From flashbacks to cash backs
by Zachary S. Lim on September 4, 2011
From the internet.
The Smurfs, the fictional woodland creatures approximately three apples in height, took the world by storm twenty years ago. The blue-skinned blitzkrieg won the feeble hearts and minds of children everywhere, making its way into the franchising world of comics, toys, video games, ice skating shows and music recordings.
Fast forward to today, and the phenomenon is back in the big screen as if nothing happened.The smell of exploitable nostalgia drew the opportunistic big leagues out. They’re calling the shots, and it turns out that we can all blame our own childhood sentiments for painting the bull’s eyes on our chests.
As cold-blooded is it may seem, an objective business-oriented view might help shed some light on this media trend. Marketing-wise, the whole nostalgia train is a gold mine for companies and Hollywood execs. Everything is ripe for the picking—time-tested franchises have already won over a demographic that has a bloated purchasing power and an overload of disposable income. Such minimal investment required for huge returns is a capitalist’s wet dream.
From the internet.
Case in point: the Transformers trilogy, Michael Bay’s behemoth of a cash cow.The latest installment of the trilogy raked in more than 1 billion dollars worldwide, which puts the franchise’s collective profit at around 2.5 billion dollars. Thismakes it the eighth highest grossing film franchise of all time—and all this stems from the 1984 Japanese toy line of the same name, a childhood fixture for those who grew up in that decade.
The Transformers franchise is only a drop in the exploited nostalgia ocean. In this decade alone, many relics from pop culture past have been unearthed and revamped, such as Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Speed Racer, and Dragon Ball Z. They have all achieved only moderate success in the box office, but were all resurrected for what seems to be the common purpose of making one more lucrative cash-in. For some people, though, the proper reaction to this is one of outrage and disgust—hardly anyone wants to see their fondest childhood memories morphed and mutated for the sake of profit.
Cognitive anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch believes that the effects of nostalgia make us better consumers. In a piece entitled “The Power of Nostalgia in Advertising,” he says that nostalgia pertains to the “the emotion generated from that good feeling that influences people’s evaluation of the advertised offer. Recollection provides context and context impacts on how we evaluate things.”
This is where some people will say that advertisers, companies and movie producers cross the line. No one wants to be taken advantage of for being a little too attached to a fond childhood memory.
However, no one should be completely surprised by these marketing ploys. Our generation seems to consider movie producers and advertisers as perverse abominations, creeping their way into the safe haven of our childhood memories just to twist them.
Businesses do what businesses do. Multimillion dollar corporations and movie studios were not built on sympathy, caring, or mothers’ love, so can we really blame them for playing the field? We cannot expect a faceless corporate entity to relate to our childhood attachments just because a few fans took to posting some angry blogs with depressing emoticons. Why are we so quick to yell out, “Is nothing sacred?”
The scrutiny needs to focus less on movie companies and more on our own changed mental climates. Think about it, were these TV shows any less exploitative then than they are now? Consider how the net worth of the creator of Pokémon is equal to that of a small eastern European country. When we were kids, these gimmicks worked well enough without a hitch.
We need to remember that these beloved toys and TV shows were money-making schemes from the start. As our generation grew older, though, we started to pick on the strategies that make the market go round. Right now, our generation is at its awkward transitional stage. These media companies won us over when we were young, but we are now growing more and more disenchanted with what we were once so excited about.
It’s not that the novelty is wearing out; it’s just that we know better now.
Imagine this: you are sitting at a kids’ magic show, watching and anticipating every move. You cannot seem to keep your eyes off of the trap doors and just enjoy the innocent spectacle of it all. In the end, it would make you wishyou were still that naïve kid years ago, as opposed to being a witness to how people profit from your own growing pains.
