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Old 11-28-2023, 03:37 PM   #1
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How many people do you think saw the Red Sky seasons back in the day?

Turtlemania peaked around 1989-1991, if I'm not mistaken? Then the decline began, and by 1993(season 7) you could see the FW series was starting to get more serious and action heavy again before it made the stylistic change to Red Sky in the next season. Clearly they wanted to rebrand the show in order to get back viewers.

So, I wonder how many people watched the Red Sky episodes back in 1994-1996? I was born in 1990, so I was able to watch the whole show several times after it was over since it often reran on a popular cartoon cable tv channel in my country. But my older brother was born in 1983 and grew up during Turtlemania. And he says that by 1992, it was starting to cool off among his peers and pretty much no one cared about the Turtles anymore in 1993. When I first watched the Red Sky episodes in 2003 or so, he was surprised because he had never seen episodes like those when he was a kid and even wondered at first if the characters kept the same voices lol

All I can do is take a wild guess, but I'm going to assume around 80% of the kids who began watching the FW series in 1987 with Turtle Tracks had already outgrown/moved on from the Turtles by the time Get Shredder premiered in 1994. And perhaps I'm being conservative. I mean, someone who was 7 years old in 1987 would be 14 in 1994. That's like an eternity of time when you are a kid and change a lot. I don't think the majority of kids would be watching the same exact cartoon series for 7 straight years. They'd eventually find others they like in the meantime.

Thoughts?
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Old 11-28-2023, 03:42 PM   #2
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Alot of the kids back then would've also seen themselves as too old and too cool for tmnt, so even the tone changes would've not been enough to sway them, assuming they even knew of the Red Sky seasons.
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Old 11-28-2023, 03:47 PM   #3
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Alot of the kids back then would've also seen themselves as too old and too cool for tmnt, so even the tone changes would've not been enough to sway them, assuming they even knew of the Red Sky seasons.
I figure just as much.

My history with TMNT is interesting. I first watched the first 3 seasons or so until the Turtles Turtles Everywhere episode somewhere around 1996-1998 and then I stopped and the FW series began rerunning on the same channel again in 2002-2005. So I was 12 when I got back into it and it was during the 1st Usagi episode. I became an even bigger fan but also quickly began noticing the falws of the FW series we all have discussed to death by now. The Red Sky seasons looked more badass to my 13 year old self.


And ofc then came the 2k3 series and the Turtles actually used their weapons and it was heavily implied that Shredder killed people. My 13-14 year old self loved that **** haha
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Old 11-28-2023, 03:55 PM   #4
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Probably circa 0,5 % of all children and teenagers in the industrialized world who lived outside English-speaking countries and territories.
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Old 11-28-2023, 04:00 PM   #5
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Probably circa 0,5 % of all children and teenagers in the industrialized world who lived outside English-speaking countries and territories.
Even the majority of those who lived in English speaking countries probably didn't get to watch Red Sky either. Especially since those started watching it in 1987. Portugal didn't get the FW cartoon until 1990 right after the 1990 movie came out in cinemas here. And perhaps that was the case for other European nations?

Portuguese kids of my brother's generation basically got fed 5 seasons of Ninja Turtles in the timespan of 2 years.
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Old 11-28-2023, 06:01 PM   #6
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I became a huge fan of the red sky seasons when they first aired but barely any of my friends knew about them. Eventually, I was dying to see season 7 episodes to remind myself what happened before red sky, I wasn't able to until 2002.

The 2003 cartoon made me take a years long hiatus from red sky but after seeing them for the first time in years, I unexpectedly got right back into them.
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Old 11-28-2023, 08:14 PM   #7
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I didn't even know they existed back then.
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Old 11-28-2023, 09:54 PM   #8
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Given what we know about FW's relationship with Mirage and the mere fact that FW just didn't make any other successful shows, it's reasonable to assume Red Sky seasons (if not seasons 5 through 7 as well) came to be for similar reasons as The Amazing Spider-Man and Fant4stic. That is to say, they only exist because the show needed to maintain production for as long as possible, just to prevent Mirage from partnering up with a different studio (which is exactly what happened). Season 10 may have been the final straw, it just wasn't justifiable for any reason at that point.
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Old 11-28-2023, 10:13 PM   #9
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Yeah, I watched the show as it aired until the end.

It was part of CBS' "Action Zone" block, which I think was an hour and a half of darker cartoons: TMNT, Skeleton Warriors, and WildC.A.T.S. with the occasional older TMNT rerun.
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Old 11-28-2023, 10:17 PM   #10
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In here Turtlemania occurred a bit later, starting in 1993 and ending in about 1995-96, when Pokemon had started.

But since, up until 1999-2000 RSS were never aired on TV, I don't think anyone cared or knew about them. By this point no-one cared.
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Old 11-28-2023, 10:38 PM   #11
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I watched them, though I was in high school at the time. I find it funny that some kids would stop watching due to "coolness." Batman, Spider-Man, The Tick, and Beavis & Butt-head were out around this time, too. Hell, I think I watched more cartoons as a teen than I did a child.
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Old 11-29-2023, 04:42 AM   #12
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Most people knew about them, that's why they were discussed in the early days of the internet (Dregg, Carter, what happened to Shredder/Krang).

TMNT fell to the wayside in the U.S. due to Power Rangers and other Fox superhero shows like Batman:TAS, Spiderman and X-men all airing around the early and mid-90-'s.

Had TMNT continued a little longer it would have been completely destroyed by the time Pokemon came to the west in 1998.
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Old 11-29-2023, 06:15 AM   #13
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Most people knew about them, that's why they were discussed in the early days of the internet (Dregg, Carter, what happened to Shredder/Krang).
A lot of people learnt about their existence thanks to the Intenet. Personally, I was only able to catch Seasons 1–5 and Vacation in Europe in pre-digital days.
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Old 11-29-2023, 06:43 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by CyberCubed View Post
Most people knew about them, that's why they were discussed in the early days of the internet (Dregg, Carter, what happened to Shredder/Krang).

TMNT fell to the wayside in the U.S. due to Power Rangers and other Fox superhero shows like Batman:TAS, Spiderman and X-men all airing around the early and mid-90-'s.

Had TMNT continued a little longer it would have been completely destroyed by the time Pokemon came to the west in 1998.
I wasn't using the internet back in 1995-1996, so I have no idea about that.

I remember Power Rangers being popular when I was 5-6. I never really watched it, but had a green power ranger toy, for some reason.

I definitely remember the Pokémon craze. I was in 3rd or 4th grade. It was crazy.

DBZ was massive here in Portugal throughout the 90s as well.
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Old 11-29-2023, 08:07 AM   #15
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I've checked out some Red Sky airdates:

USA: 17 September 1994–2 November 1996

Germany: 19 April–20 May 1999
Hungary: Never aired
Russia: 28 April–31 May 2000
Sweden: Never aired
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Old 11-29-2023, 09:18 AM   #16
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I watched them when they were airing on CBS.
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Old 11-30-2023, 06:16 AM   #17
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Everyone I knew, including myself, had basically walked from TMNT at this point. And it wasn't to other I.P.'s or shows either - it was just that period of life where you did other things entirely.

I think it was the perfect storm to walk away from it at the time. The toys had become mostly weird releases of the brothers by that time, my generation aged out overnight and things like Power Rangers hooked younger people. TMNT III was a disaster of disinterest too. It felt like that in hindsight, everything peaked at Secret of the Ooze and began declining after that. For me, the Playmates releases of Tokka and Rahzar were two of the last toys I bought off the racks from the era.

I imagine this was the culture of the moment too, so the Red Sky seasons probably had significantly lower viewership than the previous seasons. I'm sure people watched the season - but in significantly fewer numbers than before it.
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Old 11-30-2023, 11:23 AM   #18
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getting information about the red sky era was very difficult online in the early 00s, just look at old threads from this forum. I remember watching it at least once in the 90s because of the intro but in general I never really caught the original cartoon on tv, not even the earlier seasons. I guess the turtles just weren't as popular on tv when I was growing up the power rangers and other action cartoons trying to be more 90s like xmen/btas killed the popularity of reruns I guess.
So yeah, most people don't know who Dregg is and most people in the fandom who know who he is read about him on wikipedia or saw some influencers youtube video about the 1987 show, not because they saw him in the 90s. To this day he doesn't have an action figure from the 1987 show and NECA has even done background characters that appeared for 4 seconds and had no lines.
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Old 11-30-2023, 11:28 AM   #19
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Everyone I knew, including myself, had basically walked from TMNT at this point. And it wasn't to other I.P.'s or shows either - it was just that period of life where you did other things entirely.

I think it was the perfect storm to walk away from it at the time. The toys had become mostly weird releases of the brothers by that time, my generation aged out overnight and things like Power Rangers hooked younger people. TMNT III was a disaster of disinterest too. It felt like that in hindsight, everything peaked at Secret of the Ooze and began declining after that. For me, the Playmates releases of Tokka and Rahzar were two of the last toys I bought off the racks from the era.

I imagine this was the culture of the moment too, so the Red Sky seasons probably had significantly lower viewership than the previous seasons. I'm sure people watched the season - but in significantly fewer numbers than before it.
I mean, 10 years is an eternity when you are a kid. I first watched the FW series when I was what, 7 years old in 1997-1998? And by then it was considered an old cartoon, even though it had finished airing in 1996. But since Turtlemania was dead before the cartoon series was, a lot of people clearly haven't watched the final seasons. Like I said, my brother had no idea about the Red Sky episodes. The most recent episodes he remembered were the European Vacation episodes which aired during season 7 in 1993. That was also the year TMNT III came out. I suspect that movie might have pretty much killed the Turtlemania fad.

It's kind of odd how a cartoon that went on for 10 seasons and nearly 200 episodes long felt so old by the late 90s/early 2000s considering it ended in 1996.

I can only speak for Portugal, but I didn't see any TMNT merchandise when I was a kid until the 2k3 series came out. Clearly by 1997-1998 there was zero interest in shops selling TMNT toys. Perhaps you could have find used ones being resold at flea markets, I don't know. I was too young to go to such places at the time.

When the 2k3 series was announced and began airing it felt like the Turtles had just risen from their grave. Then, around a decade later, came the Nick series and new merch was available as well. Hell, I still see a few retro themed TMNT merch for sale in shops here as of 2023!
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Old 11-30-2023, 12:01 PM   #20
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1998-2002 was probably the lowest point of popularity in the history of the property. I would get weird looks asking for TMNT at comic shops. I think most people thought it was pretty much over.

While I did watch during the original red sky seasons, nobody else I knew was watching. There was a small internet presence at the time. I remember ninja turtles.com announced the final season would be all one writer.

Edit: on second thought, maybe it was Wizard magazine that made that announcement.
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