Why Action Cartoons Fail 

Also, did you know there's shirts. I have shirts: teespring.com/stores/negatives-store

Didn't Walt Disney say that when you make art specifically for kids, you're dooming yourselves to failure? After all, "what are adults but kids all grown up?"

Action cartoons like Generator Rex was so underrated and under appreciated.

Don't you DARE to remind me about the cancellation of Thunder Cats

I honestly believe there is no story that is told better through live-action rather than animation. I really don't understand why people want live-action versions of things or things to be made in live-action so badly.

‘Avatar was their strongest series’ *AND NEVER THINK TWICE ABOUT THAT SENTENCE*

Are you getting “What Happened to Ben 10/Thundercats” soon :)

Action cartoons: _begin to fade away_ Japan: allow us to introduce ourselves

Anyone remember Firebreather on Cartoon Network it was a TV movie

*"Why Action Cartoons Fail"* *Wakfu:* _Must be a Glitch in the Matrix_

"Sym-bionic tiatan this, Generator rex that, Thundercats this and that" Let's talk about an action show most people _actually_ forgot, Motorcity.

generator rex is so good. one of my favorite cartoons of all times. its one of the few cartoons that finished its story, without dragging on or overstaying it’s welcome. it’s such a shame it’s underrated, but i’m glad more people are talking about it on youtube.

I miss Symbionic Titan...

Action cartoons had everything from good fights to good character deigns, and development to good comedy and good life lessons

Ironically, you overlooked The Dragon Prince, a Netflix series co-created by the head writer of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I'm glad you mentioned Castlevania Netflix series, we need more action cartoons. If you didn't watch it already, Samurai Jack had a final season like two years ago

Another reason is because most of the shows were hated by their producers, thunder cats and symbiotic titan were despised by the corporate heads at Cartoon Network, and they were determined to save the show was destined to die by rearranging the time blocks constantly changing up when they were wearing not notifying the schedulers everything. I don't know the corporate history on generator. But something tells me there was some corporate meddling in their too and let's not forget the corporate meddling in a lot of other series. This comes down to even the concept of not releasing the toys for when they decide to release the toys they release it in the areas where nobody can get or by said toys without being hardly confuse. I mean, I've barely saw a single commercial advertising the thunder cats toys with the show, thunder cats, which is a sign that says you're not in the mood to sell your toys to fund the product.

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja was my jam back in the day. I was absolutely devastated when it wasn't renewed for a third season.

I wouldn’t say that Generator Rex failed because it was able to finish it series

Transformers Prime. First series I ever watched start to finish as a kid.

I hope Netflix considers buying ThunderCats good show

Negative Legend: All early 2010s action cartoons got canceled and were never seen again. Young Justice: *Are you sure about that*

Actually Nickelodeon's strongest series is Spongebob.

When they killed Thundercats that's when i lost hope in humanity.

Thundercats was one of my favorites cartoons and I was so disappointed when they decided to stop the series

Another aspect of the dark age of action cartoons: Critics and anime. Critics absolutely LOVE to rip a cartoon a new one for being "too anime", I know for sure that played a part in the downfall of the Thundercats reboot and I wouldn't be surprised if that was also true for the other shows. Whether it is art teachers, animation studios or show critics EVERYONE hates anime influence, I don't know how much of that is being narrow-minded and how much is they were annoyed by one weeb too many but I have heard it too often to not be true. There is a fine balancing act of detail, animation and writing in order to not get slandered as an "anime wannabe" so with new shows they had pretty much given up on action cartoons. *EDIT:* To make it clear I have no problem myself with anime influences in shows and am aware critics are less harsh on actual anime. However for some reason they dislike it when they feel that a show that is not anime has some anime parallels like they assume it is trying to be an anime wannabe or something.

Still hoping they make season 2 of Tron: Uprising, especially since Disney tortures us this year releasing a ton of videos on RU-vid!

Here in Brazil all, and i mean ALL of this cartoons were big hits in this time period, since the television schedule of their airing was acessible and the toy industry was marketing them heavely. Especially generator rex. Which appealed heavely to south and central american culture and and day-to-day life. And his narrative structure was similar to the telenovelas ingrained in our culture mixed with sci-fi action, which was a nice touch. And the blocks where this animetions were airing are beloved to this day here as a golden age. So that was my two cents on the subject. Love your channel, and thanks for your nice work ^-^

Well, I know of one 2010's action cartoon that succeeded: *Ninjago* And it's so successful, that it's still going on today 9 years after it was first released. And the reasons it survived, I think, are the toy sales it drove (obviously), the quality stories it produced, and being similar enough to anime so it could hitch a boost in popularity as anime became more mainstream.

Star Wars Rebels and TMNT 2012 actually thrived this time of the death of the action cartoons. Yeah they had their comedy and filler episodes but the center was action

Everyone: All the great action cartoons of the 2010s were quickly cancelled Me: TMNT 2012 had five seasons, Where were all of you during that time?

Some of my favorite action cartoons shows Ben 10 ThunderCats OG and 2011. Generator Rex Mega XLR SWAT KATS. Ninja Turtles. StormHawks. Hot Wheels Battle Force 5. He-Man Justice League Unlimited/Bat Man animated shows/ OG X-men and 90s Spiderman. Teen Titans OG. Young Justice. Samurai jack Transformers. Clone Wars/Rebels Avatar's last air bender.

definitly a genera full of hidden gems shout out to my fave The Secret Saturdays

Thundercats was FANTASTIC. I wish they had finished that plot line.

Dude, look at the lens, not the viewfinder. Easy mistake even I do sometimes.

I was watching Thundercats every day it aired live on TV until they changed the air time and never said to where.

Disney actually has a blend of "Action based" and "cute for the kids" with it's newer cartoons, like Gravity Falls, Ducktales and Owl House

The problem with action cartoon is merchandise. Most of action cartoons gets cancelled because the merchandise weren’t selling

Tv ads: These are not actors Me: Now that's bs RU-vid videos: This is not sponsored Me: ok

RIP Thundercats 2011, I’ll always remember you.

Now that I think about it, it was around this time when all these shows were canceled that I kinda stopped watching tv, aside from a few things.

We want action shows back! We’re tired of only goofy kid shows! I want Rex to come back because I didn’t give him a chance until his last episode aired and I loved it. And Danny Phantom because a new chapter in his life started when he and sam got together and the world learned his identity and sees him as a hero

Damn no mention of Tron: Uprising, it happened to come out during that time period and unfortunately only had 1 season. Art-wise I doubt I'll ever see anything quite like it again it was Ufotable level in my opinion. I hope someday they make another season with the same studio the ending left me craving more. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. Green Lantern: The Animated Series is another cartoon from that time period that I'd highly recommend. 7:56 This looks super cool. Since you asked Ironman Armored Adventures, Batman Beyond, Justice League, JL Unlimited, Young Justice, all the DCAMU movies, Batman: The Mystery of Batwoman, and Planet of the Hulk are all fantastic.

I heard a theory that action cartoons actually "died" because of anime. The point is, making animation for action shows is much more expensive (more detail, a lot of elaborate moves etc), so with massive introduction of anime to western audiences (about 1990-2000) many channels saw it to be more profitable to buy rights to show anime instead of investing into creating their own action shows. It also affected western action animation in the way that it often has some similarities to anime in terms of art style or plot tropes.

We need more Adult-oriented action cartoons.

TRON: UPRISING Season 2.... Press F to pay respects

Here's a hard truth. You trying to brand these shows as "Action-Cartoons" when they are in fact "Western Anime".

To sum it up in a word: Toys.

To be fair some action cartoons were cancelled for stupid reasons, such as Young Justice. That was cancelled because the higher ups felt that the show was doing too well with a demographic they didn't want I.E. it had a higher female viewership than male and they shut the show down because of that. A lot of the other action shows tended to "Fail" because no matter how good of a show you had, it was harder to sell toys with serialized shows like that and thus since the toy sales just weren't there those shows would then be cancelled.

*sees Thundercats 2011 in the thumbnail, IMMEDIATELY CRIES*

I tried to watch Generator Rex but CN kept moving it around making it hard to keep up with it. Then they rushed the last season leaving questions unanswered. But at least it got an ending unlike Symbiotic Titans or Thundercats or I’m surprised you left out He-man 2012. I’m also on the look out for good action cartoon series but have yet to find one except in Anime. I don’t know if Carmen Sandiego counts as an action cartoon. I tend to view it as an educartoon.

It literally brings tears to my eyes to remember how Thunder Cats was cancelled. It was such a great show....

Im a bit older so growing up I was flooded with Swat Katz, Gargoyles, Batman TAS, Jackie Chan, Street Sharks, so its interesting to see how it changed! nice video!

A cartoon I miss was transformers prime it was supposed to have a fourth season but they preferred to end the saga with a movie (wich is pretty cool actually). Still feels like there were more stories to tell but the show was cancelled after that

There should be more mature action/drama western animation. Primal’s a great example of that!

If Tonnami is really bringing Thundercats back, that means there REALLY IS HOPE!!!!

The thunder cats reboot was a really good show and the only reason it died is cuz CN wanted to. 🙄 (so they could write it off their taxes.. ) On top of that, they animated in Japan, which made it good quality but it costs more than getting it animated in China or Korea where alot of the new cartoon network shows get animated. And they kept moving the darn show's time slot.. it went from a nighttime schedule to a Saturday morning show at 7am.. which means less people are gonna watch cuz some people aren't early birds.. especially adult viewers (who are the main targets of reboots in general..) Also they would change the schedule without telling anybody.. no commercials nor ads warning viewers that their show was switching time slots.. (same thing they did with young justice.. which forced alot of viewers to buy individual episodes in the apple store.. I remember, they were bragging how young justice was topping the download charts. ) network literally set up their show to fail by making it harder to find. Honestly, it's a no brainer why people pirated a show that was easier to find online than on air... Also because the thunder cats reboot followed a continuous story line watching out of order is not possible.. which makes putting it online all the more reasonable. Keeping the episodes in the same spot for binge watching.. is the best way for action cartoons to continue long story lines.. but yeah, I was super upset with the cancellation of thunder cats and still am! 😑

If you want a reasonable action cartoon from the 2000s to talk about there's class of the titans. It's a Canadian cartoon based on greek mythology where the main characters are the descendants of greek hero's like heracles, achilles and Jason and the argonauts.

try do a video about why western cartoons have less genres than anime. like the isekai genre. the only western isekai that come to my mind are amphibia,infinity train over the garden wall......samurai jack and.....maybe star vs the forces of evil?the last one may not be a reverse isekai. also why don't we hear the thoughts of cartoon characters like we do with anime characters?

Still hoping they bring back Thundercats and Symbionic Titan. If they can do it for Young Justice, they can do it for any action show.

This video made me think of three series that I LOVED (One of which I still do love) as a kid Magi Nation Spider Riders Redakai All of these shows I think you should do a "What Happened To" video on

I've always seen Titans/Korra/Gen-Rex/Titan as shows for the "older kids". Problem is that when these older kids grew up eventually they got kids of their own too. As a friend of mine pointed out, these new parents would rather want something light and breezy to watch with their toddlers. I think this is also why Adventure Time, Gumball, and Regular Show got a bit big during this time period... it's because those shows appealed to BOTH toddlers who just laughed at the goofy hijinks and their parents who got all the pop culture references. Case in point, my mom used to take care of this 7 year old girl (we co-inhabited with another family, it was a huge house), and that kid watched Regular Show with me religiously back when it was kinda big. My mom, who never appreciated the animated stuff, would always remark how we that kid and I laughed at different parts of the same show.

The Dragon Prince is also a very good show on Netflix.

Disney Channel and Disney XD have action adventure cartoons such as Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Resistance, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: United They Stand.

Winx Club was a good action cartoon...then Nickelodeon came and ruined it. World of Winx is good but, like Generator Rex and Symbionic Titan, too "underground".

I really recommend Cannon Busters on Netflix. Haven't seen almost anyone talk about it yet. It's really underrated and I believe that it flew under many peoples radar.

The problem with action cartoons on streaming services is that they're really expensive. Since streaming services only make money off of a popular show if it draws subscribers, and the streaming market is already pretty saturated by Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix already (let alone all the new streaming services coming online from Disney+, and Warner's HBO Max, and NBC/Universal's Peacock) it's going to be hard for a single show to really pull in subscribers, even it becomes a must-watch cultural phenomena. That leaves the only way for a streaming service to make money off a cartoon like some sort of Thundercats or He-man show, will be through merchandising. And, one of the reasons several of the shows you listed, as well as Young Justice (another of the excellent action cartoons from the 2010 era - but somehow didn't make your list) "failed" was their failure to generate toy sales. And, I don't know if you've visited your toy section at your favorite Target or Walmart or whatever, action/adventure toys don't sell well. There used to be 2 or 3 aisles for toys from Transformers to Star Wars, Superheroes and Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers to Professional Wrestlers. Now-a-days that's all compressed down to one aisle. While the girl's section has a half an aisle dedicated to just My Little Pony, let alone the whole aisle of Barbie stuff, and the under 6 kids need more and more space for Paw Patrol and PJ Masks toys. The toy industry has struggled to find something that can draw older boys' toy-buying dollars. They don't want to buy some $7 Iron-man action figure with their allowance, they don't want their grandma to buy them some $20 transformer; because all their allowance and birthday/Christmas money is going towards that next $60 game dropping for their Switch or Playstation. Because of that, my own outlook for the future of action-oriented adventure cartoons is pretty bleak. There's little incentive or profit to be made in producing them, and, they're just too expensive to animate compared to cheap flash-animated stuff like MLP or TT Go.

I need to go back and rewatch Generator Rex...I wasn’t really into it when it first came out, but I feel like I’d like it a lot more now.

For an action cartoon I recommend....... The Hollow on Netflix, Cannon busters on Netflix, Emara on RU-vid,

Wow, your analysis is so accurate it’s scary. I had no interest in anime at all when I was younger (I had some weird cousins who were absolutely crazy about it at the time, so it was a little unfairly stigmatized in my family), but I missed Avatar, Thundercats and Generator Rex so badly that I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the gorgeous art that some contemporary animes had at the time - now I’m not embarrassed at all to say I’m a huge fan. Live action never particularly elicited my interest when I was little, and even now that I’m 22 there’s very little in live action movies or television that gives me the sense of awe and adrenaline that my favourite animated shows do. I feel like a grumpy old lady who just finished yelling at kids to get off my lawn, but honestly the cartoons back in my day were just SO much better - children now are only exposed to cheap computer animated crap (don’t get me started on Disney ‘animation’ now OH MY GOD) with zero imagination ...I can vividly remember being little and just so excited, I couldn’t wait to get outside and reenact the most exciting scenes from my favourite cartoons. anyway, rant concluded. (I feel like a huge fossil now ...time to hop on my mobility scooter and go feed some pigeons 😔)

Loved the video mate. As a person who grew up watching action cartoons I'm glad someone took the time to address situation you referred to as the "Dark Age of Action Cartoons"

Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters on Netflix is pretty good. It has a good 2000s action cartoon feel and some great plot twists and stories later on.

Avengers: EMH is one of the few Marvel Animated properties that I would say was as good as the golden age of the DCAU.

Are you getting “What Happened to Ben 10/Thundercats” soon :)

This era is also when Ben 10 started going downhill too

Thundercats (2011), Young Justice, Green Lantern and Sym-Bionic Titan failed because for a number of reasons due to Cartoon Network's incompetence. 1st Scheduling: Constant movement, numerous hiatuses, and zero advertisements, how are you suppose to watch the show if you don't know where it is? 2nd Product sales: The reason why they worked in the 80's and 90's is because they advertised everything everywhere, these shows had none after they premiered. How were kids suppose to buy the products if they don't know they exist? Heck, I use to go to Toys R Us a lot saw nothing on the shelves. and 3rd The Demographic: Word has been going around of too many Girls or age inappropriate viewers cause these too, but that's still up in the air. Bat Man the Brave and the Bold and Generator Rex worked because they faced none of these problems. Korra was moved due to declining rating, Nick still knew what they were doing especially with their new big hit at the time, the 2012 CGI TMNT. Action Cartoons can still work they just need more respect and better planning, not some half-assed "Oh well, whatever" job!

Merchandising was definitely the downfall of several shows from this era - especially the Thundercats reboot. They couldn't compete with the shows that had better collectible toys.

Some action cartoons I can think of would be The Dragon Prince, The Tales of Arcadia series (start with Trollhunters first) and some older ones would be Godzilla: The Animated Series (not too shabby), Gargoyles, Hot Wheels World Race and Acceleracers, Transformers Prime, Beast Wars, and Transformers Animated. I feel like toy deals and trying to make things kid friendly over trying to tell a good story really screws over action cartoons. And its a damn shame because I never watched Thundercats (mainly because they never really advertised it) that clip shown looks absolutely badass.

"Cartoon are for Kids" Yeah who ever said that, they never watched The Plague Dogs or Felidae before. and abit ironic as there are live action "mature" films. that seems like it was written by a 12 years old with F-Bombs and fart jokes every 10 seconds.

These are all my childhood shows and I enjoyed them very much. I remember getting very upset when most of them are cancelled...

I think an important element to this is also how the networks treated the shows. Transformers Prime was also an action series around this period of time, and I don't have the numbers, but it always seemed like it did really well, especially for a series (then-exclusively) on a premium cable channel, since it had three seasons and a movie, but it also was given good time slots, which a lot of networks ended up not doing for many of these action shows (Especially Cartoon Network). But Transformers is also an interesting case because later series did lean more towards the humor end, so I think it is also a generational shift (But also a shift because they were now showing on cartoon network, which wants shows featuring more comedic elements) basically what im saying is please watch every transformers series if you havent already but especially prime

Man! I didn't even know they did a remake of Thundercats! I really was looking forward to that and I didn't know it was already here! Like, what?!?!

For me, anime raised my expectations for animation so high that western cartoons look pathetic in comparison. This happened to me at a very young age, I watched DragonBall Z with my uncle and no other western cartoon had the fights, the deaths, and the absurdity that anime did. Any cartoon I like is strictly nostalgic, and I probably couldn't argue that they're good on their own.

On the bright side, seems like action cartoons are on the way back into fashion, with shows like Castlevania, the two new He-Man reboots, Invincible, etc. Hopefully it sticks this time.

Man that’s a shame, I always loved more action cartoons rather than just the nonsense and comical ones, even before this “ dark age “ of the 2010’s, justice league, static shock, samurai jack..

can you make a video researching why cartoons have gone from a more dark and gritty palette like Batman Beyond and TMNT 2003 to a need for more vibrant palettes? how does the mood and overall theme of shows change when changing its lighting and its effect on viewers and does that change its quality as a show?

Thundercats was great

Honestly i was so happy when i saw Sym Bionic Titan on Netflix i hope more pple will like it and see it so it will turn into a Netflix original and get a season 2 that show needs a second season

Truth be told, I'd rather be watching the Harley Quinn animated series than the Game Awards...

I miss you Ben 10(original), Teen Titans(original), Avatar: The Last Airbender, Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime. I'll always remember you...

I didn't know Symbiotic Titan came to Netflix till this video.

Great video it's probably going to be useful to me in the future

Do a “What happened to Secret Saturday’s” video that would be dope

It's always interesting to hear stories about how relatively recently anime became mainstream in countries like the US. I grew up in France and, where anime was THE kid tv show staple. I always have to remind myself that most English speaking peeps discovered stuff like Dragon Ball 15+ years after I did (no seriously you guys have no idea, anime was ALL over our TVs) and we even had stuff like City Hunter and Fist if the North Star.

now these days people watch shonen type anime wich is what we loved in action cartoons but even better

Part of the issue in the past (not sure if it is the case now) was that they used to fund animation via toy sales. Most infamously in my eyes was the Green Lantern animated series not continuing because the toys from the live action movie did not sell. Places like toys r us wouldn't stock the toys from the cartoon because in their eyes both boxes said "green lantern" on the label. So why stack more of the same? The viewing demographic for many shows were not the type to buy the toys regardless. Viewership and advertising dollars alone were never enough.

Korra from the beginning was a failure mainly attributed to the plot and 2 main people behind it.

I'm upset about the 2011 thundercats. Like god the second season sounded so good. They also killed the time slot for that show too without updating the correct times in the commercials.

"I would actually defend Teen Titans Go" ... You're dead to me.

The Justice League series was the last action cartoon I really followed. Still own most of it on dvd.