franchises traced across kinds of media and merchandise, from Mickey Mouse in 1928 and the Lone Ranger on radio to Baby Shark, Labubu, and KPop Demon Hunters. Each row shows when a category first appeared for that series.
Color shows the category group and shape the category within it. Filled markers are firm dates; hollow markers are approximate. Markers in the same year stack vertically.
Click any cell to edit it. Blank means no date entered, not that the item never existed. Edited cells are underlined and saved in this browser; export a CSV to keep them.
Computed from each visible category's earliest date. Categories sharing a year are joined with +.
Toys, watches, Big Little Books, trading cards, and pajamas arrived first. Radio was a primary medium, not a spin-off: the Lone Ranger began there, and Popeye and Superman reached it within a few years. Sponsors made food the main premium channel, as with Merita Bread and Kix for the Lone Ranger. Video games came 40–50 years later.
Howdy Doody and Davy Crockett show the first TV merchandising booms. Crockett is the purest case: record, film, comic, cards, costume, lunchbox, bedding, and a Disneyland land all landed within about a year of the 1954 broadcast. Metal lunchboxes became the standard tie-in from 1953–54.
The TV show came first, with a lunchbox, board game, trading cards, model kit, and costume inside 1–3 years. Batman in 1966 is the extreme case. The Flintstones pushed into food and health with vitamins (1968) and Pebbles cereal (1971). View-Master reels, Power Records, and Mego figures mark the period.
Star Wars put merchandise right behind the film, and its novelization came out months before it. Kenner's "Early Bird" certificate existed because the toys weren't ready in time. Fast-food glasses and Happy Meals turned release dates into promotions, and Ghostbusters shipped its video game the same year as the movie.
FCC deregulation of children's TV allowed program-length commercials. Toy, tie-in comic, and cartoon launched together; costumes, pajamas, and cereal followed at once, and a film capped the run 3–4 years later.
Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears were designed by American Greetings for licensing. Card art came first, then dolls, a TV special, lunchbox, and bedding within 2–3 years; the cartoon followed the toys rather than leading them.
Pac-Man reached a hit single, cartoon, board game, pinball, and cereal within three years of the arcade release. Mario followed the same path later and more slowly, with a cereal, Saturday-morning cartoon, and comics by 1990.
Planet of the Apes and Six Million Dollar Man began as novels but merchandised only after the screen versions. Harry Potter is the modern pattern: film, video game, LEGO, and card game all in 2001, with fast-food tie-ins deliberately avoided.
Shrek, Cars, and the Marvel films returned to the Star Wars template on a larger scale. Cars reportedly sold far more in merchandise than it earned at the box office, and Cars Land followed six years later. Fast-food tie-ins peaked and then faded as studios pulled back from Happy Meal deals.
Angry Birds was the first app-born franchise: plush within a year, a theme-park land by 2012, a film in 2016. Baby Shark and CoComelon started as YouTube videos and reached charts, live tours, and toys before any TV series. Shopkins and L.O.L. Surprise! used unboxing videos in the slot the Saturday-morning cartoon once filled.
Fortnite turned in-game skins into the main merchandise, and crossovers (Thanos 2018, Star Wars and Batman 2019) put old franchises into new games. KPop Demon Hunters inverted the 1980s order: the hit came first and toys lagged months behind. Squishmallows and Labubu grew from collectible toys with almost no story at all.
Pokémon inverted the order: game, manga, cards, and toys, then anime, then movie. Power Rangers launched its TV show and toy line at the same moment.
Trading cards, costumes, and T-shirts tend to appear in the first season of popularity. Cereal and fast-food premiums mark the peak of a fad. LEGO, pinball, Pez, and theme-park rides tend to arrive late, as a sign a property has become a long-term brand.
The metal era ended around 1985–87, so TMNT, Power Rangers, and Pokémon boxes are plastic. Lunchboxes tracked peak popularity rather than origin.
Model kits, miniatures, and RPGs travel together. TMNT's 1985 RPG predates the cartoon by two years, and Star Trek had a model kit in 1966, a wargame in 1979, and an RPG in 1978, all before or alongside the first film. Licensed RPGs otherwise cluster in 1982–87 and 2017–22. Dungeons & Dragons runs the hobby path in reverse: wargame miniatures (1971), RPG (1974), board game, then a 1983 cartoon, LJN toys, and a lunchbox, with novels and comics after.
Metal lunchboxes, View-Master reels, Power Records, and most cereal tie-ins disappear after the 1990s. Their slots went to Funko Pops, in-game cosmetics, LEGO sets, plush collaborations, and theater sing-alongs. Streaming moved the first appearance of a show off broadcast TV entirely.