Transformers

This morning while I was walking into work I saw Bumblebee drive by. Sorry, what I meant was I saw a yellow Chevy Camaro drive by and this got me thinking. When I was a kid the Transformers was created as a marketing tool to sell toys. Hell, all cartoons back then existed to sell toys, and it worked. I owned tons of Transformers and I played with them while I watched the show. Then Gi Joe came on and I pulled out those toys, following that He-Man, etc. Here we are 27 years later and my generation is still buying toys because of the Transformers. It went from being a half hour toy commercial to becoming a 2 hour long car commercial. Now I'm buying Transformers for my kids and I bet 20 years from now they will be buying Transformers for their kids reminiscing about and their youth.

What's really amazing to me is that all this stems from a silly little cartoon about robots that turn into cars. I bet no one in 1984 would have ever been able to foresee the marketing genius behind what they were creating.