>>41381
>Actually, I'm pretty sure -tans were originally comissioned from established Artists for companies.
I'm only aware of one example of a commercially commissioned -tan predating the OS-tans, which were definitely not commercially commissioned. That is the girl who showed up in a memory chip manufacturer's advertisement, lying across one of the chips. (Sorry, I don't remember which manufacturer that was.)
Of course, one could debate exactly where the boundaries of "-tan"-dom lie. For instance, is it necessary for the character to specifically be a personification of the object/brand/concept, or is it sufficient to simply be a mascot? If we take the less restrictive boundaries, is Mary Tyler Moore's "Happy Hotpoint" character a -tan? If we take the more restrictive boundaries, how do we know that the memory-chip girl was even a -tan? Did the advertisers conceive of her as an anthropomorphism, or simply as "a cute girl who advertises our products?"
In any case, I don't think that merely being commercial, or non-commercial, is a reason to include or exclude content from this board. But neither do I think sagetard is being reasonable in his insistence that AWR's work should be excluded because it's not the quality that would be produced by a professional, or even of a skilled amateur. Fuck, guys, we're doing this for fun, remember??