The Dark Origins of Children’s Programming - Part I
Show Notes and References

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing on through the 90s, there was an obvious thread woven through much of the entertainment that was catered to children of all ages—a dark thread; one tinged black by death and frayed with decay… but the decay of what exactly? And what is it that died? Or who? There was a heavy reliance on themes of danger, death, and the dark, with one very familiar emotion at the center of it all: fear. On this episode, we’ll be exploring where that dark thread of fear came from, and not only why it existed but also why it was allowed to wrap itself around us so tightly, like a string tied around our fingers to keep us from forgetting something we ought not forget… The simple answer? A healthy dose of fear was better than the alternative.

Beginning in the ‘50s and ‘60s…

Our timeline today begins in the 1950s and 60s in the afterglow of both WWII and Korea. There was business to do, and business would be good. They had products to sell and money to make. Life had been hard enough, so now, people decided, let’s make it livable.

Desperate for some semblance of peace and normalcy, the nuclear family became the most popular family structure, a structure which was extraordinarily idealized and romanticized in pop-culture at the time, portrayed in motion pictures and television programs to the point that we still fawn of 50 and 60s nostalgia to this day — examples include Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Mad Men.

And speaking of Mad Men… one industry that began to flourish in this newfound time of peace was advertising. Taking the nuclear family into account, companies had products they needed to sell to the everyday working man, to housewives… And of course, they had products to sell to children, and boy did they sell those products to those children.

Believe it or not, people used to be concerned about the amount of advertising they consumed on a regular basis. I just recently finished watching Mad Men and this is a trope they would return to every-so-often, meeting a character who’d have some snide remark about the impropriety of advertising and how awful it was.

But by this point, in the 1960s, nearly every household had a television, and advertisers realized what TV could do for their industry, especially when it came to products for children, if for no other reason than that children were oftentimes the ones watching the TV. And children, as has always been the case, tend to dictate much of how a family spends their money—mostly food and entertainment.

This phenomenon is commonly known “pester power,” and it often involves a lot of whining and the getting of one’s own way. Sounds a lot like an ex-girlfriend, amirite? Advertisers recognized this mysterious and despicable power children had over their households, so it only made sense that they would begin putting their energy into TV commercials, seeing as how so many children were being raised by the television more more than by their own parents — a scenario that would become more and more common with the increase in divorce rates or households where both parents worked, and therefore, the growth and development of a generation of children that were predominantly left to their own whims and devices, fabricating a personal sense of independence.

This type of child was known as a latchkey kid.

What’s a Latchkey Kid?

Definition according to Wikipedia: Any kid who returns from school to an empty home or is left alone in the home for any length of time with no supervision while the parent is either working or running errands. It can be any age of child, alone or with siblings.

The first generation of children to be exposed to this level of neglect and independence was Generation X, aka kids who grew up in the late 60s, through the 70s, and into the very early 80s. This was happening before outside of the home childcare options were widely available, so a lot of parents had no choice but to leave their kids at home alone.

Now, latchkey kids still exist today. I was a latchkey kid in the late 90s and throughout the 2000s, especially in the summers, and when my sister started driving us to and from school when she was 16, we were latchkeys year-round, because that meant my mom wouldn’t have to be home by a certain time. She’d get home in time to make dinner, and in the summers as long as we were home in time to eat it, everything was fine.

The GenX kids went through their most formative years as, arguably, the least-parented and least-nurtured generation in US history. There have been many studies into the effect this had on the development of that generation. It’s interesting, and I highly recommend looking into it, if any of our listeners are interested in that sort of thing.

Depending on the child, this experience had different results. Some children matured more quickly and took care of home needs, including the raising of their siblings. Other kids didn’t take it so well, resulting in an increase in drug and alcohol abuse, peer pressure scenarios such as taking up smoking, sexual promiscuity, or other behavioral issues derived from a lack of adult attention or intervention. Many were bored and turned to troublemaking just to have something to do. Some kids developed low self-esteem or depression from being left alone so often and for such long periods. Others were simply afraid, maybe even traumatized by certain experiences, so much so that it now walks beside them throughout their adulthood, just as present and commonplace as their own shadow.

Other studies revealed that staying home alone was great and should happen as a part of a child’s development, citing that it’s a much better alternative than staying with a babysitter or another older sibling?? With all these differing studies and results, who’s to say?

Kids latched (get it? Latched?) onto this extreme level of independence, and it actually became such a problem that many cities has youth curfews to make sure kids and teenagers weren’t roaming the streets at night, getting into trouble or putting themselves in danger, leading to the routine, haunting Public Service Announcement: “Do you know where your children are?”

Now, despite parents having to be reminded that they needed to check on their children, and despite the presumptions that they were out there running the streets, joining gangs, and getting up to all sorts of no good mischief, they were not entirely forgotten. There were always activist groups trying to promote the safety and wellbeing of Americas youth. The reality is that most children, latchkey kid or not, just stayed home, bored, watching whatever was on TV. And one of these activist groups, which was called Action for Children’s Television, aka ACT, took issue with the sorts of programming children were consuming on a regular basis.

1968 - ACT Takes a Stand

With this increase in concern for the bombardment of advertisements seen by children—and even worse, advertisements catered TO children—ACT was formed in 1968 in Massachusetts “as a grassroots foundation to improve the quality of children’s programming.”

The first show they targeted, and apparently a quite famous one, was called Romper Room. This was a show for children - the kind where they had a bunch of kids on the stage with the host as she tried to get them to pay attention. The Romper Room Prayer. There was the Magic Mirror moment where the host would say random kids names as though she was talking to them through the TV. The original host lady was one of the creators, Nancy Claster, although the show was franchised and syndicated, so there ended up being multiple hostesses depending on where the show was being created and broadcast. This made the regional broadcasts possible, rather than having to rely on the national broadcast.

Now, this is important: Romper Room had a line of children’s toys that they would try to promote during the show. This was nothing new - product placement was already very common in that time. Hell, soap operas got their name because they were produced by soap companies like Procter&Gamble. They’d been doing on the radio since the 30s.

The reason it’s very important to note that Romper Room had a line of children’s toys is because in 1969 Romper Room Inc. was bought by Hasbro.

But more on that later.

ACT didn’t like this because they thought the host of an educational children’s show should be focused on teaching children, not selling them products.

This was just the beginning. ACT also went after some of the more violent shows that kids were watching — Space Ghost, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, Fantastic Four, along with soooo many others — and cleared the way for new shows such as “Dastardly and Muttley,” and “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?” which wasn’t as violent, sure, but it did rely heavily on a child’s sense of fear, poking and prodding it at every turn, ingraining into their young minds that it’s always us humans who are the actual monsters of this world. And yes, we will be covering the original Scooby-Doo series, don’t you worry.

So not only did ACT step in and literally begin changing children’s programming, like immediately, but they also invested a lot of time, effort, and probably a lot of money throughout the 1970s in psychological studies on what types of affects advertising had on the developing brains of children.

Children’s Psychology Reveals Developmental Consequences of Advertising

You ready for this? They found that children cannot differentiate between a cartoon and a commercial, and the younger you were, the harder it was to differentiate. This was a psychological FACT that advertisers relied on completely, because they needed their commercials to have as much of an impact on children as the shows themselves did.

ACT requested that the Federal Communications Commission (aka the FCC) regulate these advertisements. Because of their findings, they saw it as an attack on children. It was taking advantage of kids, honestly… In other words, exploiting them? Maybe?

ACT suggested guidelines such as a minimum of 14 hours of programming for children of all ages throughout the week, no commercial breaks during children’s shows, and that children’s show hosts couldn’t sell products. They also wanted shows to announce when the program was pausing and a commercial was beginning, aka “This show will be back after these messages…”

1980 - Ronald Reagan Takes the Reins…

When Reagan was elected in 1980, one of his moves was to appoint Mark Fowler as the new head of the FCC… And one of Fowler’s first moves was to deregulate everything that had been in place up until that time. He allegedly claimed that the marketplace should decide what would be successful and what wouldn’t, that nobody should stand in way of what these companies wanted to advertise or promote, or what have you. Either children would like it or they wouldn’t.

So, all of the efforts of ACT up until this point were rendered inconsequential. ACT fought as hard as they could; started a task force, compiled 60,000 pages of expert testimony from child psychological, nutritionists, and educators. But 60,000 pages of what I’m sure were called “professional opinions” were nothing compared to the 16 million dollars raised to lobby against this task force.

Fowler won, veritably signing the death warrant for many educational and beloved shows. Among these shows were classics such as Captain Kangaroo and Schoolhouse Rock, which I remember from old video cassettes in school when we had a sub or the teacher had to grade papers or something.

Let’s all take a deep breath. This is when some of our favorite, earliest childhood memories were born.

Manufacturers and advertisers could now do just about anything they wanted. This is why we were constantly bombarded with commercials for toys, cartoons and other shows, candy, junk food, fast food, you name it - if it was colorful and desirable and bad for children, this is when it was finally allowed to be on television.

My Little Pony. Sock’Em Boppers.

This statistic is fun — there was a 300% increase in cartoons that had licensed characters. Honestly, these shows basically existed to sell toys and other products. Garfield. Smurfs. Carebears. Snorks. The Chipmunks. The list goes on and on and on.

This is why I said it’s an important detail that Hasbro bought Romper Room Inc, a mere decade before. Because Hasbro, among others I’m sure, created shows to specifically sell their own products. If it weren’t for Reagan’s great deregulation, the 80s never would’ve seen some of Hasbro’s finest work - cartoons such as G.I. Joe and Transformers.

These two have been referred to as a masterclass in selling products to children. There are some insane statistics mentioned in this article I read, but the one I found most fascinating was that the 1986 Transformers movie featured the deaths of a few major characters, including Optimus Prime, JUST SO THEY COULD GET RID OF THOSE DISCONTINUED PRODUCTS AND INTRODUCE A NEW CAST OF CHARACTERS AND SELL ALL NEW TOYS THAT SAME YEAR. I kind of love how Optimus Prime had the same fate as Sherlock Holmes - there was so much outrage over his death that he was resurrected in 1987.

The Power of the Cartoon Mascot

Cereal and junk food companies were now free to completely disguise their commercials as cartoons, This is why every single sugary breakfast cereal has a cartoon mascot. It’s why nearly every product that’s catered specifically to children has always had a character of some sort, or utilized a character from some cartoon or TV show to sell that product. using anthropomorphism as a common tactic, which is why most of the mascots are animals. This is also why Joe Camel sold cigarettes - to make them more appealing to children. TV show characters and movie stars are STILL selling products to this day, because guess what - it doesn’t just work on children.

Toys. Junk food. “Pester power.”

All of this insanity was enough for congress to take a look at it in 1988 and decide to set some guidelines in place. There was a limit set to the number of minutes a network could air commercials that differed between weekdays and weekends. Cartoons also had to have some kind of educational component, such as G.I. Joe’s “and knowing is half the battle.”

This passed at a 328-78 vote in the House of Representatives, but as his last act as president in November 1988, Reagan vetoed the bill.

By now you might be asking yourself, how were parents okay with this? Why was it allowed to continue? Why weren’t more parents invested in the types of entertainment their children were consuming? Well, there’s a very good, very bad, and very dark reason for this…which we’ll cover in Part II!