Card Sharks: How Greeting Playing cards Dominated ’80s Cartoons

Put a bonnet on it: How American Greetings created a farm system for unique kid-friendly characters

The early Nineteen Eighties are sometimes seen because the heyday of animated TV reveals, and for good cause. The ideas had been artistic and vibrant, if not fairly so academic. Plus, that they had the good aspect impact of making a halo round which tens of millions of {dollars} price of toys could possibly be bought.

However that additionally meant figuring out properties that would truly translate to a TV setting. And surprisingly, the greeting card business was extraordinarily well-positioned to benefit from the rising recognition of cartoons.

Whereas the business wasn’t precisely recognized for animating stuff, it did foster quite a few graphic artists, together with a number of that discovered vital success in widespread tradition. Most famously, Robert Crumb parlayed his early profession as a workers artist for American Greetings to construct a second profession on the forefront of the underground comix motion. He took benefit of the corporate’s lax remote-work requirements to construct a reputation for himself. (Admittedly, the animated function primarily based on his Fritz the Cat character wouldn’t be a very good Saturday-morning possibility.)

In the meantime, Crumb’s boss Tom Wilson had discovered big success—and a merch alternative for his employer with Ziggy. And to not be outdone, former Hallmark artist Russell Myers had launched a strip of his personal, Broom-Hilda, which had already been tailored in animated type greater than as soon as through the Nineteen Seventies.

Put merely, there was already proof that the greeting card business may generate concepts which may have a life past greeting playing cards. The sector simply wanted to lean into the chance.

The Cleveland-based American Greetings, as highlighted by Wilson’s current success, had the within lane. On prime of Ziggy, the corporate had already seen success with Holly Hobbie, a younger woman wearing rags and a bonnet who liked cats. (Presumably she helped popularize the “loopy cat woman” meme.)

The corporate quickly doubled down by taking these two characters and growing a 3rd from the bottom up. The concept began off within the early ’70s as a easy, cute illustration on a greeting card meant for a granddaughter. Holding a large daisy and carrying a bonnet with strawberries on it, it evoked a sure type of cuteness that made it vastly widespread. Clearly, it was one thing a sensible greeting card firm needed to capitalize on.

And capitalize American Greetings did. After a bit extra R&D, together with a redesign to make the bonnet extra central to the character’s entire vibe, that drawing grew to become Strawberry Shortcake, which first appeared in 1977. It rapidly outpaced Holly Hobbie, rising so profitable that by 1979, the corporate had already arrange multi-million greenback advertising and marketing offers with Kenner and Common Mills. A Plain Supplier piece from that yr famous that Kenner predicted that Shortcake toys would outsell Star Wars toys, which seems like a daring guess, certainly.

In a latest interview with Cleveland Journal, Muriel Fahrion, the artist who designed Strawberry Shortcake, credited Common Mills’ Bernie Loomis for the query that led Strawberry Shortcake to explode. His ask, per Fahrion: “What do you may have that’s for ladies which will probably be simply as huge as Star Wars is with boys?”

The gritty B-movie that impressed the collection Breaking Dangerous.

It paid off rapidly: Per one 1981 story, Strawberry Shortcake drew greater than $100 million in gross sales in its first yr and $300 million in its second yr, a lot of that coming from toy gross sales.

A bolder guess got here in March 1981, when, on the heels of Strawberry Shortcake efficiently elevating the glucose ranges of the American public, American Greetings launched a sub-brand only for product licensing known as These Characters from Cleveland. Wilson, who arguably kicked off the development, was made co-president of the endeavor.

It seems, a giant a part of the rationale they did that is that that they had one thing big on the horizon, manner huger than something the corporate had ever launched earlier than.

A bull marketplace for bears: The massive guess American Greetings made on the Care Bears

Just a few weeks earlier than the creation of These Characters From Cleveland, American Greetings executives met with officers from Kenner to indicate off a brand new set of characters it was engaged on. The Care Bears successfully had been a guess that teddy bears could possibly be up to date for the ’80s, one developed with a toy firm, Kenner, and a meals firm that additionally made toys, Common Mills. And it mainly nailed its viewers to a T.

When Kenner noticed the bears, developed by cartoonist Dave Polter and greeting card artist Elena Kucharik, it instantly felt like a slam dunk.

“They liked it immediately. It was an plain idea,” recalled Ralph Shaffer, the subsidiary’s co-president, in an interview with Cleveland Journal.

However a profitable idea is one factor. The key to creating all of it work is the execution. And for the Care Bears, the plan was surprisingly complicated.

A 1982 Cleveland Plain-Supplier piece described a fancy, excessive worth plan to launch the idea to the general public. American Greetings wasn’t simply launching it themselves, however had already gotten various different corporations on as licensees. Slightly than placing all its eggs right into a single basket, American Greetings was flooding each retail channel it may.

It didn’t even matter when you favored the Care Bears. In 1983, you knew all the things about them. Their numerous cartoon collection, beginning with a pair of specials earlier than increasing to a full collection, aimed for a very younger viewers of viewers, maybe the identical viewers of kids which may have watched Sesame Road.

An R-rated scene from the action-packed, brutally violent film Pulp Fiction.

That meant that when the inevitable film got here out, it created an attention-grabbing set of circumstances. It seems that within the mid-’80s, within the years instantly earlier than the Disney renaissance, there simply weren’t many films focusing on six-year-olds. (Anybody who is aware of the historical past of the MPAA’s G ranking in all probability isn’t stunned.) And because of this, the movie’s launch grew to become a relative hit within the spring of 1985, scoring $22 million within the U.S. alone, about $68 million with inflation.

(To not get all Professor Coldheart over right here, however like many younger boys of the period, I didn’t see the enchantment.)

The reported preliminary spend on all that Care Bears merch? An eye fixed-watering $122.5 million, effectively above that of Strawberry Shortcake’s preliminary outlay. A stable $6 million of that alone went to promoting in print and broadcast mediums. American Greetings guess on Care Bears prefer it was a certain factor, and the American public responded by proving them proper. By the point the primary film got here out (there have been three through the unique ’80s heyday), it was already a billion-dollar enterprise all by itself.

Why did Care Bears pop off a lot? It’s price noting that, at the moment, a need for personalization was beginning to creep into our toys. One other main development selecting up pace in 1983 was the Cabbage Patch Youngsters. That doll’s signature function was that every face was distinctive and got here with a certificates and identify, enjoying into the thought of adoption. Care Bears didn’t go fairly that far, however the many sorts of bears meant that there was one for each disposition. Plus, it’s price noting that teddy bears had been the archetype of the fashionable toy, so there was already a built-in market of individuals prepared to purchase plenty of stuffed animals.

A scene from Care Bears: Unlock the Magic, or as I like to consider it, Inglourious Basterds.

As juggernauts go, it made Ziggy appear type of like a ripple to the large splash the Care Bears made—one robust sufficient that there have been fixed revivals over time, each in movie and on tv. There was even a long-running latest revival of the collection, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic, which ran for over 5 years.

Whereas different American Greetings properties have had success over time—Strawberry Shortcake has additionally seen various revivals—it’s Care Bears which have set the excessive watermark for greeting-card franchises.

Sadly, that signifies that the remainder of the business needed to decide up the scraps.

Raccoons with shirts: Why Hallmark’s greeting-card characters by no means hit Strawberry Shortcake’s heights

It’s price noting that Care Bears acquired a lot of the eye within the Nineteen Eighties, however there was already the same line of well-established characters available on the market by then, the Shirt Tales.

That set of characters, created by Hallmark round 1980, was the corporate’s first actual merchandising success after various makes an attempt. And in contrast to American Greetings’ personal properties, which relied on Canadian animation homes, one-off specials, and TV syndication for a lot of their run, the Shirt Tales had a Hanna-Barbera pedigree and had been surrounded by the same megahit: The Smurfs.

Behind-the-scenes of the band GWAR hanging out of their dressing room.

Sadly, whereas profitable greeting playing cards, the Shirt Tales collection didn’t fairly join in the long term. The present ran for 2 seasons—paling compared to The Smurfs, which ran for eight and had been taking over a 90-minute block of NBC’s Saturday mornings. And whereas I did personal a Shirt Tales drum equipment as a child, I’m certain (like Josh Groban) I’m a part of the one era that had a kind of.

In his 2018 e book on Hanna-Barbera, cultural historian Jared Bahir Browsh slagged the collection and identified that American Greetings kind of beat them at their very own recreation—whereas giving Canadian animation homes an inroad into the U.S.:

The low-quality animation and the fundamental if not illogical storylines that always discovered the characters wandering into precarious conditions with nobody, though they lived in a populated group harm the collection. Shirt Tales was additionally scheduled towards Pac-Man and Warner Brothers shorts, The collection was largely ignored throughout its shocking two-season run on NBC.

Including true insult to the damage that was the failure of the Shirt Tales cartoon collection was the truth that The Care Bears, a collection created by the “These Characters from Cleveland” division of American Greetings, starred of their first particular within the Spring of 1983 along side a extremely profitable plush toy line produced by Kenner.

One cause the Care Bears blew up and the Shirt Tales ripple was a bit much less pronounced, in accordance with Browsh? “These collection, notably the Care Bears, attracted younger females, an afterthought for a lot of animators.”

However one other issue may truly be that the idea of the Shirt Tales wasn’t constructed from the ground-up to be a media empire in fairly the identical manner the Care Bears had been. American Greetings primarily constructed the franchise from the bottom as much as embrace playing cards, toys, and cartoons. In the meantime, Hanna-Barbera primarily needed to invent a storyline for a bunch of animals who had nothing in widespread apart from that they wore T-shirts. That led to some left-field decisions to fill within the gaps, like making Bogey Orangutan discuss kinda like Humphrey Bogart.@tedium.coTo be clear, if cartoons made out of disparate mental property had been going to work, the early ’80s had been the time for it. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, constructed round a group of toys, had the thinnest of supply materials earlier than Filmation acquired its arms on it—and it nonetheless grew to become one of many decade’s largest media franchises. However put merely, These Characters from Cleveland kind of killed it as a result of its animators and enterprise staff handled the method of character growth like an R&D store, not as a cheerful accident.

An previous horror film that they solely pull out when Svengoolie wants a break.

That stated, Hallmark had different properties it was more than pleased to lean into. Its Rainbow Brite franchise, launched with a mannequin nearer to the Care Bears, noticed considerably extra success in mediums outdoors of playing cards, partly as a result of it truly had a narrative and a coordinated advertising and marketing technique. Something to stop a world with out coloration, proper?

However whereas it has seen revivals over time (a contemporary one is seemingly within the works), it’s no Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears on the public-perception entrance. In contrast to Care Bears, which lasted quite a few seasons, Rainbow Brite discovered an viewers primarily based on only a 13-episode run and a 1985 film. Shirt Tales had extra episodes, however Rainbow Brite is the product line Hallmark nonetheless makes.

I can’t make any good jokes for this one, so that you’re caught with a boring previous cutline.

Extra lately, Hallmark has discovered success with the Flash-era personalities Hoops & Yoyo, which had been large enough within the 2000s and 2010s to have prime-time vacation specials. However Hallmark’s model has historically been much less character-driven than American Greetings.

Which is to say that, whereas different greeting card corporations tried constructing manufacturers, this was actually American Greetings’ lane. The corporate had profitable launches later within the ’80s with My Pet Monster and Popples, and American Greetings even created its personal profitable line of toys, Madballs.

However you understand one factor that American Greetings by no means had that Hallmark does? A vastly widespread, broadly considered cable channel—one which Rainbow Brite has barely appeared on.