From G. I. Joe workout routines and Sailor Moon wedding gowns to Bratz doll make-unders and Ferby modding, toyetic, merchandise-driven television from past decades has proved remarkably resilient. Toyetic television clearly holds a far greater and more enduring cultural significance than definitions such as “glorified half-hour commercials” (Hilton-Morrow & McMahan 2003, p. 78) might suggest. It is meaningful to individual viewers, it becomes “social lubricants facilitating communication between one child and another” (Steinberg 2012, p. 90), and it can connect generations through shared viewing and playing pleasures. The idea of the program created to sell merchandise has been reversed in cases where the production of a program is funded through the sale of its merchandise, such as The Amazing Digital Circus. The boundary between quality and merchandise-driven television is no longer clear, with even educational programs such as Sesame Street now associated with significant merchandising. One of the aims of this volume, then, is to ask how we might define toyetic television as we move into the second quarter of the millennium. Intended for Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companions series, this volume turns a critical eye to the genre of toyetic television and its many transmedia intertexts, exploring the significance and resonance these texts hold for children, adults, and communities. It examines the movement of toyetic texts cross-culturally, intergenerationally, and between media. It analyses texts and audiences, industry and regulators, to uncover the significance of toyetic television to the contemporary moment.

Children’s programming is the most widely internationally traded category of television, while simultaneously being subject to intensely localized regulatory systems. Sesame Street has had numerous localized versions, for example, including Nigeria’s Sesame Square, Mexico’s Plaza Sésamo, and pan-Arabic collaboration Iftah Ya Simsim. When toyetic television moves transculturally, it encounters new reception contexts. Japanese animation Dragon Ball found a devoted fanbase across Latin American, leading to new merchandise such as Argentinian soccer jerseys featuring Dragon Ball characters. A particular focus of research, advocacy, and debate around toyetic television has been concern about potential negative impacts on children from the blurring of boundaries between entertainment and advertising. While it may seem quaint in the current era of toy unboxing YouTube channels, the fear that toyetic television would cause rampant consumerism, rigid perceptions of gender roles, increased American cultural imperialism, and actual acts of violence amongst children was widespread in the 1990s. Those fears are mirrored in recent years by hope that the same toyetic franchises could reflect socially progressive ideas such as body positivity in the remake of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020), queer representation in recent seasons of Power Rangers, and greater racial diversity in last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). Toyetic Television: A Companion moves beyond these good/bad media effects binaries to consider how and what meaning is made with, through, from, and by the various networks surrounding toyetic television and its consumers.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Transnational and intercultural approaches to toyetic television
• Gender, race, disability, and sexualities in toyetic television
• Material cultures: Collections, cosplay, and toy modification
• Toyetic television production and consumption in the Global South
• The future of toyetic television in the streaming age
• Remakes and reimaginings
• Nostalgic engagement with toyetic television
• Afterlives of toyetic television in fan fiction and paratextual play
• Video games and digital paratexts
• Theoretical approaches to transmediation, media-mix, and franchising
• Regulation, national or cultural identity, and children’s television
• Educational and psychology approaches to toyetic television
• Music and sound effects in toyetic franchises
• Toyetic media for adults and intergenerational consumption
• Ludic approaches to television
• Fan studies approaches to toyetic television 
• Toyesis and toyetics in unexpected places

Please send 300 word abstracts and a short biographical note (50-100 words) to Dr Sophia Staite at staitepublications@gmail.com by August 30th 2024, with a view to having a completed essay by early 2025. Finished essays will be approximately 4000 words long (excluding bibliography), should be accessible but touch on the big ideas, and will ideally take a main example as a ‘lens’ to look at the wider topic.

Suggested readings:

Bacon, S. (ed). (2021). Transmedia Cultures: A Companion. Peter Lang.

Bainbridge, J. (2010). Fully articulated: The rise of the action figure and the changing face of ‘children's’ entertainment. Continuum, 24(6), 829-842.

Bainbridge, J. (2017). From Toyetic to Toyesis: The Cultural Value of Merchandising. In S. Harrington (Ed.), Entertainment Values: How do we Assess Entertainment and Why does it Matter? (pp. 23-39). Palgrave MacMillan.

Barratt-Peacock, R., & Staite, S. (2022). Gothic Trajectories of Childhood: Play as a Third Space, Affective Dissonance, and the Melodrama of Kamen Rider Kiva. Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, 9(1), 1-14.

Gray, J. (2010). Show Sold Seperately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York University Press.

Harvey, C. B. (2015). Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Storyworlds. Palgrave Macmillan.

Hendershot, H. (1998). Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation Before the V-chip. Duke University Press.

Hilton-Morrow, W., & McMahan, D. (2003). Flintstones to Futurama: Networks and primetime animation. In C. Stabile & M. Harrison (Eds.), Prime time animation:Television animation and American culture (pp. 74-88). Routledge.

Steinberg, M. (2012). Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. University of Minnesota Press.