Re: SWAT Kats at the ABA

From: Andy Hill <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 05:37:12 -0700 (PDT)

 
On Wed, 7 Jun 1995, Mitch Botwin wrote:

> The gentilman, when asked about the cats said the project was cancelled due to
> lousy merchadise sales. I responded, that I hadn't seen any product nor any ads
> for product. He said there were some items made, but no interest.
>
> This forms an interesting loop - no ads no interest
> no interest no product
> no product no ads - interesting
>
> The gentilman stated that there would be no new episodes, but there would be a
> Kats month and a push for them (why if there is no merchandise?).

     Welcome to the world of Catch-22 corporate Orwellian Double-speak.
One of my partners in crime obtained a "merchandise list" right from
Turner - the poster is the only thing on it that he'd heard about, and
that's only because I told him. This person likely was given a corporate
line to feed the public, but folks like this usually result to "I wasn't
given that information" when asked anything difficult. I love watching
the faces of folks like this as they contradict themselves in the same
sentence and you press them for an explanation, as in the "intersting
loop" noted above - marketing folks don't understand that they create the
loop themselves. Really, the only thing I'm not overly happy about
concerning the upcoming merchandise and promotion is that the toys aren't
all that great, IMO - they should've made them look more like the
characters as they appear on TV, and shouldn't have tried to detail them
so much. It may end up hurting sales somewhat when people _would've_
bought them had they been done "properly".

> The salesman was trying to turn me away from an old item and on to the new
> projects they had coming out. I mentioned there was some feeling that it might
> be due to the violence present in the Kats, but he didn't react. The Quest
> stuff looks like it might have a bit of real looking violence, unlike the
> Captain Planet crap.

      Again, this is an old time Marketeers trick, "newer is better" -
but even this taken in context with Turner's marketing of "Classic" H-B
cartoons makes it a study in contradiction. It's _very_ hard to get any
info on "Jonny" at the moment, but what I have heard is "the Jonny
character model looks queer", and it's "woefully behind schedule". Lance
Falk reports that he tried to get an assignment on the program, his
favourite from kiddie-days, but was "shut out by the old-boys network".
The thing is, "Jonny" is likely to appeal more to the some of the same
older age-bracket that's currently being ignored by the organization by
the cancellation of 'KATS - and the new show won't appeal to any of the
Furry-crowd at all. Someone over at H-B remarked "we learned our
mistakes with SwatKats - for 'Jonny', we'll have all the marketing in
place before the first episode is shown".

"Too little, too late Feral"

Andy




Received on Thu Jun 08 1995 - 08:38:00 PDT