decade history meant it still had marketability.  For a series like Our Gang this attitude was crucial and the  entertainment value of the entries suffered tremendously at the  hands of MGM, which soon injected it with inferior scripts that  promoted various lessons (morality, safety, patriotism, and  education) in place of comedy and as the veteran Roach kids outgrew  their roles, they were replaced by increasingly obnoxious and less  talented newcomers. MGM could offer far higher production values  than Roach could ever afford but it couldnt hold a candle to it in  the area of comedy. The fact that the series would survive in  production through 1943 shows the momentum that Hal Roach had  carefully built up... it took five years of mostly terrible MGM  scripts to kill it.