Educational Shorts are short (5 minutes or less) stand-alone programs designed to convey a moral about something within the space of a standard commercial break. Often shown at the tail-end of American Saturday morning cartoon shows, or during the commercial breaks in-between shows. Parodied often elsewhere (who can forget those "Knowledge Is Power" GI Joe shorts, or their various spoofs?). First created as a form of commercial during the early days of TV, where commercials actually tried to inform the viewing audience of the uses of a product, instead of simply making the product attractive through glitz and glamour.