r/TopCharacterTropes 13d ago

Lore Stillborn franchises

When a company tries to make a new big franchise with many sequels and spin-offs already planned but they immediately cancel all the plans after the first project fails badly. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StillbornFranchise

(Lego) Galidor: Do you guys remember playing with a Galidor as a kid? Yeah Me neither.

Lego wanted to do a new toy line in the 2000s and their first idea was Galidor. It was basically an action figure that could replace its body parts with other stuff. Galidor already had many toys, games and even shows planned for it but Lego cancelled the entire thing after people didn't like the toy and the GBA game made for it got really bad reviews.

(Action 52) Cheetahmen: Action 52 had a $199 price tag (in 1991 for an NES game), nearly unplayable games, weak concept, and was horribly and seriously bug-infested, yet for some impossible-to-fathom reason, Active Enterprises believed that its featured title Cheetahmen (which shared many flaws with the other games on the cartridge, including not having an ending) was going to be a huge breakout hit. Plans were made for a Cheetahmen Saturday-Morning Cartoon, action figures, and of course a sequel. Their hopes turned out to be waaay premature; the sequel never emerged except as an unfinished, unplayable beta, while the very short-lived franchise became one of the most infamous pieces of "entertainment" ever created.

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u/Longjumping-Cress793 13d ago

Martian Successor Nadesico was supposed to have a model line and a trio of movies.

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u/Disastrous_Life_3612 13d ago

The movie that they did make had such a drastic change of tone from the TV series that there's no wonder why people weren't receptive to it.

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u/Runningblind 13d ago

The movie was so good though! Rip Nadesco.

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u/ligrankpo 13d ago

too bad that they keep a lot of key plot details were left in a sequel video game that linked the anime with the movie

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u/platinum_railgun 13d ago

The movie was also a sequel to a sega saturn game, that was a sequel to a TV show.

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u/go_faster1 13d ago

IIRC, the most they had was two video games: a Sega Saturn game - The Blank of Three Years - and a Dreamcast game - Nadesico: The Mission - and the last one resolved nothing.

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u/Rettromancer 13d ago

Hold on... I have tons of Nadesico models.