Toys have long been a lucrative byproduct of films, from Star Warsto Harry Potter. But in recent years, Hollywood has made films specifically to sell the toys. Donald Clarkelooks at how Tinseltown twinned with Toytown for this week's big release, Transformers
CONCERNED parents may, quite reasonably, find the arrival of the Transformersmovie somewhat troubling. The problem is not to do with the violence, you understand. The average child has, by the age of four, seen many sights more disturbing than brawls between giant robots. Besides which, as Lisa Simpson, star of another film released this week, once asked: how are children ever going to get desensitised to violence if they're not exposed to it?
No. Decent Mums and Dads are more likely to be concerned that the project is little more than a colossal advertisement for an extravagant collection of dual-purpose toys. Transformers Movie Leader Optimus Prime is currently available from your local emporium for around €50. If you're lucky there may even be a toyshop in the same complex where you see the film.
As it happens, Michael Bay's picture is actually rather good. Nobody is likely to mistake it for The Seventh Seal, but it combines jokes and explosions to pretty impressive effect. Be that as it may, the suspicion remains that Transformerswould never have made it to our screens if it weren't for those shiny plastic automatons in their colourful boxes. Hasbro, manufacturers of the toys, may have as much to gain from the release as Paramount Pictures.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura, one of the film's army of producers, has clearly primed himself for this precise query.
" Transformershas a very, very active fan base," he explains. "They are going to come even if they are older guys now. Hasbro has to worry about the toys. If kids like the picture, other kids are going to come."
Fair enough. But di Bonaventura must experience the odd moral pang when preparing a film that has so much to do with flogging shiny stuff to youngsters.
"No, not really," he says. "But I can understand why people might see it that way. Look, I worked on Harry Potter, and that film sold a lot of toys. My job remains to deliver a film that is as entertaining as possible. Look, I don't think there is anything unethical or immoral about these toys. There may be some toys I would feel that way about. But not these."
Di Bonaventura is right to point out that his film is far from unique in allowing itself to act as a commercial for playthings. Ever since George Lucas, defying perceived wisdom, claimed a cut on the merchandise for Star Warsand, in so doing, made himself immeasurably more wealthy than he would otherwise have become, film studios have assiduously encouraged mutually beneficial arrangements between themselves and toy companies.
The Transformers Empire has, however, played a particularly notorious part in the history of cross marketing. Back in the 1980s the original cartoon series was one of several kids' shows - think also of My Little Pony, The Care Bearsand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- that were seen to have been constructed with the express purpose of selling toys to children.
However much you regretted the promiscuous ubiquity of Luke Skywalker dolls or Darth Vader masks, you had to admit that Lucas did not conceive Star Warspurely as a way of bringing these trinkets into existence. Those ponies, bears, turtles and robots were a different matter. By the close of the 1980s it had become desperately difficult to launch a cartoon series without the co-operation of a toy company.
The advance of the unholy alliance between the manufacturers of toy robots and the developers of cheap cartoons was aided by the decision of the Reagan administration to deregulate children's television in 1984. Henceforth no restrictions were placed on the amount of advertising that could accompany kids' shows, and it became possible to market toys and TV shows in the same package. Before long the entertainment business had become hopelessly addicted to the phenomenon known - in a phrase so gruesome it could only have been coined by marketing wonks - as "creative synergy".
The later consolidation of various media entities into hulking behemoths such as Time Warner/AOL only made the conspiracy easier to propagate. Assaulted by the buzz of internet marketing, their paths obstructed by stacks of gleaming playthings and mobile phones firing messages at them hourly, viewers could be forgiven for wondering whether, after seeing so many images and hearing so many slogans, they need bother viewing the film or series at all. Even the Transformersmovie, despite its considerable might, seems a little overpowered by the force of its own marketing.
Subsidiary marketing can, when used creatively, be a thing of beauty. No decent Simpsonsfan, upon hearing that a number of US 7-11 stores had been transformed into Kwik-E-Marts for the launch of the film, could resist tipping a respectful hat towards the hucksters at Twentieth Century Fox. And, some of the toys associated with movie and television campaigns have, indeed, been things of beauty.
The worry remains that films are being written and shot to accommodate the demands of toy companies. Considering that Hasbro's name appears in the opening credits of Transformers, one might reasonably wonder whether that corporation had a hand in the design of the film's robots.
Tom DeSanto, another of the film's producers, denies this is the case.
"Back in January 2003, when we began thinking about this, they were always partners. They did say: 'Hey Hollywood. This is our bread and butter. These are characters people care about. Don't be disrespectful towards them.' But they were also very clear too say: 'Make the movie version. Just be true to what it is.' We went for a much more biological look for the robots here."
DeSanto makes a good point when he says people cared deeply about the robots. Twenty years ago moral guardians got in a great tizzy about the effect the transforming cyborgs would have on children. But, like Action Man before them, Megatron and Optimus Prime seem to have taken cherished places in a generation's recollections of childhood.
"There was an age thing trying to sell this movie," DeSanto laughs. "People 38 and under knew what it was about. If you were over that mark then it was like you were talking Martian. I said to the studios, 'Just ask your junior executives and you will find out what it means.' "
We should, perhaps, thank our stars the junior executives weren't Care Bear enthusiasts.
Transformers opens today
