chuckdawg1999 wrote:I think the problem with giving definitive endings to cartoons is that it might kill the sales of any toys coming out since kids will think the story is over. Leaving things ambiguous, like in "Predacons Rising," allows the thought that things are still "happening."
In a lot of cases, though, there may not be anymore toys to sell. For some examples from the past decade, the Unicron Trilogy cartoons all had definitive endings to their cartoons, as their toylines were also coming to an end.
Thinking about it, pretty much every cartoon after G1 had to have a definitive ending since their toylines were also ending. With Prime Beast Hunters, the only reason the toyline is continuing is because Hasbro needs some filler line product on the shelves between now and AOE, just RiD served to fill the gap between Beast Machines and Armada, and Classics did between Cybertron and the 2007 movie.
Toralei_De_Nile wrote:I suppose a definite ending really does hurt series sales though. When BW First ended those Transmetal 2 figures were shelf warmers even up to RID/Car robots came out.
If there were Transmetal 2 toys shelfwarming that late, then that must have been the fault of the stores ordering too many since there were no more TM2 toys being produced that late in the game (save for Tripredacus Agent). Not to mention that hardly any of them were show characters, so those didn't sell as well as the show character did anyway.
Though, there were a few BW toys being released secondary to the main BM line, but these were either redecos of older toys or the Mutants, which were released as just a means to milk the popularity of BW for all it was worth.
Toralei_De_Nile wrote:Recently-ish when Animated ended two years after Rodimus and Arcee toys were still on Toy's r'us shelves too.
That's because those two toys weren't released until two years after the show ended. Hasbro wanted to drop the Animated line and move on to ROTF and the 2010 toylines, but fan demand for the figures managed to help squeeze those last few Animated toys out to retail, and only Toys"R"Us would carry them. so those two being on the shelves so much after the show ended wasn't due to shelfwarming, but due to such a delayed release for those figures.
Toralei_De_Nile wrote:The wal-mart I worked at still had that giant optimus prime, covered in a gross thick layer of dust in the back room and they put it out in the seasonal aisle during spring and summer time XD
Now that thing shelfwarmed regardless of whether or not the show was airing since very few even wanted that thing.
Wasn't the cartoon (all eras) meant to be glorified advertisements?
