What was Donatello's best and worst invention in the original toon?

[CyberCubed]

Best would probably be the invention which makes rotten food edible again. It could basically stop world hunger. Raphael ate a banana which was previously rotten and that blew my mind as a kid seeing it made fresh again.

The dumbest would probably have to be one of the pizza making machines that backfired.

[Shark_Blade]

I only watched the first season really, so the things he built that I remember were the turtle van and the hot-air balloon turn air glider. I guess both of them are the best.

I don’t know much if he ever made terrible inventions. I should try watching more of this show.

[Icebot]

His best inventions are probably the Healthometer, Dreamovision, the Food Revivifier, the Demutation Ray, Techno Tracker, Virtual Reality Projector (don’t remember if that was his or Carter’s invention), Turtle Cam, Turtle Comm, porta tracker.

The ones that turned out to be the worst might be the Duplicate machine, time stopper, most of his pizza machines.

[Galactus]

The Portable Portal is his best. It was at that point were he built the portal his inventions went from kooky designs but actually possible to all out science fiction. The fact that he modified it to be portable was a plus and contrary to popular belief it worked well most of the time.

Although the Turtle Van and Blimp are probably the best in terms of getting the most use out of them.

The worst was probably the Retro catapult (which he invented twice in a bit of continuity flub) and neither time did it work well.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

The Portable Portal is his best. It was at that point were he built the portal his inventions went from kooky designs but actually possible to all out science fiction.

A lot of Donatello's science fiction-inspired inventions were probably built out of gadgets stolen by the Turtles when they visited the Technodrome.

[sdp]

FW donatello was a genius above other donatello's, I was sad when turtles forever tried reconning FW donnie into not being smart.

[CyberCubed]

I also forgot about the health-o-meter, which had a glitch in it the first time when Raph used it which is why he thought he was dying.

[Galactus]

FW donatello was a genius above other donatello's, I was sad when turtles forever tried reconning FW donnie into not being smart.

'87 Donatello was smart in Turtles Forever. His methods were weird and crazy but they were shown to work. Not that this was a huge stretch from the actual Fred Wolf show the whole using a wrench as a hammer thing that people bring up was actually taken from Leonardo Lightens Up.

[sdp]

If you think about it Donatello is pretty much the reason the FW turtles defeated the bad guys in most episodes, without him they were nothing. He was clearly the MVP of that team.

[Coola Yagami]

Donnie had an odd mixed bag to work with.

First he had the more 'sane' vehicles like the Turtle Van and Blimp that logically work.

Then he had the crazy stuff like interdimensional portals and whatnot.

Then he was forced to make the stupider more ridiculous things like the retrocatapult because 'toys'. Sure the Van and Blimp were toys too but they were practical.

Then you had him also do random house-hold nik-naks that would always fail, blow up or whatever under the schtick that 'none of his inventions work right'. Even the intro theme show him working on some over-complicated coffee maker blowing up in his face.

Like you know what I mean? I would not trust going into the air on a blimp or jumping into an interdimensional portal built by the same guy that can't even build a simple coffee machine or pizza flipper.