series running concurrently with licensed products and active marketing campaigns. Some shows, such as the Filmation/Mattel collaboration He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) were among the most-watched animated shows in television history. Other properties, such as the Transformers (Marvel/Hasbro, 1984), are still selling products at a steady pace 27 years later. Millions of action figures found their way into the hands of young boys, but the lucrative market for little girls was not ignored.

Licensed characters like My Little Pony (1986, developed in conjunction with Hasbro) charmed prepubescent female audiences. The American Greeting Card Company, through its "Those Characters from Cleveland" division, managed to develop an entire series based on their licensed characters: Kideo TV (1986) marketed The Get-Along Gang, The Popples, and Rainbow Brite to younggirls. That same greeting card company had long since cornered that market for grade school girls with its saccharine production of The Care Bears series in 1985. For those in their tween years, Hasbro helped to develop a show called Jem in which pre-teens could watch a female rock-star fantasy and then go out and purchase the products accordingly.

These new, deregulated shows were partnerships between toy companies and select animation studios, and inevitably corporate guidelines dictated much of the show's content. Writing in issue three of Cereal Geek, a British magazine devoted to 1980s animation, Robert Lamb noted that:"Shows based on toy lines like He-Man, She-Ra, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, etc., also had the added joy of input and supervision from their respective toy companies. Different deals