Was Hamtaro's Chances of Success in The US Sabotaged?

[Tommypezmaster]

Watching retrospective videos of the franchise and was wondering if the US sabotaged Hamtaro being a hit in the states?

I feel like the reason was because some people were not happy about it's inclusion on the Toonami block back in 2002 & after it got removed from there, it got on inaccessible early morning timeslots causing low ratings. Cause of this, they gave up trying to make it a thing in the US. Leaving a large chunk of the show undubbed.

I feel like it could've done better if was put on FoxBox or Kids WB back in the day. What do you think?

 

[Daikun]

A cutesy hamster show which would've fit easily on Nick Jr. didn't fit on an action-focused block like Toonami.
Yeah, it probably would've fared better on a different kids block so it wouldn't feel out of place, or just a different time slot elsewhere on Cartoon Network.

I wouldn't say it was "sabotaged;" it was just a short-sighted marketing decision in an attempt to appeal to as many viewers as possible. Toonami was HUGE in the early 2000s, so of course they figured putting Hamtaro there would have as many eyeballs on the screen at that moment. Too bad the higher-ups didn't understand the point of Toonami--its purpose is to serve adrenaline-pumping action to a wide audience. It's not meant to be an all-purpose anime block. That's where they screwed up.

 

[Frontier]

I still remember watching Hamtaro religiously growing up .

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

It wasn’t sabotaged in the sense that it was deliberately set up to fail. They had it on two parallel runs in before school timeslots and after school Toonami timeslots. One run was offset 20 episodes from the other. As a result it was running in a weird order where you had to watch twice a day and the early morning episodes assume you had already seen the first four weeks of Toonami episodes. If Toonami hadn’t expanded from 2 to 3 hours, Hamtaro probably wouldn’t even have been on the block. But post Kids WB Toonami ending, they got an extra hour back. They could’ve put it at 3:30 as a Toonami lead in instead of Sailor Moon. But it would’ve been a waste to air that early when kids are still coming home from school, outside of the main Toonami block without the hype of Toonami lineup promos and bumpers. Rarely was the 3:30 slot promoted. When other anime like Zoids premiered just before Toonami, they were inevitably folded into the actual Toonami block, and did better there.

Hamtaro ran into problems with season 2, which didn’t even air on Toonami. I never saw season 2 until the 2020s, because it aired at 3:30 PM, then was moved to the even worse 2:00 PM in spring 2003. Season 2 received little to no promotion compared to the new SVES and Toonami TOM3 lineups. The period it was on Toonami, it actually received a major marketing push and key before and afterschool timeslots.

The problem is TOM3 pushed things in an ultra edgy direction really pushing it for weekday afternoons, with shows suited to late Saturday night like Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho. Toonami in the TOM3 Gothic Font era airing Hamtaro in the spring 2003 TOM3 lineup instead of the DBZ Kid Buu Saga, G Gundam and He-Man would’ve been totally ridiculous. TOM2 could easily air Hamtaro before he constantly aired girly magical girl shows like Powerpuff Girls, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, and even harem anime like Tenchi Muyo which Viz said in their manga letters columns was mainly read by young girls.

TOM3 obviously wasn’t going to air Totally Spies and Hamtaro so they aired just outside the block instead and inevitably created the conditions for Miguzi to replace Toonami. TOM3 airing old style robot anime like Cyborg 009 and Astro Boy just didn’t appeal much to teenage girls. The one robot anime Sean Akins said had good ratings with the viewers CN wanted on TOM3 weekdays was SD Gundam Force. Even though adult fans hated this poor CGI parody of Gundam, it was bright, colorful, and silly and did well with CN’s increasingly young skewing audience. The dilemma of Toonami after AS appeared was do they continue to hack up mature shows like Kenshin and Gundam Seed, removing all the references to death in shows about the guilt of killing? Or do they aim at the audience CN wants, kids of both genders and a wide age range. It seemed like the shows that did best in 2003-2004 were action comedies with appeal to both genders: Teen Titans and Jackie Chan Adventures often got 2-3 weekly slots on SVES and early Saturday Toonami. Yet for some reason, JCA and Hamtaro never aired on Miguzi. Hamtaro’s main city era appearances were Halloween special on Fridays and the Saturday block party marathon to promote one of the games. Maybe in some AU, Code Lyoko is on Toonami and Hamtaro is on Miguzi in 2004.

 

[JUS28]

It wasn’t sabotaged in the sense that it was deliberately set up to fail. They had it on two parallel runs in before school timeslots and after school Toonami timeslots. One run was offset 20 episodes from the other. As a result it was running in a weird order where you had to watch twice a day and the early morning episodes assume you had already seen the first four weeks of Toonami episodes. If Toonami hadn’t expanded from 2 to 3 hours, Hamtaro probably wouldn’t even have been on the block. But post Kids WB Toonami ending, they got an extra hour back. They could’ve put it at 3:30 as a Toonami lead in instead of Sailor Moon. But it would’ve been a waste to air that early when kids are still coming home from school, outside of the main Toonami block without the hype of Toonami lineup promos and bumpers. Rarely was the 3:30 slot promoted. When other anime like Zoids premiered just before Toonami, they were inevitably folded into the actual Toonami block, and did better there.

Hamtaro ran into problems with season 2, which didn’t even air on Toonami. I never saw season 2 until the 2020s, because it aired at 3:30 PM, then was moved to the even worse 2:00 PM in spring 2003. Season 2 received little to no promotion compared to the new SVES and Toonami TOM3 lineups. The period it was on Toonami, it actually received a major marketing push and key before and afterschool timeslots.

The problem is TOM3 pushed things in an ultra edgy direction really pushing it for weekday afternoons, with shows suited to late Saturday night like Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho. Toonami in the TOM3 Gothic Font era airing Hamtaro in the spring 2003 TOM3 lineup instead of the DBZ Kid Buu Saga, G Gundam and He-Man would’ve been totally ridiculous. TOM2 could easily air Hamtaro before he constantly aired girly magical girl shows like Powerpuff Girls, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, and even harem anime like Tenchi Muyo which Viz said in their manga letters columns was mainly read by young girls.

TOM3 obviously wasn’t going to air Totally Spies and Hamtaro so they aired just outside the block instead and inevitably created the conditions for Miguzi to replace Toonami. TOM3 airing old style robot anime like Cyborg 009 and Astro Boy just didn’t appeal much to teenage girls. The one robot anime Sean Akins said had good ratings with the viewers CN wanted on TOM3 weekdays was SD Gundam Force. Even though adult fans hated this poor CGI parody of Gundam, it was bright, colorful, and silly and did well with CN’s increasingly young skewing audience. The dilemma of Toonami after AS appeared was do they continue to hack up mature shows like Kenshin and Gundam Seed, removing all the references to death in shows about the guilt of killing? Or do they aim at the audience CN wants, kids of both genders and a wide age range. It seemed like the shows that did best in 2003-2004 were action comedies with appeal to both genders: Teen Titans and Jackie Chan Adventures often got 2-3 weekly slots on SVES and early Saturday Toonami. Yet for some reason, JCA and Hamtaro never aired on Miguzi. Hamtaro’s main city era appearances were Halloween special on Fridays and the Saturday block party marathon to promote one of the games. Maybe in some AU, Code Lyoko is on Toonami and Hamtaro is on Miguzi in 2004.

That's great information, @J'onn J'onzz! I'm curious of how what Jim Samples was thinking at the time when it happened.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

That's great information, @J'onn J'onzz! I'm curious of how what Jim Samples was thinking at the time when it happened.

Jim Samples from 2004 on Toonami:

Cartoon Network Shifts Toonami To Saturday, Creates Miguzi

www.awn.com

From 2004 on CN upcoming shows:

Cartoon Network Unveils New Shows

ATLANTA -- Feb. 25, 2004 -- In 2004, Cartoon Network will telecast more new episodes than ever before in its 11-year history, it was announced today at...

www.animenewsnetwork.com

Key quote:

"We know that kids have voracious appetites for new shows, so we'll have more new programming on Cartoon Network in 2004 than ever before. By greenlighting more new shows faster, ramping up production of current hits and aggressively acquiring new series, we'll have twice the amount of new programming on our air this year than we did in 2002," said Jim Samples, executive vice president and general manager, Cartoon Network. "I'm confident that our new shows will not only solidify our current lead with boys, but will continue the growth in girls viewing that started earlier this year."
This is from February 2004–the Miguzi shows are already licensed but a couple months from the block premiering. Teen Titans is referenced as the top new show of 2003. Samples mentions growth in the girl demographic as a key focus.

Toon Net tunes sked with Kids WB

Cartoon Network and Kids WB promised more new programming and more collaboration between the two Wednesday as the sibling channels unveiled their 2004-05 offerings.

variety.com

But in all the articles from 2004, Hamtaro is never mentioned as a priority, even though CN still held the rights. I have to assume Totally Spies did better than it with a girls demographic.

I’d be curious of whether Hamtaro even had more male or female fans. Airing on Toonami and never really being fully marketed to girls, it seems to be considered a cozy and nostalgic show by even a lot of male millennial otaku. The Ocean dub is also very charming, with the beautiful voice of Moneca Stori as Laura sounding a lot like her Kagome in InuYasha. I think Hamtaro probably has decent cross gender appeal, despite being a rare slice of life anime on Toonami. Like how InuYasha has a prominent female and male protagonist, Hamtaro is male while Laura is female, balancing the human and hamster subplots.
Edit: even in the timeline where Toonami gets to keep all 7 SVES hours; they still never finish airing Hamtaro.

Toonami Saturday Schedule

New Toonami Schedule Premieres on April 17th // On Saturday April 17th, the new Saturday Toonami block will premiere. Running from 7pm to 2am the 7 hour block...

www.animenewsnetwork.com

Since Hamtaro was never on Saturday nights and long off Toonami, it didn’t even make the cut on a block with room for 14 shows. Even knights of the zodiac would’ve survived this scenario. However 11-2 were ceded to AS before 7 hour Toonami could occur.

 

[Space Cadet]

As a religious Toonami viewer at the time, I did watch the show because it was on the block but even when I was 14-15 at the time, I knew the show felt out of the place. It should have been a Saturday morning show. It would have been perfect for Nickelodeon or even Disney Channel if they were interested in airing anime and considering the high ratings they had at the time, they had no use for it. That being said, I did enjoy the show for the most part, although it's not my favorite Toonami show by a long shot.

The one fun fact that I ended up learning not too long ago is when I was getting into the music of the long-running J-pop idol girl group Morning Musume, their popular subunit, Mini-Moni did music for the movies and also voiced characters(they voiced the Mini-Hamus).

 

[Tohya]

Watching retrospective videos of the franchise and was wondering if the US sabotaged Hamtaro being a hit in the states?

I feel like the reason was because some people were not happy about it's inclusion on the Toonami block back in 2002 & after it got removed from there, it got on inaccessible early morning timeslots causing low ratings. Cause of this, they gave up trying to make it a thing in the US. Leaving a large chunk of the show undubbed.

I feel like it could've done better if was put on FoxBox or Kids WB back in the day. What do you think?

Sabotage is a hot take when you really look at what was actually happening to Toonami in 2001–2002 lol.

Anyways, from what I remember, its lack of success had more to do with failed Merchandising then anything else. I mean, it was actually doing way better numbers when it was kicked off Toonami and moved to the mornings. Like, its peak dominance occurred in that specific 7am slot. Like....like it was a ratings GIANT once it as put in front of its target demo (lmao imagine that). But unfortunately if you were an imported anime from Japan where you generated billions in merch and you find none of that stateside, well, Cartoon Network circa 2002 wasn't going to invest in dubbing your show past the 104 episodes needed for syndication. Dubbing was super expensive back then and if toys werent paying the bill it was GGs for your show.

Could it of done better on Kids WB? Hilarious, not when Pokemon and Yugi-oh dominated those blocks. It would have been buried in the 6am death slot right next to Cardcaptors and Escaflowne. And since Hamtaro's merch revolved around plushes and school supplies (far from the legendary three pillared model of a competitive hook, card game factor and game boy synergy), it probably wouldn't had even made it past 52 episodes. On Fox Box im a little less sure but I feel like it would have gotten walled by the blocks "action" first cartoons.

Anyways, no sabotage. It's was really just the simple case of it having a misaligned retail footprint.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

Sabotage is a hot take when you really look at what was actually happening to Toonami in 2001–2002 lol.

Anyways, from what I remember, its lack of success had more to do with failed Merchandising then anything else. I mean, it was actually doing way better numbers when it was kicked off Toonami and moved to the mornings. Like, its peak dominance occurred in that specific 7am slot. Like....like it was a ratings GIANT once it as put in front of its target demo (lmao imagine that). But unfortunately if you were an imported anime from Japan where you generated billions in merch and you find none of that stateside, well, Cartoon Network circa 2002 wasn't going to invest in dubbing your show past the 104 episodes needed for syndication. Dubbing was super expensive back then and if toys werent paying the bill it was GGs for your show.

Could it of done better on Kids WB? Hilarious, not when Pokemon and Yugi-oh dominated those blocks. It would have been buried in the 6am death slot right next to Cardcaptors and Escaflowne. And since Hamtaro's merch revolved around plushes and school supplies (far from the legendary three pillared model of a competitive hook, card game factor and game boy synergy), it probably wouldn't had even made it past 52 episodes. On Fox Box im a little less sure but I feel like it would have gotten walled by the blocks "action" first cartoons.

Anyways, no sabotage. It's was really just the simple case of it having a misaligned retail footprint.

They did try to rollout game boy Hamtaro games but it was too late in the game. The Hamtaro GBC game was so late in the cycle that the commercials emphasized GBA could play it too. There’s also a GBA game Ham-Ham Heartbreak which came out in America. To give an idea of how screwy the American release schedule was, CN did a marathon to promote Rainbow Rescue on August 21, 2004, even though it didn’t even end up meeting the July 4, 2004 release deadline! In fact it was never released here at all and to play it in English you’ll have to import it from the UK…

To be fair to Cardcaptors, it never aired at 6 am nationally. Kids WB as a standard Saturday morning block didn’t start until 8, and then later 7 AM with the Pillowhead Hour. Though some markets did shuffle things around especially for the Kids WB weekday airings which in Arizona were randomly interspersed with Fox Kids weekday lineup in the morning and afternoon on WB which aired both on channel 61. Cardcaptors actually often got pretty good slots, and lasted a year or two, which is a lot longer than Escaflowne’s month or two. If you look at the schedules up through September 2001, it took slots from big WB comedies like Pinky and the Brain and DCAU shows like Batman and Superman. Cardcaptors regularly aired just next to Pokemon. They didn’t really deathslot it until they used Kids WB Toonami on weekday afternoons to quickly rush through season 2, after Yu-Gi-Oh took its slot on September 29. If you look at the improvised post 9/11 schedules from 9/15 and 9/22, the Mummy, Nightmare Room, and Yu-Gi-Oh were all delayed two weeks, due to themes of Egypt and horror being too sensitive for the immediate post 9/11 climate. During the Super Stuffed Saturdays used to kill time for a couple weeks, they gave Cardcaptors a full hour of premieres both weeks. I recall CC was also used on CN’s Kids WB spotlight slot on Friday nights next to CCF, Toonami, and Samurai Jack, to kill a week before the Mummy and Yu-Gi-Oh! could premiere. They tried their hardest to make it a hit, making a soundtrack, heavily re-ordering and re-writing it, but it just didn’t work after it had to compete with Yu-Gi-Oh and other new shows. More hardcore anime also hit Toonami during CC’s run: Gundam Wing, Tenchi, Outlaw Star, Mobile Suit Gundam, 08th MS were all competing with Kids WB, offering more authentic Japanese experiences complete with Japanese music and names, making CC seem like the hackdub it is now known as. By September 2001, Cowboy Bebop was now premiering on AS with a TV-14 rating. The anime market began moving more to target older audiences and primarily males,… so Cardcaptors’ run on CN in 2001 was only the spotlight slot and three weeks on Toonami, to build hype for Season 2 on Kids WB.

 

[Takao]

I think whomever is sitting on the rights (Viz) is sabotaging any current year success by doing absolutely nothing with it. We've lived through a decade of cute mascot characters being pretty commonplace in the Anglosphere and somehow, a cute hamster with some nostalgia value has been entirely MIA.

 

[Santana434]

I have a feeling, coming from a person who loved Hamtaro anime. I just think CN doesn't know what the hell to do with Hamtaro and can't figure out what decent timeslot to put in, considering toonami was still on weekdays that period. I mean when the show first aired on CN in the Summer 2002. it aired 2 new episodes a day, one in the morning, and the other in the afternoon, but as time went on it seemed hamtaro struggled to find its audience, Sure it gained some marketing like Video games, some toys and even Burger King Toys during Halloween season of 2003. Then when season 2 came out, things took a worse for Hamtaro it aired in such a bad timeslot on weekdays, and after CN Halloween of 2004, Hamtaro was completely removed from the lineup all together. It probably would've been better if Hamtaro aired on Disney Junior(formally known as Playhouse Disney at the time), or Nick Jr, but the problem is both of those channels rarely aired anything anime related compared to CN's. So my best bet, would probably be Foxbox at the time, but we dont know how much 4kids will censored it, But Hamtaro is already a kiddy friendly show so there isn't much to censor. Because 4kids actually didn't censor Kirby anime as much so maybe it can work there.

 

[Golden Geek]

I think whomever is sitting on the rights (Viz) is sabotaging any current year success by doing absolutely nothing with it. We've lived through a decade of cute mascot characters being pretty commonplace in the Anglosphere and somehow, a cute hamster with some nostalgia value has been entirely MIA.

I'm shocked Viz would still have those rights, but considering their manga department, it's hardly the first time they've sat on rights for years and years before deciding to do something or finally letting it go to someone who actually wants to do something.

 

[Takao]

Hamtaro is a Shogakukan property outright (to the point the brand's official Japanese website is hosted under their domain) with no else besides TV Tokyo and the author in the show's copyright line, so I kind of assume Viz likely has it by default as their subsidiary. Maybe worth noting that Hamtaro.com still redirects to Viz's site, too.

You don't even need to re-release the show or manga. Like I said, simply getting the plush and other character goods available in the west seems like a no-brainer given the cute character trend. If you can buy officially licensed, localized Gudetama merch in the U.S. and Canada, I don't see how Hamtaro would have no market.

 

[Tohya]

They did try to rollout game boy Hamtaro games but it was too late in the game. The Hamtaro GBC game was so late in the cycle that the commercials emphasized GBA could play it too. There’s also a GBA game Ham-Ham Heartbreak which came out in America. To give an idea of how screwy the American release schedule was, CN did a marathon to promote Rainbow Rescue on August 21, 2004, even though it didn’t even end up meeting the July 4, 2004 release deadline! In fact it was never released here at all and to play it in English you’ll have to import it from the UK…

To be fair to Cardcaptors, it never aired at 6 am nationally. Kids WB as a standard Saturday morning block didn’t start until 8, and then later 7 AM with the Pillowhead Hour. Though some markets did shuffle things around especially for the Kids WB weekday airings which in Arizona were randomly interspersed with Fox Kids weekday lineup in the morning and afternoon on WB which aired both on channel 61. Cardcaptors actually often got pretty good slots, and lasted a year or two, which is a lot longer than Escaflowne’s month or two. If you look at the schedules up through September 2001, it took slots from big WB comedies like Pinky and the Brain and DCAU shows like Batman and Superman. Cardcaptors regularly aired just next to Pokemon. They didn’t really deathslot it until they used Kids WB Toonami on weekday afternoons to quickly rush through season 2, after Yu-Gi-Oh took its slot on September 29. If you look at the improvised post 9/11 schedules from 9/15 and 9/22, the Mummy, Nightmare Room, and Yu-Gi-Oh were all delayed two weeks, due to themes of Egypt and horror being too sensitive for the immediate post 9/11 climate. During the Super Stuffed Saturdays used to kill time for a couple weeks, they gave Cardcaptors a full hour of premieres both weeks. I recall CC was also used on CN’s Kids WB spotlight slot on Friday nights next to CCF, Toonami, and Samurai Jack, to kill a week before the Mummy and Yu-Gi-Oh! could premiere. They tried their hardest to make it a hit, making a soundtrack, heavily re-ordering and re-writing it, but it just didn’t work after it had to compete with Yu-Gi-Oh and other new shows. More hardcore anime also hit Toonami during CC’s run: Gundam Wing, Tenchi, Outlaw Star, Mobile Suit Gundam, 08th MS were all competing with Kids WB, offering more authentic Japanese experiences complete with Japanese music and names, making CC seem like the hackdub it is now known as. By September 2001, Cowboy Bebop was now premiering on AS with a TV-14 rating. The anime market began moving more to target older audiences and primarily males,… so Cardcaptors’ run on CN in 2001 was only the spotlight slot and three weeks on Toonami, to build hype for Season 2 on Kids WB.

Yes, but to be fair my point was that Cardcaptors did get death slotted once it was obvious that its roots were a mismatch for the core demo. OP mentioned a hypothetical about what Hamtaro's US run would have looked like had it aired on KidsWB or FoxBox. And my point was that it would of occupied the death slot right next to Cardcaptors once they needed to burn off it's episodes. And the reason I brought up Cardcaptors was because it followed the same playbook as Hamtaro did and was essentially a repeat of that failure. An industry tried to take a popular Japanese property with a soft, comfy (i.e character driven) vibe and force it into a high-octane "Boys 6–11" demo, and failed.

However short-lived, at least Hamtaro enjoyed fantastic ratings in its morning time slot on Cartoon Network. Had Hamtaro aired at 8:30am (on a Sat) in a KidsWB's prestige time slot sandwhiched between Pokemon and Jackie Chan adventures it probably would have been executed in board daylight like Escaflowne was on Fox Kids.

As for Nelvana's Frankensteining of poor CCS, its exactly downstream of my overall point. If Nelvana was willing to butcher a show with literal magic battles just to make it "manly" enough for KidsWB, imagine what they (or 4kids) would have done to Hamtaro? Would they have written entirely new scripts? Would they have gone out of their way to make the hamsters cooler or tougher? Would they have just given up 8 episodes in when they realized there was no way to turn Ham-Hams into battle hamsters?

I have a feeling, coming from a person who loved Hamtaro anime. I just think CN doesn't know what the hell to do with Hamtaro and can't figure out what decent timeslot to put in, considering toonami was still on weekdays that period. I mean when the show first aired on CN in the Summer 2002. it aired 2 new episodes a day, one in the morning, and the other in the afternoon, but as time went on it seemed hamtaro struggled to find its audience, Sure it gained some marketing like Video games, some toys and even Burger King Toys during Halloween season of 2003. Then when season 2 came out, things took a worse for Hamtaro it aired in such a bad timeslot on weekdays, and after CN Halloween of 2004, Hamtaro was completely removed from the lineup all together. It probably would've been better if Hamtaro aired on Disney Junior(formally known as Playhouse Disney at the time), or Nick Jr, but the problem is both of those channels rarely aired anything anime related compared to CN's. So my best bet, would probably be Foxbox at the time, but we dont know how much 4kids will censored it, But Hamtaro is already a kiddy friendly show so there isn't much to censor. Because 4kids actually didn't censor Kirby anime as much so maybe it can work there.

Yeah I think thats thing some are probably not really understanding about Hamtaro. A shows vibes aren't paying bills, its merchandise model is.

Playhouse Disney and Nick Jr are heavillllllly regulated when it comes to commercial airtime which means that if your Nick Jr airing Dora, or Playhouse Disney airing, idk, Bear in the Big Blue house, your entire 30 minutes of airtime is one big commercial. Every second Dora says something adorable is another backpack being bought. So if your a TV exec for Nick Jr in 2002 and Hamtaro makes its way to your desk, you ask yourself "Why should we give 30 minutes of our limited airtime to a show owned by a Japanese company? I'd rather air a show WE own so we can keep 100% of the toy money." But unlike 4kids who was an actual Master Licensor with its Pokemon and Yugioh merch, CN simply operated as a broadcaster. They didnt care about toy strats, they just wanted massive viewership that would make the ad slots extremely valuable to toy companies. Which means it was always a disposable property. Once Hamtaro didn't immediately turn into a cultural phenomenon that sold ad slots at premium prices, it was GGs for the Ham-Hams. As for 4kids and Kirby, again 4Kids was not only the master licensor for Kirby outside of Japan, but Kirby itself had a massive advantage because of Nintendo. And since 4kids could do whatever it wanted outside of Japan, it was able to go on an aggressive rebrand for the show to fit Fox Box's action lineup. And since it had the gaming synergy with Nintendo, they could reorder episodes to act as a 20 minute commercial for its games.

Unfortunately, it just wasn't in the stars for Hamtaro to succeed during that era. In the US cira 2002, you couldnt have an almost 300 episode series show trapped in a "fad" business model. Had it been released today where it could of used a blind box style that created a chase factory, where scarcity could be engineered and where it could of been made for collecting and fashion instead of being made for play, it probably would of succeeded . Point of this whole thread is that it wasnt sabotaged, it just had bad luck that it came to the states during a time when the industry made money in a different way.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

Remember Cartoon Network did air other animal city cartoon shows in Pecola and Sitting Ducks next to Hamtaro in the mornings. They tried to create kind of an informal block. I think Pup Named Scooby Doo was on weekday mornings too. This wasn’t exactly Tickle U type material, since I think these shows weren’t exactly preschool, but they did skew younger and were softer than TOM3 Toonami of course.