How often did you make "stories" or episodes with your TMNT toys?

[CyberCubed]

So when I was a kid like most people I imagine, when I played with my toys I would "pretend" that I was making an episode of the cartoon. I would time my play-time for 22 minutes (the standard length for an ep without commercials), and I would try to do a new story each day with whatever TMNT figures I had. Luckily I had most of the villains/mutants I could do something different each day.

From memory I think I did this from age 5 to about 12 or so until I stopped. How often did you do this as a kid?

[I Crave Pizza No More]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

So when I was a kid like most people I imagine, when I played with my toys I would "pretend" that I was making an episode of the cartoon. I would time my play-time for 22 minutes (the standard length for an ep without commercials), and I would try to do a new story each day with whatever TMNT figures I had. Luckily I had most of the villains/mutants I could do something different each day.

From memory I think I did this from age 5 to about 12 or so until I stopped. How often did you do this as a kid?

I don't think I ever played according to the formula of the cartoon, with a possible exception being once I had the Sewer Playset, Technodrome, and Party Wagon toys. But even then it was rare, mostly because some of my favorite figures were variants or characters who weren't ever really part of the cartoon.

More commonly, my friend and I invented a scenario where a bunch of random characters--some were turtles, some were variants of turtles, and some were other random mutants or humans like movie foot solider or Mitsu--were forced to live together in some kind of base in a post apocalyptic world. The base was actually behind and underneath a bar my buddy's parents set up (but I guess never used) in the basement. It had various shelves and stacks of stuff like records that we just incorporated into the base. Eventually the "world" expanded to other bases in the basement, such as a cave made by removing the seat cushion of a sofa chair and laying it over the arm rests. There were some enemies who lived out in the world, and maybe they were a mix of TMNT and other toys like MOTU or Jurassic Park dinosaurs or whatever, but often the enemies were people within the bases who had disputes with one another. Deep stuff for a couple of 10 year olds!

[mrmaczaps]

I don't think I ever did this with tmnt figures but the old man had a video camera & I had blank vhs tapes that I would record making "movoes" with the he-man figures & Kenner Super Powers figures... I even wrote scripts & tried to do different voices. Lol. I may have mixed in a few other figures somewhere but don't think I ever did a turtles one. Odd considering I had plenty of tmnt figures & the lair.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

I referred to the stories I made up with my action figures as adventures, not cartoon episodes or comic issue.

[Prowler]

Ofc I came up with my own adventures. I had the Turtles, 2 Elite Foot, 1 Tech Foot, 2 Regular Foot Soldiers, Shredder, Usagi, a Utrom exosuit and Nanotech Ribotnfigures. Also the Battle Shell, Raphael's bike and some aquatic vehicle whose name I forgot. I didn't have Splinter, Casey, April, Bishop or Hun. But still have a solid collection.

No I didn't follow the exact formula of the 2k3 series carton. Mostly had the Turtles fighting Shredder and the Foot or fighting among themselves. Or made them wrestle with my WWE action figures.

[Leo656]

Basically, I'd get all my Good Guy action figures on one side of the living room and all my Bad Guys on the other side, along with whatever playsets and vehicles I had, and have Epic Wars that would last all afternoon.

Like, for example, a standard scenario would be a team-up between the TMNT, He-Man and the Masters, the Ghostbusters (both "Real" and Filmation), and whatever DC and Marvel action figures I had, versus Skeletor and his Evil Warriors, Prime Evil from Filmation Ghostbusters unleashing a ton of various ghosts, and Lex Luthor and the Joker fronting the Legion of Doom. He-Man and Co. would be operating out of Castle Grayskull, trying to defend it, while Skeletor and the other bad guys would all operate out of Snake Mountain (I didn't have a lot of bad guy playsets, at least not from actual lines; I had some simple, generic, off-brand ones though like "mountain secret hideout" playsets and stuff like that), while the Turtles and the Ghostbusters would all be based out of the Ghostbusters Firehouse since I didn't have a Turtles' Lair but they were all based out of NYC so it still tangentially made sense. Once in a while if sh*t got real, and I could find all the pieces, I'd have the bad guys on the verge of winning until Voltron showed up and laid down the thunder. Sometimes the bad guys would commandeer Voltron and then like Superman or He-Man would end up chucking him back into outer space. I had a ton of stuff so you'd get some really great crossover stuff out of it all. This would last an entire day or sometimes a weekend, depending.

I don't remember too many specifics of the adventures themselves, but I do remember that usually after the good guys would win, they'd kick it back to Ghostbusters HQ for a big victory party where the male action figures would run a train on the few female action figures I had. Yeah, I was a weird kid, but I figured that's how they'd all celebrate saving the world, Giant Orgy. Why not, right? Poor Futura, poor Wonder Woman... poor Evil-Lyn, who decided "F*ck it, this is better than listening to Skeletor whine about taking another loss; I'd rather get torn open."

I was quite a sophisticated 6-year old, as you can clearly tell.

I did the "Mix TMNT (and He-Man) figures with my WWF and WCW figures in my wrestling league" thing a bunch too, though. I remember at one point Leo and Hulk Hogan were my Tag Team Champions, and they traded the World Title back and forth a few times as part of a friendly rivalry thing. Raph and Mikey I think had the Tag Titles a few times, too, but Raph also would sometimes get pissed at being in Leo's shadow and turn heel for a while to get the Title off of him. He was more of a tweener than a full heel, though, but of course "tweeners" weren't actually a thing at that point so I guess I invented the idea. Since He-Man was so overpowered he was only ever "allowed" to wrestle other, similarly jacked-up guys... and Hulk Hogan. And of course Hogan always got the win because while He-Man is The Most Powerful MAN In The Universe, Hulkamania is The Most Powerful FORCE In The Universe, and one man can't stand against a tidal wave, JACK!

But so to the specific question of "how often"? All the f*cking time. My toys hardly ever got put away because I almost always had something or other going on. I'm amazed some of them are in as good of shape as they're in, but a ton of them do have scuff and rub marks and such.

[Andrew NDB]

Definitely I'd do this. All the time. And I'd take them in the bathtub and continue the story, or start a new one. And they'd often interact with the Ghostbusters figures and vehicles, too.

[Leo656]

Yeah but was April working the Ghostbusters HQ fire pole like a stripper pole while the Ninja Turtles threw money? Or... were you actually reasonably well-adjusted as a kid?

There's a part of me that needs to know I wasn't uniquely, severely warped as a child.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Yeah but was April working the Ghostbusters HQ fire pole like a stripper pole while the Ninja Turtles threw money? Or... were you actually reasonably well-adjusted as a kid?

There's a part of me that needs to know I wasn't uniquely, severely warped as a child.

Just nonstop teaming up to fight the bad guys in convoluted scenarios with a lot of banter. I don't think I ever owned the April figure. I vaguely remember a buddy had one and everybody gave him sh**.

[Leo656]

I didn't have one either, if anything it was Futura or Evil-Lyn on the pole. It worked great for that purpose, what with the way the platform would spin around the pole as it fell, added a great bit of authenticity.

So basically, it was just me, then. Man, that's kind of a little upsetting.

[Andrew NDB]

[inaheap]

I never timed it. I was always imagining new adventures based on the stories airing at the time.

[Dask]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

https://i.ibb.co/Tbjmy7H/312165333-1...17857654-n.jpg

Well, that's an arc that needs to be explored