It was specifically outlawed because people were already doing it. Hot Wheels (1969) was a controversial cartoon in its day for being a merchandise-driven children's show.

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Literally most of the shows we grew up with, our parents grew up with, all the way back to our grandparents- a lot of TV is ads! Kids TV as an ad for toys, night time talk shows used to be explicitly ads for whatever product their sponsor of the week was!

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It's weird that no one wants to acknowledge that every ahow you enjoyed watching as a kid was a toy commercial. Yu-Gi-Oh? Batman? Pokemon? Gundam? Teen Titans? None of these shows would have existed if they weren't selling toys.

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a cool thing about indie animation is that it's expected to save the entire industry, every show has to look better than the things the fans grew up on or it's a waste of time, there's no union to be found anywhere, no budget for any of it, and asking the audience to pay anything to watch is illegal

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the most recent school shooting, in which three elementary school children and a teacher died, is on page 22 of the Sunday New York Times — in case you wanted to track how little we care about this now

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