01-02-2019, 05:42 PM | #21 |
Jedi Master
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I guess they did not consider those of us who are kids playing with the action figures act out episodes and did not need imaginative disguises on the Turtles to do that. I do not believe successor cartoons suffered such over the top concepts, correct?
Did you all like the fact toys were made of characters that did not appear in the 1987 cartoon or other media? I never quite understood the point of that, not knocking it, it was just odd. I thought I was gstting a preview that may show up in Archie' TMNT Adventures or the 1987 cartoon. Sgt. Bannanas, Dr. Eel, King Lionheart, Panada Khan (alongside Usagi) were begging to go beyond a toy.
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01-02-2019, 06:48 PM | #22 | |
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But go figure, I was so particular about my Turtles looking EXACTLY like they did in the show that I asked for the Wacky Action Turtles, because the regular ones didn't have pupils! -JJ |
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01-02-2019, 09:45 PM | #23 | |
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01-02-2019, 09:51 PM | #24 | |
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01-02-2019, 11:59 PM | #25 |
Foot Elite
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I was not a child at the time, but I feel the original toy line went downhill when it became a parody of the more successful boys and girls toylines before it. I seem to remember hearing about a cousin of mine groaning at the sight of the first series of Mutant Military and Sewer Sports All-Stars at Toys “R” Us in the fall of 1991. There were too many to collect for him. Like I imagine, everyone his age wanted the characters that appeared in the Fred Wolf cartoon only. So, it was a big letdown for my cousin because he had a ‘gut feeling’ the basic assortment figures were going to be buried under numerous and unnecessary variants on standard cards from that point onwards until the end of toyline’s history. Sadly, the original toyline never recovered.
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01-03-2019, 12:09 AM | #26 |
god status
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I don't even remember turtle toys being on shelves when I was younger. The last one I got as a kid was a movie Raphael and that wasn't even bought in my state. I only remember Batman toys being everywhere and then in 93 Power Rangers took over.
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01-03-2019, 12:57 AM | #27 | |
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01-03-2019, 08:19 AM | #28 |
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I was born in '82, so I grew up through the height of Turtlemania.
I loved most of the variants--rock n' roll, military, sports, Universal Monsters, etc--but felt like TMNT first started to suffer in 1993 when figures no longer had individualized art cards. And over the next year or two, the shelf space at stores began to decrease, more of the figures reused the same molds (Shogun turtles and Apollo 11 figures, for instance), and some of the figures, while kind of cool, felt pretty disconnected from the TMNT universe I grew up with (Metal Mutants, Super Mutants, Muta-Force, Cyber Samurai, Coil-Force, those Street Fighter rip-offs, etc). Power Rangers, which I disliked both then and now, also stole some of their thunder. By 1996, very few of the characters Playmates released were of anyone but the four TMNT, and some of the concepts were real stretches (like the Dino Turtles, the ones that were actually dinosaurs themselves). I recall how the shelves at Toys R Us remained virtually unchanged from week to week, whereas a few years earlier there was something new every time I visited. When the Next Mutation came out, I was a freshman in high school and tried to watch it, and really did want to like it, but it wasn't very good and reminded me too much of Power Rangers. The Next Mutation toys, some of which I bought for kicks, were actually really nice. But by then they were hard to find and most stores had a very small TMNT footprint. |
01-03-2019, 08:21 AM | #29 | |
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01-03-2019, 09:06 AM | #30 | |
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Do they collect all the individual prints? Any missing? I see some on the amazon site and if they are complete I may start to buy them to give them a try. I have read almost every TMNT comic and need some more to read Are crossovers in this saga collection?
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01-03-2019, 11:18 AM | #31 | |
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And Super Shredder, Tokka, and Rhazar all should have been released with the Movie Star figures in early 1992. Instead, those three figures were shoed into the rest of the basic assortment for ‘91 in the fashion that Storage Shell Donatello was the year before. In other words, they were sneak preview figures. I thought the Storage Shell variants were a nice play on the Battle Armor Skeletor and He-Man figures from the early Reagan ‘80s. So, those toys were fine in my book. The original TMNT toyline was transitioning in the early 1990s from how it was last in the very late 1980s to the way it would be at the start of the mid 1990s. Needless to say, there was a clear disconnect between the 1990 characters and the 1992 ones. Each figure came on an individualized art card in the early 90s, but the ‘92 molds were highly-stylized, glossier, cartoonier, colorful, and in some cases, heavier than those before them. I’ll be honest. I really liked the original Playmates toy line before Mike the Sewer Surfer and Raph, the Space Cadet were introduced. I would have taken those particular disguised turtles out of the lineup for the autumn of 1990. The other two were fine. The original toyline, looking back, suffered a lot from an identity crisis. Again, it was better in the first three years before Playmates tried to capitalize on all of the new toy trends of the 1990s (i.e. - Polly Pocket) and the unforgettable toy fads of the 1980s (i.e.- Transformers). I think most fans and acquirers of the first toyline would agree me that it should have stayed a pseudo-Masters of the Universe toyline from beginning to end. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I’ll be curious to see the season 3 episode of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix when it airs. The original TMNT line went on longer than most of the best ‘80s action figure lines before it, but it does not stack up to those lines at all. It’s rather ironic that the flaw with this toyline for the animated adaption of the hit comic book spoof was that it stopped taking itself seriously. Last edited by mikey0; 01-03-2019 at 02:13 PM. |
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01-03-2019, 12:10 PM | #32 | |
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01-03-2019, 12:43 PM | #33 |
Hench Mutant
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I grew up with the 2000s line and I appreciated that the line mostly reflected what was in the 2003 series, down to the variants. I guess it helped that there was a decent recurring cast of human, mutant, and alien characters as well.
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01-03-2019, 02:08 PM | #34 | |
Foot Elite
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There were more pegs reserved for the Kenner Batman Returns line by the end of ‘92 at places like Caldors than space for the TMNT stuff. Still, the first Mutations line was on end-caps at Toys “R” Us for quite a while in the spring of 1993. The turtles were not taking up the full aisle in the spring of ‘93 at Toys “R” Us like they did in 1990 though. Like you brought up, the Bandai Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers line took over completely in 1994 and made the turtle line look like relics from a different time period. I’m going to say, also, that the birth of Turtlemania in 1990 ruined the toyline. There was more of a demand for new turtle products from children and retailers alike after the 1990 holiday season. The first wave versions of the turtles and Shredder were hard to find until the fall of ‘91. By then, anyone that wanted the four turtles had three other chances to get them (Storage Shell Donatello, the Wacky Action figures, and disguised turtles). So, children of the early 1990s moved on to other toys like the Super Nintendo, Super Soakers, and Hasbro WWF action figures from 1991 onward. To this day, the turtles are thought of as a 1990 thing. Toy scalpers in 1990 thought the figures would be worth a fortune in the future, at the time, but the figures were extremely mass produced. |
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01-03-2019, 02:25 PM | #35 | |
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01-03-2019, 03:03 PM | #36 | |
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Power Rangers
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01-03-2019, 03:28 PM | #37 |
Random Punk
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I was born in '85, so got to experience both. I lost interest in the Power Rangers fairly quickly, maybe around 1995 after the first movie. The Turtles were always more important to me than the Power Rangers, as the toys were way cooler to me. The only thing the Power Rangers toy line had going for it were the Zords. I do agree that the Turtles had become to seem like sort of a relic of the past by the mid-nineties, like a lot of other things from the 80s.
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01-03-2019, 03:34 PM | #38 | |
Overlord
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TMNT off air
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01-03-2019, 03:56 PM | #39 | |
Foot Elite
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01-03-2019, 04:03 PM | #40 |
Mad Scientist
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what you guys talking bout, I am living in turtle mania right now. just go my turtle room and get on eBay for more haha
great thread btw
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