Optimus Prime from 1984	Optimus Prime from 200

When I was a kid, I remember staring for hours at my Transformers posters and folders, marveling at the detail that was put into each character. I loved the toys because they started off as toy cars and trucks and then turned into cool-looking robots. My friends and I would complain that we had to stick Optimus’s hands onto his arms, because that wasn’t how it worked in the TV show. We would often sit around drawing the characters, trying to mimic every detail so that our drawings looked as realistic as possible.

I doubt today’s generation is doing that with the latest design of the Transformers. I know I’ll probably come off here as being reactionary, but… seriously? Did Optimus Prime really need a cartoony makeover that makes him look like a bad video game character? Is this design something that kids will remember 20 years later? Is this design something that will inspire kids to think about mechanical details, or something that they’ll be inspired to copy until they get it right?

Of course not. The new look for the Transformers isn’t something that kids wanted; it’s a design from some people at the Cartoon Network who are trying to be hip and infuse their own artistic ideas into an established license. Kids will likely watch the show, since it’s being marketed towards them nonstop. But chances are good that, if you asked them, most kids would tell you that they much prefer the realistic look of the Transformers in the old cartoons or in the movies to the new, ultra-stylized look of the latest show.

But then, I’m making a big assumption that kids are the ones who are actually watching the show and buying the toys. That’s not a fair assumption to make, since the Cartoon Network pulls in a surprisingly large number of college students and adults during the afternoon hours, and because there are a sizable number of adults who collect Transformers toys. And even though they’re not the intended target audience, they’re often the most vocal segment when it comes to articulating which changes are good, and which are not.

I bring this up because I’ve come to realize that the whole idea that “cartoons and comic books are for kids” is a big myth. Truth be told, kids prefer things that are realistic; that’s why they gravitate towards shows like the Power Rangers and Hannah Montana and iCarly. As goofy as these shows are, they don’t talk down to kids. In fact, in the kids’ minds, they’re not much different from the shows that parents watch. Kids will watch cartoons, too, since they’ve learned from a young age that cartoons are going to have content that will engage them.

But have you ever stopped and wondered why cartoons got so closely associated with children in the first place?

I haven’t seen a lot of information on this topic, so I’m simply going to speculate here. (Please feel free to correct me in the comments section if you know more!) There was a time when animation was designed for the whole family to enjoy, and though cartoons were generally meant to be funny, they were also used to tell more serious stories (such as the old Tex Avery Superman cartoons, or the Disney films like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty).  But as the medium began to age and adult-oriented entertainment grew more sophisticated, cartoons lost their appeal to older audiences. Since they were very expensive to produce, animators began cutting corners and churning out cartoons with a much lower quality than before. As a result, cartoons lost a lot of their magic and lost their ability to entertain adults. Children still enjoyed them, however, since the cartoons were less sophisticated than the adult-oriented shows and easier for the children to understand. Thus cartoons became something that were primarily aimed at children.

In the 1980s, toy manufacturers realized that, following the merchandising success of the Star Wars films, they could use cartoons to introduce new toy lines. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe went first, becoming the first nationally syndicated cartoon show and inspiring children to buy He-Man action figures so they could replicate the adventures they saw on TV. Shows such as G.I. Joe, Transformers, Care Bears and Rainbow Brite followed, all geared at doing the same thing. What’s really important to remember about each of these shows is that they were designed to sell toys, and so their styles matched the toys quite closely. The idea here was to make children feel that their toys were coming to life onscreen; the designs had to match to sell merchandise.

I suspect that this is exactly why cartoons and children became so closely related to one another, and even though animation has since enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with adults, many companies are still rooted in their old ways of doing things, and they assume that since cartoons have been traditionally associated with kids, that that’s what kids expect from products.

But the problem is that if you actually talk to kids, you’ll find that most of them are more interested in watching March of the Penguins than they are in watching Happy Feet. They’d rather tune in to watch Meerkat Manor than sit through another screening of Madagascar. They get excited about Walking With Dinosaurs, but they’re indifferent to Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

And by the way, they feel exactly the same way about comic books. They love comics with cool, realistic artwork that has a photorealistic quality about it. But they’re much less excited about comic books that are done in a hyper-cartoony style (such as Teen Titans).

I’ve heard a few theories on why kids are this way. Jason Maranto, who’s painting my first book from Army Ant, suggested to me that children reject things that seem childish once they reach the age of 8 or 9 because they’re trying to imitate the grown-ups around them. Teachers I’ve talked to have told me that children naturally want to learn, and tend to gravitate towards things that pique their curiosity and that answer their questions more than things that simply entertain them. My own conversations with children have led me to believe that kids love knowledge because it makes them feel important, and thus they seek it out whenever possible so that they can feel more secure in their place in the world.

Whatever the case is, I’m going to suggest that kid-oriented product creators are generally more interested in telling kids what they want than they are in asking them. And what’s more, this strategy seems to work because these companies are good at influencing the purchase decision makers (parents) while ignoring the end users (kids).

That leads me to believe that there’s a lot of money to be made for those who can enter the market with a clear idea of what kids want. But that information isn’t going to come from thinking inside the box — it’s going to come from developing some radically new concepts that really challenge the ideas of what adults think kids would like to have… and that captures the imagination of the kids themselves.

-SJJ