The Strange History and Cascading Derivatives of The Ghostbusters Franchise
While there’s much to be said for the nostalgia market in general, as someone born in ’83, I am subject to the ‘80s nostalgia boom, a creature that has moved from a niche to a mainstream industry. My best guess as to why is at least partially due to the fact the ‘80s were such a peculiar and material decade, complete with shoulder pads in women’s clothing and weapons-grade hairspray, that truly stands alone. This strange decade produced the Ghostbusters franchise, which would consolidate a vast audience, with cartoons for children, movies for adults, and merchandise for all.
Some rather masterful nostalgia-based art, provided by www.deviantart.com/whittingtonrhett/gallery, demonstrating broad derivatives for the cartoon, itself a derivative of the original movie
Happy Meals and Intellectual Property Tie-ins
While it is true that Disney had a head start on creating a diverse number of derivative properties for their movies (i.e., the first Disneyland was built in 1955), the 80’s saw an explosion in the value of derivative properties. For one of many examples, the first Happy Meal happened in 1979, and the “Star Trek Meal” was rolled out in the same year to be the first Happy Meal associated with a movie. It wasn’t until the ‘80s that the Happy Meal would be far-better paired with movie merchandise and engage in joint promotions with the studios, however, and global supply chains would serendipitously allow China to produce a Rocketeer figure for something like $.05/unit to be shipped in giant container ships.
This decade also saw an explosion in movies on VHS. The kids would want the Happy Meal toy from their favorite movie sequel, push mom and dad to rent the original at a local video store, then follow up by requesting the cereal with their favorite character on the box and the playset you could grab at Toys R’ Us: derivatives of derivatives of intellectual properties were becoming more of an everyday aspect of life, and my brother, like many when facing a physical remnant of their past, almost lost it when I picked up an unopened pack of Dick Tracy cards at a thrift store for his birthday.
The complicated universe of derivatives can result in the same brand having many lives, and it seems like in the ‘80s, intellectual property just began to hop from medium to medium so much that many forget where it started: He-Man began his iconic cartoon life as a super-jacked action figure alongside his enemy Skeletor, and the story had to start from there in a comic; G.I. Joe, a staple ‘80s cartoon, was originally a “doll” created in 1964, and only began production on the cartoon to get around restrictions against animation being shown in commercials that targeted children; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the cartoon that dominated my childhood, started as a relatively dark comic book parody of The New Mutants (mutants in the sewer) and Daredevil (ninjas in NYC) where Shredder was killed by being tossed from the roof of a tall building in the first issue. From there, it has spawned several other cartoons, a live-action series, several movies (one featuring Vanilla Ice), the finest toy lines the world has ever seen, a countless number of costumes, video games, and other merchandise, and even produced a guest appearance from Michaelangelo in a fairly ironic anti-drug cartoon, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.
While all of the above ‘80s properties certainly have prominent places in producing a large number of spin-off products, media, and merchandise to fuel nostalgia, Ghostbusters is probably my favorite underrated ‘80s cultural stock: although there is an endless number of public comments on the movies, many my age experienced the franchise more through the far-less appreciated derivatives than the original movie or its direct sequel. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I’m more familiar with the action figures and cartoons than I will likely ever be with any live-action movie - they were what solidified in my imagination precisely what a “Ghostbuster” is, and continue to bring me back to the franchise today.
Zooming in on the cartoon, The Real Ghostbusters would have some media that was incidentally confusable. The name Ghostbusters was negotiated from a previous sitcom series owned by Filmation (and later Universal Studios), The Ghost Busters, that featured three paranormal investigators, one of whom was a guerilla wearing a beanie. As it sounds, it had nothing to do with the movie we’ve all seen. Filmation, the owner of The Ghost Busters, sold the rights of the name for the film to Columbia Studios, however, not the rights for the name of the animated television series: the animated show was officially up for grabs, prompting an intellectual property firefight that nearly prevented its release by creating a property with enough brand confusion that I actually caught an episode to two myself.
The Ghost Busters: Easily confused with The Ghostbusters
The production company that grabbed the Ghostbusters cartoon, Dic Entertainment, produced a 4-minute short featuring an animated version of the Ghostbusters and began production, trying their best to recreate the spirit of Ghostbusters with a more child-appropriate format and tone. Additionally, while all the usual deals for licensing had to be made, there were some noticeable differences in specific features to avoid paying unnecessary licensing fees, i.e., Dr. Venkman looks significantly different than Bill Murry because Murry’s likeness was too expensive. At the same time, The Ghost Busters (the one with the beanie-ape) was producing its own cartoon and led The Real Ghostbusters to add in The Real part to try to differentiate themselves as The Ghost Busters crossed their fingers and nearly edged them out of their own brand.
The Real Ghostbusters was stretched out to 22 minutes and produced across several seasons and was a complete hit, as was much of the merchandise stemming directly from it (i.e., Hi-C Ecto Cooler; several video games; a comic book; an absurd number of costumes, figures, ghosts, toy vehicles, etc.). This media and merchandise arguably kept the Ghostbusters franchise relevant in the Zeitgeist for long enough to warrant Ghostbusters II: remember, five years is an eternity to wait for a sequel, even back when we seemingly only had 6 or 7 movies a year.
Rick Sanchez finding Hi-C Ecto Cooler in a dragon’s hoard (and once again proves The Real Ghostbusters’ continued cultural relevance and legacy, arguably above the movies). Keep in mind that juicebox is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative of the movie
The franchise would then go on to spawn another animated series that directly followed The Real Ghostbusters, Extreme Ghostbusters, as well as several more movies.
Ultimately, while people will talk of the Ghostbusters movie with a sort of reverence, the franchise was so broad that it’s hard to limit a conversation about that intellectual property merely to the original film. Part of the appeal is the iconic Ghostbuster logo on coffee mugs, pulling an Egon figure from next to a Big Mac, playing the Nintendo game with friends, or unboxing who knows how many toys as a kid for years after the appeal of the original movie had faded from the public eye and was languishing on the USA Network at 2 a.m. While many franchises have done it well, I do not believe that any franchise has so efficiently leveraged a relatively modest amount of media (one great movie with a mediocre sequel) into such an absolute empire of media and merchandise that would continue to produce for decades.
Who ya gunna call?