I don't think many animation fans not involved in the actual animation industry understand what happened in the late 80s/early 90s. The animation industry as everyone knew it radically changed.
Nearly all industries in the US have lost jobs to cheap, overseas competition.
And certainly GI Joe and the Marvel/Sunbow shows did their animation overseas in Korea and Japan. But the pre-production and post-production was all done in the US by mostly UNION staff. The cost of these shows was enormous. And you can tell, when you look at the difference in quality of the animation compared to other shows. A big part of that was actually CARING about the show they were making. They wanted it to look good. It wasn't just some stupid kids’ cartoon that they thought was crap. You talk to the people who worked on the Marvel/Sunbow GI Joe and they thought it was amazing.
Then came DIC. The joke in the industry is that it stands for "Do It Cheap". They found every way to cut corners, get lower budgets, and find every way to skimp.
M.A.S.K. cost 20 times less to make than GI Joe (per episode).
Unfortunately, when toys sales slumped, the financing from them vanished and there was no way to justify spending the money to make good series. Combine with that the new SAG voice actors’ agreement in 1989. So all voice work went to Canada. But at least, most post-production stayed in the States.
DIC undercut everyone. They underbid on contracts. The budgets for shows kept getting lower and lower.
Even Canada is too expensive for many animation studios now. Post production for animation is being done in China.
The animation industry in Southern California has been decimated thanks to DIC and Saban. Most of the people you see on the credits of GI Joe lost their jobs due to DIC.
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