TV URBAN LEGEND: The United States government forced shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to include those "We'll be right back after these messages" commercial bumpers.
As you have seen in my recent series of TV Legends Revealed about the classic 1980s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon (as well as the corresponding toy line), the history of He-Man is inexorably interconnected with the history of advertisement on children's television and, of course, the United States government's intervention (or lack thereof) with that advertisement.
As I've noted a few times so far, children's television had gone through a major shift in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Parents groups had successfully petitioned the government to regulate the children's programming industry to an almost unheard of degree. The initial target of parent groups was violence, as the theory was that the cartoons of the 1960s were way too violent for kids, and as a result, a lot of the superhero programs of the era were pretty much dead in the water. When superhero shows popped up again in the 1970s, with the Super Friends, they had famously been watered down dramatically, in terms of the violence depicted on the shows. It is pretty funny when you have Superman on your TV show and all he is seemingly allowed to punch is meteors or asteroids or mountains.
However, while the anti-violence was a broader group of parental groups, there was a specifically powerful parent group called the Action For Children’s Television (ACT), that formed in 1968, that focused its sights on the world of advertising in children's television and their first big target at the time was a surprising one....Romper Room!
Romper Room was a live action children's show that basically resembled a kindergarten glass. The interesting thing about the show was that it debuted in Baltimore in 1953, but soon became a franchised television series. That is to say that each local TV affiliate would have their own Romper Room (sometimes affiliates would share). The format of the show was that a host (almost always a woman. It might be literally only women, but there might have been an exception, so let me cover myself) named "Miss ____" (Miss Sally was a popular one) would lead the kids on various educational and fun little bits throughout either a half hour o an hour and then, at the end, the host would bring up a "magic mirror" and stare through it and say, "Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?" The host would then "spy" the children watching the show at home who would have sent in their names to be read out loud. So the host would be all, "I see Timmy and Billy and Bobby," etc.
Okay, but here was the catch and what ACT was not happy about - the Romper Room hosts for each of the local affiliate would then do ads during the commercial breaks advertising local products. In addition, Hasbro actually bought the Romper Room brand in 1969 and soon put out a Romper Room brand of toys, which would also air during Romper Room episodes.
ACT was formed in the Boston-area and they quickly targeted the WHDH version of Romper Room (hosted by Jean Harrington and then Louise Lark, as Miss Jean and Miss Louise, respectively) and insisted that the show no longer allow the hosts to do advertisements during the commercial breaks. Eventually, the network backed down and agreed to stop doing host ads.
Later, the FCC agreed to make it so that hosts of children's shows could not do advertisements period and that Romper Room could not advertise for Romper Room toys during the show, either. Well, guess what? Without the benefit of having a local host advertising local products, the local affiliates had no interest in PAYING for their own Romper Room. So by the early 1980s, there pretty much was just one syndicated Romper Room for the rest of the country (some of the bigger cities still maintained their own Romper Room, though).
But this led to the general issue that ACT and groups like it pushed before the government, which was that kids cannot distinguish between a cartoon and an advertisement. It's all the same to them. ACT hired psychologists who demonstrated this simple fact. ACT wanted all ads banned from children's advertisement, but obviously that was never going to happen, but the government did agree to limit the amount of ads during each given hour of children's television and, of course, the point of this whole article, the government also mandated that cartoons specifically have bumpers to let kids know that commercials were starting and ending. Here are He-Man's, starring his little magic friend, Orko...
Boy, Orko sure had a distinctive voice, huh?
Things changed when Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980. Reagan pushed to de-regulate a number of industries and children's television programming was one of them. He named Mark Fowler as the new head of the Federal Communications Commission and Fowler basically gutted all of the restriction in children's animation, arguing that the marketplace should figure itself out.
In 1984, the commercial bumper set-up was actually no longer required, but by that point, the shows had already spent the time and money doing the bumpers, so they stuck with them throughout, especially since the whole point of syndicated cartoons was that you are supposed to be able to mix and match the episodes, so a show in 1983 (like the first seasons of G.I. Joe and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe) would have to be able to match a season done in 1985 (and obviously, the shows made in 1984 were produced well before 1984, so the change in regulations would take a long time to be implemented anyways).
Nowadays, besides re-runs, I think Adult Swim's sort of ironic bumpers are the only commercial bumpers still used on cartoons, but I could be wrong on that.
The legend is...
STATUS: True
Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV. Click here for more legends specifically about animated films and TV shows.
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