Which Came First: The Toy or the Cartoon? Turns Out, It’s Complicated.

For most of my life, I think I just assumed the cartoon came first.

You watched something on TV, loved the characters, and then somebody made toys of them because kids wanted to play with them.

Seems logical.

Except… that is absolutely not how it always happened.

Sometimes the toy came first. Sometimes the cartoon came first. Sometimes they were basically developed alongside each other. Sometimes the whole thing started with a comic book, a greeting card or a video game.

And sometimes the cartoon you loved as a kid existed, at least partly, because somebody wanted you to buy the toys.

Which does make you look back at childhood slightly differently. 😂

So… which actually came first?

Let's start with He-Man.

Mattel launched the original Masters of the Universe toy line in 1982. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe followed on television in 1983, based on the toy line. 

So in that case:

Toy first. Cartoon second.

And suddenly the enormous castles, vehicles, creatures and seemingly endless cast of characters make a lot of sense.

Then there's Transformers.

This one gets even stranger.

Before Optimus Prime and the Autobots were Transformers, some of the physical toy designs already existed in Japan as part of Takara's Diaclone and Micro Change ranges. Hasbro acquired the rights to those transforming robot toys and developed Transformers for the American market, with Marvel helping create the characters and backstory. The Transformers brand arrived in 1984. 

So the robots existed before the story we associate with them.

Toy first again.

But then you get something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Surely that was a cartoon that became toys?

Nope.

The Turtles began in a comic created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984. The success of the comic opened the door to licensing and eventually the enormous cartoon-and-toy phenomenon most kids remember. 

So now we've got:

Comic → cartoon/toys → absolute childhood takeover.

And then there's Strawberry Shortcake.

She wasn't originally a doll or a cartoon character.

She appeared on an American Greetings card in 1973, with the familiar classic character emerging later in the decade. Kenner's famous scented dolls arrived in 1980 — the same year as her first animated television special. 

Greeting card → toys and television.

I definitely wouldn't have guessed that as a kid.

And then Pokémon comes along and ruins the question entirely

Pokémon is another good example of why “toy or cartoon?” doesn't always work.

Neither.

It began with the video games.

And yet, growing up, Pokémon was the TV show to me.

I had a few toys, and the cards came later. I actually remember starting with one card and somehow ending up with more through trading.

Yu-Gi-Oh! cards happened much the same way.

There was something magical about childhood trading where apparently no money needed to change hands and yet your collection could somehow multiply.

I don't really remember caring about where Pokémon had originally come from.

It was just… Pokémon.

And that's probably the interesting part.

Once these franchises became big enough, the line between the thing and the merchandise for the thing almost disappeared.

My childhood looked a little different

I was born in the mid-90s, so I wasn't sitting in front of the television waiting for the latest He-Man episode.

My childhood television was things like Rugrats, Teletubbies, Noddy, Magic Mountain, The Magic School Bus, Barney and Johnson & Friends.

And strangely, I don't remember there being mountains of merchandise in New Zealand for many of them.

Teletubbies and Barney were different.

I've been told that when the Teletubbies toys came out, my grandmother waited in a massive line at The Warehouse so she could get one each for my brother and me.

As a kid, obviously I didn't appreciate the logistics involved here.

Toy appears on television.

Child wants toy.

Grandmother somehow ends up standing in an enormous queue.

Seems reasonable. 😂

But that story also shows just how powerful television could be.

You didn't need to explain a Teletubby to a child who watched the show.

Put Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa or Po on a shelf and we already knew exactly what we were looking at.

Then there were the ads.

If the cartoons weren't enough, the 2000s had another weapon.

Toy commercials.

I remember seeing advertisements and immediately wanting whatever they were selling.

Girl Tech is one I still remember, but there were so many that they've mostly blended together now.

And I don't remember sitting there thinking:

"Hmm. This advertisement has been carefully constructed to create consumer demand."

I was a child.

My thought process was considerably more sophisticated:

I NEED THAT.

😂

It was basically FOMO before we knew what FOMO was.

The kids in the advertisement were having the greatest day of their lives. The toy looked incredible. Everything was brightly coloured. Whatever it did looked approximately 400% more exciting in the commercial than it probably was once you got it home.

And suddenly you needed one too.

And don't even get me started on the catalogues.

Before online wishlists, we had a pen and a catalogue.

The Warehouse.

Farmers.

Chrisco.

You'd sit there and circle what you wanted.

And circle something else.

And something else.

And somehow by the time you reached the back of the catalogue you'd produced a Christmas list with the approximate value of a small car.

Those catalogues were dangerous. 😂

There was something different about seeing page after page of toys laid out in front of you.

You could study them.

Compare them.

Go back to the page later.

Circle your favourites.

And then leave the catalogue somewhere incredibly obvious in the hope that an adult might take the hint.

Looking back, it was basically offline online shopping.

The method changed. The idea didn't.

Kids today don't experience this in quite the same way.

Traditional toy advertising obviously still exists, but now there's YouTube, TikTok, influencers, unboxing videos and people demonstrating products directly to an audience.

The sales pitch can feel less like:

“HERE IS A COMMERCIAL FOR A TOY.”

And more like:

“Look at this cool thing I'm using.”

My own kids aren't particularly caught up in the influencer side of it, but it's impossible not to see how much children's marketing has changed.

And yet the basic idea really hasn't.

Show somebody something exciting often enough and there's a decent chance they'll start wanting it.

We were watching commercials.

They might be watching somebody unbox it.

Different screen.

Same “I want one” feeling.

And apparently it still works on adults.

Here's where things get particularly funny.

We didn't actually grow out of it.

The marketing just got better at finding us.

A new movie, television series or reboot can suddenly remind thousands of adults that something from their childhood exists.

And I see that effect through Previously Played With.

When a remake or new movie brings an older franchise back into the spotlight, interest in the original items can suddenly pick up again.

Barbie was a huge example.

When the 2023 movie arrived, collectors and dealers reported a noticeable surge of interest in older Barbie dolls. One Australian collector told ABC that the film had significantly affected doll collecting, while retailers elsewhere reported sharp increases in Barbie enquiries and sales around the movie's release. 

Think about that.

A toy launched in 1959.

A movie arrives more than six decades later.

And suddenly people are hunting through cupboards, op shops and online listings looking for old Barbies again.

The screen is still selling the toy.

Except now some of the children watching have mortgages.

So were our cartoons just really long toy commercials?

Sometimes?

Kind of.

But I don't think that's the whole story.

Because something can begin as marketing and still become genuinely important to the people who grow up with it.

We didn't care about licensing strategies.

We cared whether He-Man was going to beat Skeletor.

We didn't know anything about Hasbro licensing Japanese robot toys.

We knew Optimus Prime.

A child watching Strawberry Shortcake wasn't thinking about American Greetings or Kenner.

And I certainly wasn't watching Teletubbies thinking about the commercial potential of four brightly coloured creatures with televisions in their stomachs.

They were characters.

They became memories.

And eventually, for some of us, they became things we wanted to find again.

Maybe that's why this whole cycle still works so well.

First you sell the child the toy.

Then, 30 years later, nostalgia sells it to them again. 😂

And somewhere in between, your grandmother has stood in a ridiculous queue at The Warehouse trying to get you a Teletubby.

---

Now I want to know: what TV show, movie or advertisement made you absolutely NEED the toy as a kid? And did you ever actually get it? 👇