmas special?

Calvin: Yep.

Calvin's Dad: Another show extolling love and peace interrupted every seven minutes by commercials extolling greed and waste. I hate to think what you're learning from this.

Calvin: I'm learning I need my own TV so I can watch someplace else. Our lives are filled with machines designed to reduce work and increase leisure. We have more leisure than any man has ever had. And what do we do with this leisure? Educate ourselves? Take up new interests? Explore? Invent? Create?Dad, I can't hear this commercial.[Calvin is thrown outside]If it were up to my dad, leisure would be as bad as work.How can you stand these cartoons? They're just half-hour commercials for toys. And when they're not boring, they're preachy. And these characters don't even MOVE. They just stand around blinking! What kind of cartoon is THAT?Meet my dad, the Gene Siskel of Saturday Morning TV Watching a Christmas special?Yep.Another show extolling love and peace interrupted every seven minutes by commercials extolling greed and waste. I hate to think what you're learning from this.I'm learning I need my own TV so I can watch someplace else.

Regularly mocked in Foxtrot, where Jason makes no secret whatsoever that he wants money, not artistic recognition. One of his proposed Slug-man comics was nothing but Slug-man and Paige-o-tron using their various weapons against each other (Each Sold Separately, *batteries not included, and all ending in a Trade Snark) ending with Jason wondering if it was customary to approach network executives or toy manufacturers first. Another had him submit a comic strip to his school newspaper. Jason: Honestly, what do you think of my strip?

Peter: Well, it's not particularly funny...

Peter: And it's not particularly well-drawn...

Peter: In fact, it's probably the lamest thing I've ever seen.

Jason: But will it sell T-shirts?

Peter: My, but you do have pure motives... And this immortal line: Jason: Do you think the world is ready for cartoon-shaped Ty-D-Bol tablets?



Films — Animation

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Several of Margaret Snyder Picture Books come with a Toy.

The American Girls Collection of books is this trope combined with the need for role models. Every book in the series features a new outfit for the starring character, and for her corresponding doll — a school outfit, a Christmas outfit, a birthday outfit, and so on, along with accessories, sometimes even extending into doll furniture. They'll bend the universe of the characters in order to make this work — how does Addy, an escaped slave who is starting life over in the city, manage to get nice new dresses regularly? Her mother is a seamstress. The merchandise ends up working for the series, though, because the accessories are impressively well-researched, and usually end up contributing to the sense of history, or to the story — or both!

Deltora Quest, which started as a standard fantasy series; but gained an anime adaptation with a card game and series of collectible figurines.

The Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 novels published by Black Library sometimes seem like this. Occasionally, it seems like every named character in the Horus Heresy series who doesn't die is condemned for his heresy to spend eternity as an expensive piece of plastic. Horus Heresy isn't really the best example as GW proper does not produce any Heresy-era miniatures (their sister company Forgeworld announced a series of Horus Heresy campaign books and models, but the book series had been going for years before). Many BL books heavily feature special characters from the games and sometimes you can catch hints of new models in books released shortly before a new codex/armybook that feature the army in question.

A series of Barbie novels was published in the 1960s that portrayed the character as a high school student. In 1999, a new series was published for Generation Girl line.

An in-universe example: in Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist, the girl-band G-7 was created by Leggy Starlitz primarily to sell The Merch. The music is only of secondary interest to him.

Live-Action TV

Music

This sort of work is homaged by the energetic Hip hop/Dancehall act Major Lazer with the video for their song "Hold the Line." The film is a mostly animated adventure featuring a Lazer-armed superhero fighting vampires, cut with footage of kids playing with Major Lazer action figures. Even down to the video quality it looks exactly like an '80s toy ad for He-Man or similar. Sadly the toys are unavailable, made for the promo only - especially irritating because they look beautiful.

Pinball

Gottlieb's Canada Dry (a rethemed version of their earlier El Dorado) was produced for a promotional contest in France.

Corvette was released in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the car line.

...and Stern Pinball's Mustang was released for the 50th anniversary.

Played straight with the various Harley Davidson pins.

Professional Wrestling

Puppet Shows

Tabletop Games

Homaged with the Cartoon Action Hour role-playing game. The first version even suggested players think of gimmicks for a corresponding action figure when creating characters.

Warhammer 40,000: What once started as a joke among the fanbase became less of a joke in light of the more obnoxious army rules sets that come out. In the memorable case of the 5th edition Codex Tyranids, the iconic Carnifex, which was once a staple of any Tyranid list worth using for decades on end, was nerfed into near oblivion. But fear not, for Games Workshop's new Tyranid model range is full of winning units, such as the Trygon / Mawloc kit, and the now-ubiquitous Hive Guard. Have fun buying new models, kiddies! Some players think that Games Workshop is steering away from this due to the increasing number of units with complete rules developed long before the models come out. Former examples include the Space Marine Drop Pod, Ork Battlewagon, Tyranid Gargoyles and Tervigon, Chaos Daemons' Seekers of Slaaneesh and Dark Eldar Razorwing, while current examples (as of October 2012) include various special characters like Old Zogwort, Justicar Thawn and Baron Sathonyx and a vast number of Tyranid units including the Harpy, Shrike Brood, Doom of Malan'tai, and Parasite of Mortrex. Forge World, a separate modeling company specializing in resin kits, will sometimes sell kits for these units, but crack is not only cheaper, but has an infinitely simpler assembly. Oddly enough, the company has almost no merch beyond the models and books themselves. Given the rabid fanbase, including many who love the setting but don't play the main tabletop game, this seems an odd choice in an age where even every webcomic sells T-shirts. Currently, apart from selling licences to third parties to make computer, board and role-playing games set in the universe, the line of merch includes generic gaming accessories (not all those GW custom dice sets do anything you couldn't do with a pocketful of regular D6), figure transport cases and paintbrushes, in the hope that the punters won't ever discover that Officeworks also sell paintbrushes. Some of their tools seem to have a reason to exist, e.g. not many manufacturers make a mould line removal implement; but there are some you'd just get at Spotlight or another craft store, and not to mention their special branded super, plastic, and white glues. These are a people who insist on trying to sell you a pot to fill with water to rinse your paintbrush in. They once had a souvenir mug, but apparently it went wrong and was not cleared for food use, so was sold as a different brush-washing pot. Games Workshop undoubtedly swung back in this direction for a while, after their legal team's trademark debacle with the author of Spots the Space Marine a few years back. Almost all units and characters that had rules, but never got official models, eventually disappeared from the tabletop as the books containing their rules were superseded, with only a few exceptions (usually units with official models that went out of production and were never replaced). Likewise, practically all model-less units and characters in Warhammer failed to make the transition to its successor, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, although Games Workshop acknowledged that some players and collectors made their own models for them by recommending units that they could be used to proxy. Another sign of a more merchandise-driven approach was a move towards artwork that replicated the miniatures, detail-for-detail, rather than focusing on exploring the setting beyond the tabletop like in the past (although this may also have been due to an increased reliance on freelance artists). However, recent information about the art direction of Warhammer 40,000's 8th edition suggests that they may be swinging back in the opposite direction again.



Toys

Video Games

Web Animation

Homestar Runner: Parodied with the Show Within a Show Cheat Commandos. The show is not only blatantly market-driven, it doesn't even attempt to hide this fact. Buildings are routinely referred to as "playsets," and one of the toys is called the "action figure storage truck" within the show. "Cheap as Free" (the name of the fictional toy manufacturer) appears every time a new object appears, and the show's theme song includes "Buy all our playsets and toys!" In one episode, they even go through the battery compartment of the Headquarters Playset, where the batteries have been left in too long and have leaked. Silent Rip: No wonder the electronic lights and sounds stopped working. These batteries haven't been changed since Donnie's twelfth birthday! This is particularly ironic since Homestarrunner.com is, itself, entirely supported by merchandise. In fact, they sell an actual set of Cheat Commando figures in the shop, and papercraft playsets are downloadable for free.

Mattel created Monster High just for this reason, also planning a book series and a movie from the get-go.

BIONICLE had many different online animations in its original lifespan (Bohrok Online Animations, Vahki Online Animations, Piraka Online Animations, Stars Battle Videos, etc.) and its 2015 reboot featured a series of 90-second online animations as a means of storytelling (alongside books).

Blank: A Vinylmation Love Story exists to promote Disney's Vinylmation figures.

The DC Super Hero Girls web shorts exist to promote Mattel's line of DC dolls and toys.

Webcomics

Web Original

Western Animation