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Home > The BrainFood Show > Making Children Cry for Fun and Profit


	Podcast:		The BrainFood Show
	Episode:		Making Children Cry for Fun and Profit
	Category:		Society & Culture
	Duration:		00:19:52
	Publish Date:		2026-02-12 08:00:00
	Description:		If you’ve spent any time whatsoever on the internet you’re probably already quite familiar with how attached people are capable of getting to their favourite fictional characters. While this invariably manifests as arguments, because internet, it is by no means a new or novel phenomenon. For example, consider what happened when the powers that be decided to kill Optimus Prime in the 1986 feature, The Transformers: The Movie, and indeed at one point planned to kill literally all the main characters, all so that they could boost toy sales by introducing an entirely new set of characters children would now need to buy. A decision that resulted in untold masses of crying children in theaters, upset that Hasbro had killed their robotic dad. Not hyperbole. We’ll get into it. Now your first instinct might be to scoff at the idea of people giving this huge of a crap en masse about a talking truck, but we’d like you to keep two things in mind, we’re talking about children and there’s no doubt a fictional character out there that you would be, at the very least, a little upset to see shot in the back by a car-sized laser gun. How that would manifest would invariably, well, vary, but the fact you’d have some kind of reaction is the point we’re trying to make. But, we’re just saying, if you didn’t tear up at Iron Man’s death, you are a soulless monster. Author: Karl Smallwood Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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