The Death of the Man who Invented Saturday Morning

This past Friday, Bernard Loomis, "The Man who Invented Saturday Morning," died of heart disease at age 82 in his home in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. From the late 1950s to the 1990s, Loomis forged a legendary record in toy marketing. He came up with the idea of making Saturday morning cartoons based on toys. Previously, the cartoons came first.

While some people believe this to be repugnant and point to the more blatant examples of kiddie commercialism in the 80s like "GI Joe" and "Jem" and "MASK," Loomis' first concept of this was a half-hour long show in 1969 that highlighted kids playing with Mattel's latest product, Hot Wheels.

His products included:

• The Six Million Dollar Man action figure (had two, first one chewed by Boston Terrier)
• The Bionic Woman (had one, er, to go with my Six Million Dollar Man. Shut up.)
• Hot Wheels (had many)
• Baby Alive (never had one, but the idea of a realistic doll that you feed a special formula that requires you to change its diaper later really appeals to me)
• Strawberry Shortcake (he conceived of this as a line of dolls, greeting cards, and a made for tv movie. I had the boy one that looked like Huck Finn because the girl next door had several. That's my story. Shut up.)
• Steve Scout, the official doll of the Boy Scouts of America (had one, but apparently this is one of Loomis' flops, like Duke the Wonder Dog.)
• the Star Wars line of toys

One amazing thing about the Star Wars line of toys is that he advised General Mills to pass on Spielberg's Close Encounters because it wasn't "toyetic," but opted on the Star Wars because the people in the movie wore costumes. (I remember the rubber and wire bendable/poseable grays put out by Mego[?] or some company like that. They sucked.) The movie was such a runaway hit that they pushed the release date for the toys to Christmas even though there was no way to physically produce the toys in time, so the man sold empty boxes with IOU's that promised to deliver the toys within the next couple of months. When the toys eventually arrived, the other kids who's parents hadn't fallen for the marketing ploy were clamoring for the cool toys their friends had, thus upping the Spring quarterly sales.

In 1988, he was the subject of the book title The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning, and Other Adventures in American Enterprise by David Owen.

I, for one, would like to pay my respect to the man that invented my childhood memories. Thank you, sweet Prince, and flights of Angels sing you to your rest.