12. Toy Commercials
President Reagan signed legislation affecting the number of ads that could be shown in children’s programming. While this might sound like a perfect move on his part – a responsible way of preventing companies from targeting children and encouraging them to whine to their parents for more stuff – it also led to horrible programming.
The television shows of the era were 23-minute-long ads for toys. So many people who didn’t grow up in the 80s don’t realize that the whole Transformers series is based on an 80s-era cartoon show, which was invented to sell the toys.