9. Gotta Buy 'Em All!
Okay, so maybe this one doesn't qualify as a "life lesson" so much as subliminal advertising and enabling of addictive behavior, but let's be real. Franchises like Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and even the recent craze of Skylanders (sure, they haven't made a movie yet, but we all know they will at some point, just ask Angry Birds) all exist to do what companies like Nintendo and 4Kids love and parents hate: sell your children
as much useless crap as possible. We can't blame this entirely on the last 10 years or so of media-for-merchandise culture. Remember Transformers? You might have heard of them. An obscure director named Michael Bay actually made
threemovies about
them. Even back in the 80s, cartoons were created almost solely to show kids all the things that their parents could shell out hard-earned cash for. Though, to be fair, the folks who make TV shows and movies for kids have to make money somehow, too. Still, "Gotta catch 'em all!" is a little on the nose there, don't ya' think Nintendo?