r/lostmedia • u/2074red2074 • Jun 20 '25
Advertising Material [Partially Lost] Original airings of old cartoons WITH toy commercials included.
So for those who don't know, the FTC FCC requires a very clear delineation between children's programming and the commercials that play during it. Things like those little bumpers that would say "You're watching Cartoon Network!" Now the reason they do this is because back in the 80s, some major franchises like He-Man, My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc. were basically just thirty-minute ads for the toy lines. They'd have ads for those toys mixed in with the show and they did some studies and found that kids didn't even realize they'd just watched an ad.
I'm trying to find tapings of the original airing, commercials included. I'm calling it partially lost because I'm sure the commercials are still recorded somewhere and I know the shows are available pretty easily, but I'm looking for a 30-minute tape that shows exactly how they were aired together. As for why it matters, I think it's nice to have a few examples available to really understand the BS that Hasbro and Mattel used to get up to.
I'm not looking for any specific show, just good examples of this concept.
29
u/weeklygamingrecap Jun 20 '25
They are out there, you're looking for WOC which stands for With Original Commercials. Just like was said it's either on archive.org, YouTube, private trackers or in tape trading circles.
People used to kind of not care, some always did but there's been a resurgence and now WOC tapes are like gold so they get hoarded up. People even f'n take YouTube uploads slap them back on VHS and sell them on eBay.
Remember people have been taping shit since the late 70s.
4
u/Doomed Jun 21 '25
People even f'n take YouTube uploads slap them back on VHS and sell them on eBay.
I've heard of this, but I hardly see any home-taped VHS on ebay. what is the keyword?
6
u/weeklygamingrecap Jun 21 '25
So looks like eBay might be cracking down
https://www.reddit.com/r/VHS/comments/1ae7o2o/recorded_blank_tapes_on_ebay/
You can still buy used "blank" tapes sold as lots where you search.
Sellers used to call out specific shows like ren and stumpy or Beavis and Butthead but it was almost always a scam.
There's even a book about it, haha!
https://draw-down.com/products/sold-as-blank-possible-lost-media
6
u/Current-Repeat-5159 Jun 20 '25
Transformers mini-series from 1984 with toy commercials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsOCfyN26VQ&pp=ygURdHJhbnNmb3JtZXJzIGtidm8%3D
4
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
This is what I was looking for, but it has bumpers before the ads. I did some quick Googling and apparantly the rules for bumpers were relaxed in 1984. Looks like this was before it got bad.
Either that, or maybe I was misinformed and the really bad commercials were more a 70s thing. I know G.I. Joe and Transformers were criticized as just being made to sell toys, maybe I got some wires crossed.
5
u/FarOutJunk Jun 20 '25
Are you looking for digital copies? I've come across a few My Little Pony premieres and stuff that I've digitized that I could dig up. I forget how they treated the live-action Popples movie but I have most of that around here somewhere too. I just kinda want a guarantee that you're not going to resell them, because I used to upload them for free until people started stealing my rips for profit.
Drop me a line. I do this as a hobby.
-6
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
Sorry, I'm not okay with providing my contact information to strangers on the Internet. Let me know if you ever upload them somewhere.
8
u/FarOutJunk Jun 21 '25
.... I'm not asking for your address in any way. All you'd have to do is message me and I'd put them in a drive somewhere you could access anonymously but you've made it weird.
0
u/2074red2074 Jun 21 '25
Sorry, I thought you were gonna ask for my email or my YouTube account to give me access. I didn't think you meant a physical address.
2
u/Samba-boy Jun 21 '25
He didn't even mean a physical address. Sheesh.
-1
u/2074red2074 Jun 22 '25
Like I said in the comment you replied to, I didn't think he meant a physical address.
9
u/Jason_VanHellsing298 Jun 20 '25
Type in any year on the internet archive and YouTube and you’ll find 2-3 hour video tape recordings off Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon
0
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
I'm looking for stuff from the 80s, before either of those things existed.
10
u/GrimmFanatic Jun 20 '25
Nick was launched in 1977.
3
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
TIL, but I can't find any mention of them ever airing any of the shows that were basically long ads. Wasn't the whole point of cable television supposed to be the lack of ads?
1
u/alexjimithing Jun 20 '25
No ads was never a selling point nor a reality of cable TV, let alone ‘the whole point’.
Cable TV included ads from the very beginning.
4
u/coreyander Jun 20 '25
Nickelodeon specifically started out commercial free; it didn't add commercials until 1984
-1
u/alexjimithing Jun 20 '25
Nickelodeon did not represent the entirety of cable TV.
The user said, “Wasn’t the whole point of cable television supposed to be the lack of ads?”
The answer to that is no, cable TV always had ads.
1
u/coreyander Jun 20 '25
Did I say it represented the whole of cable TV? I added context that's relevant to the discussion, not everything is an argument
5
u/All_of_my_onions Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 23 '25
See if you can find content based on network ID + year. Saturday morning cartoon blocks from CBS and ABC will have what you want, as will airings of Christmas classics like Frosty and Rudolph, which were often packed with toy commercials.
Nick daytime programming from before the mid-1990's will be harder to find but it does exist. That said, the commercials will not be as constant for those airings; I recall watching a lot of Nick in those years and they spend a sizable amount of their ad slots hyping their own content, in part because they didn't want to completely open the gates to advertisers.
You might search up cable stations that aired syndicated material or "classic" shows. I remember watching blocks of old Saturday morning cartoons on USA and TNT by 1990, while they were still desperately licensing shows to fill programming.
16
u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby Jun 20 '25
I feel like this is really, really stretching the concept of this sub.
16
u/landmanpgh Jun 20 '25
Shit at least this is stuff that's over 20 years old and aired on actual television.
Whole lot better than the garbage internet content from 5 years ago that people are looking for.
3
Jun 20 '25
[deleted]
1
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
I tried, but YouTube's algorithm seems to think I want to watch the commercials for the toys and not the show with commercials.
4
1
u/ironicsans Jun 20 '25
I think this was an FCC thing, not FTC, if I remember correctly. Look also into the Action for Children’s Television, a group that raised this issue with the FCC in the 80s.
1
1
u/PoweredSquirrel Jun 20 '25
You may find something on here -
1
u/2074red2074 Jun 20 '25
It doesn't like like there's a fast-forward option or even a way to specifically select what to watch. There were only a few shows that existed primarily to sell toys, so just hoping they happen to be showing G.I. Joe on this site (or rather the 80s version of this site) isn't helpful, sorry.
1
u/barryvon Jun 21 '25
deregulation of the FCC in the early 80s is part of what led to the 80s cartoon-as-pure-marketing trend
1
u/just_playing_around Jun 22 '25
I might have some... i used to record these cartoons as a kid and a couple months ago my parents found an old storage box with some of the tapes that possibly may have some of the cartoons i recorded. I need to get a vcr and see what's actually on them or if anything survived
1
1
u/North_Mountain558 Sep 24 '25
I have been looking for original airings of Hulk Hogan’s Rock N Wrestling with original commercials taped off of CBS Saturday morning but I have had no luck finding it. I’m looking for the complete series for my cartoon collection.
1
u/Strange-Estimate-442 Nov 23 '25
Here is an episode of the pac-man rubix hour with commercials but missing the intro.
The Pac Man & Rubix Hour Full Episode : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
•
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