Our Opinions Worthless
 

Interesting topic title no? I made this because I was thinking of something today that depresses me more about this buy out. Since turtles was always owned by a humble company that stuck close to the fan base they often listened to us. Maybe not when it came to some of the bigger things but they did go out of their way to please us when they could. Plus all the Mirage guys were super generous and very nice to us. We could e-mail Dan at any point and he'd respond not as the runner of some corporate website but as one of us.

With this buy out turtles will now be totally corporate. Anything we say will amount to nothing in their eyes. What pull we did have as fans means squat to them now. Years of devotion and business has worth. They have zero intention of pleasing us. They want to make new fans and those fans are children. One thing that I always loved about turtles was balance. The cartoon was for the kids and the comic was for the adults. If the toon failed to entertain me the comics always did. With that stuff gone I don't know what will keep my love for them alive. Unless they really manage to make a great series but I'm not holding my breath.

I don't know how that makes everyone else feel but it depresses me. Just thought I'd share that with you all.

The fans had no say in what happened with the turtles. I don't remember anyone saying they wanted Raph to be turned into whateverthehell and making the new movie suck and shrinking Don and screwing up the Turtles Forever thing, etc.

It is kinda depressing. The irony, though, is that a lot -- not all or even most, but a lot -- of fans blamed Laird for not handling TMNT better in recent years. Now he's burnt out, probably in part due to so many of these fans, and has given the property over to a big company that is at least capable of giving the fans what they want (whether that's what will happen or not); but now fans will probably blame Laird for selling to a company that doesn't listen to them, especially if that company ends up killing TMNT altogether in a few years if it's not successful.

Personally, I'm just happy that we're going to get another new take on TMNT. I'm also happy that Laird will have a little more time to work on Volume 4 now. The only real drawback I see is that TMNT may not survive now if Nick doesn't deem it successful, whereas we could always count on Mirage to keep it alive regardless since it was their own creation.

That's also a major concern of mine.

One great example I can think of where fans were listened to was when that horrid baby idea floated around. That didn't last two seconds, it was Laird approved, we had a big part in that getting canned. If Nick tries to pull something like that it would have to air, get ****** ratings, and then turtles will probably just get shelved for awhile.

That's my exact concern as well. This is NICK people... unless it's Spongebob or something on Nick Jr. they really don't give a crap about anything unless it's a complete success at the first sign.

Spongebob wasn't even buzzworthy until 2 years after the show was airing. You think they'd have that sort of patience nowadays?

The one thing we're all worried about is that if the show doesn't get good ratings, they'll hide it on Nicktoons for a year and then toss it in a pile and forget about it. It can happen. There will always be that possibility.

That's pretty far from the "only" drawback, but it's a definite reality.

And I hear you on what you're saying, Spitfire. There is no longer a human heart beating at the center of TMNT... only suits, committees, focus groups, and nervous beancounters in a rough economy.

No, fans had nothing to do with that. Peter approved it, but Playmates didn't. Murphy didn't post it on his blog until after it had been rejected and they were going back to the drawing board (to eventually come up with Back to the Sewer).

Honestly, fans have very rarely been listened to. The personal contact with the people at Mirage has certainly been wonderful and I would definitely call it a situation that is (was) unique to the Turtles, and I think that's what will be missed most. But I don't think that's exactly the same thing as being "listened to" in the overall scheme of things.

I think my favorite will always be the infamous Music Turtles incident. We told them the figures were crap, they told us we were stupid and gave us the proverbial finger, then they ... never released the figures. :tthumbsu:

Rough Economy suits it best. The pressure to make money is more important than ever... and if they don't get their investment back, we could be a VERy unhappy fanbase.

For a minute... forget the OT... forget the 2k3, the movies... forget all of that/

While it was under the decision of the co-creator, we lost an amazing independent comic success story and the soul behind it. And I'm guessing a lot of the fanbase are going to be swayed and buttered up by promises of Bebop and Rocksteady bumbling around and waving saying "Hey! Remember us?" All the while, the future is really uncertain. Even if things do turn out great, we lost a bit of comic book magic to corporate made in China Pixie dust. And that is the most disheartening of it all.

Yeah I'll miss the way Dan and Murphy especially interacted with the fanbase. And of course Peter Laird.

But what can you do. Its going to be something we'll never get again. Nick reps don't communicate with fans.

None of us can predict the future. For all we know the TMNT property will be sold again. If Nick runs it in the ground they may sell it for next to nothing. Who is to say PL won't buy it back in 10 years?? Im just saying we can't predict whats going to happen. just enjoy the ride.

If anyone buys it again I hope it's Eastman.

Hey maybe if we want to be heard, maybe this is time for us to start getting along????? I think there is a super strong fan base here! But not all of us agree on things which is totally natural, but can get annoying at times. But no one can ignore the voices of their audience, not if that voice is loud and well organized. For instance there was a petition at one point to get a special edition made for the first movie. I think there were like 2 or 3 hundred sigs on there.... thats not even close to enough to make a difference in the business world.

Just a thought.

It was also an Internet petition. That alone gets nothing done.

And Mirage was no better at listening to fans than anyone else. Nick is going to do stupid sh*t and good sh*t, just like Mirage did.

That's the thing, though. Even when organized, TMNT fandom has little to no collective "voice." We just aren't that many in number. The TMNT franchise is a very small fish in a very big sea, despite how passionate the lot of us might be about it (particularly when we can manage to get along).

True. True... there is a difference though. Then we weren't listened to because Peter was a stubborn controlling creator... now we won't be listened to because we're not the booger eating 6-9 year olds they clearly want to appeal to. :kgrin:

Well... that and Playmates thought the safer bet was getting the Terminator Salvation license. Really. That was a smart move on their part. How did they perfectly predict it would be the hit of the summer?

Seriously, they couldn't give those damn things away.

I will never understand this mindset. I understand being a fan of something, and it meaning a lot to you on a personal level, but I think some people need to take a step back and realize that simply being a fan doesn't make you entitled to anything. Peter had a lot of things to consider, a lot of contracts and arrangements with various companies to uphold, so it's not as if he could have (or should have) just followed the whims of the "fandom". He had to do what he felt was best for the property and for himself.

And besides which, it was his property, so he was allowed to be as "stubborn" with it as he wanted to. The fact that he and the other Mirage folks had such open communication with the fans wasn't something they had to do, and they could have listened to the fans a hell of a lot less than they did.

And to be fair, Peter did a lot to at least try and please the Mirage fans in the last decade. We've gotten around 100 new comics since the Mirage relaunch in 2001, and have seen several classic Mirage storylines adapted in the 2003 cartoon, things that most of us never thought we'd see before Peter started building up the property again. Cut the man some slack.

B-b-but Peter Laird raped our childhoods, skinned our pets, shot our local congressman, and crapped in our mouths!

All sarcasm aside, I agree with Bry 100%. This Nick deal should really put people into perspective of just how good they had it for the last 6+ years. I think he would be a lousy creator if all he did was listen to fans. It wouldn't be his creation without his ideas. He did try to please some fans and easily gave us one of the best incarnations of the TMNT on TV. Fans are so ungrateful. You won't be happy until the title is changed to Fanboy and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I hope Nick brings back Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation.

He's too busy warring with The Amazing Rando.

Rather than enjoy any status quoe shake-ups (like Raph's mutation and Don's experiance, April being a drawing, Leonardo in the Battle Nexus), all th ungrateful turds-for-fans just bitched and moaned about trivial things, blasted Laird, blasted Lawson, and never, not ONCE, appreciated what they had.

This is karma. And it's long overdue.

Well, people are finally starting to appreciate what they had, but it's too late now. I always felt bad reading all the silly complaints from fans, that's why I'm not very active in the TMNT community. People were down right vicious.

I bet Pete just got fed up, threw his arms up and said screw it. There's a cool 60 million and a lot less headache.

Chances are, come 2012, everyone will begin to rediscover and appreciate all the great stuff from 9 years ago and wonder why we don't get stuff half as good.

No, I get you, homie. I was just saying that saying the fans are not listened to NOW as opposed to before is baffling.

Why should I appreciate horrendous artwork and awful story-telling? Nick could bury the franchise forever, and I'd still blast the both of them for Volume 4.

Exactly. I'm going exactly with Zarius said. The fan base whined and moaned and groaned and blamed Pete for everything. And even if he did "make the fanbase unhappy" it was his right to do so. This non-stop crap about whining about how bad the new show was, how bad the movie was, how bad the this and that and blah blah blah... totally counterproductive. And frankly, a lot of that stuff was beyond amazing. A new toy line, a new series, a new movie. Really... was ANY of this was unthinkable years ago. Look at He-Man's revival. What did that last? A Year or two? Barely? TMNT was the only real revival that actually lasted and had some sort of measurable success... and frankly, we have Peter, Playmates AND 4Kids to thank for that. Sure, after the movie everyone got greedy and screwed around with stuff. Still beats any of that cheap costumed concert crap we had in the early 90's.

I agree... part of me wants to say he just gave up.

The He-Man "revival" was a tragic experiance, but at least the States got every episode of every series available on DVD (including The New Adventures of He-Man, which is'nt rerun at all), though that happened long after the modern series was swiftly brutalised in the ratings.

What was worse about the revival, besides the endless He-Man and Skeletor variants dwarfing the other characters, was the fans gaining control of the comic and attempting to counter the animated series when it stopped doing what they thought they should be doing. There was good and bad in both, but the monthly series was horrendously mismanaged. Proof that when push comes to shove, the fans really don't have the mind for buisness and SHOULD leave it to the professionals.

Not so much as "given up", but rather he realized he'd no other worlds to conquer, he had acheived his goal of reviving the TMNT under his own specific vision, not forgetting contributions made to it by Kevin, the original series, the comics etc...and now he wants someone else to breath fresh life.

It's a better option that coast on your laurels and wait years for someone to do something new for free on the internet because they don't have access to your company. Jim Davis, Garfield's creator, let his franchise go to hell because he's stinking rich and has admited he only does it for the money now (and that's why the new series sucks)...once he was allowed to tell the stories he wanted to tell in the 1980s and 1990s, Garfield's boom period (The T.V Movies, 9 Lives, Babes and Bullets, U.S Acres), he settled down and did everything for the money. It took twenty years before Garfield Minus Garfield made his strip relevant again after that.

Actually large corporations tend to respond better to the "fans" than small companies. While that's not ALWAYS the case, it does tend to be in a lot of instances.

No company will cater to the fans too much though. Nick isn't going to put TMNT on hiatus or any of that nonsense. You guys are way too "the sky is falling" over nothing. Laird rarely if ever catered to the fans.

Nick more than likely will put someone in charge of the line. They could be much more accomidating to the whims of the fans than Laird was. It happens all the time. Not all big corporations are evil.

I'm late to the party, but:

You're only fooling yourself if you think the fans were ever listened to in the first place. Playmates and 4Kids obviously had no intention of pleasing the twenty-and-over crowd. Not the target audience. And Mirage made it clear time and time again that they were going to produce products that satisfied them as artists, and if you didn't like it, they didn't expect you to buy it.

The fact that Turtles Forever was made is still something of a miracle.

True. But they only listen to the fans as far as it correlates to profit. We're not the profitable fans they'd need to listen to. Kids are.

While we all have different views on things I always believed my needs deserve to be catered to. If I'm a customer I'm paying for a service and if the quality of that service is low then I'm being ripped off. Granted I can choose to no longer pay for that service but if a company I've been pouring money into for years decides to give me the finger out of nowhere I tend to get a little mad. I helped pay their bills and was loyal to a fault when it came to buying their stuff. I'm not going to complain about stupid crap like the artwork in the comic or the way the new series ended I'm talking releases.

Playmates not releasing figures we would have all bought. Even if they were afraid of not turning profit they could have released them online only in limited supply so fans were given the opportunity to get their hands on them and they need not worry about losing cash. They could only produce the amount they got for pre-orders. While we're on the subject what the hell is up with NECA? We get bobble heads and some retarded looking turtle things I don't know what their called but we can't have our figures of Shredder and the Foot Ninja? Oh yeah let's release April because she has a huge history of selling well. Another middle finger in my book is the DVD treatment. If you compare the quality of the first run DVDs to the re-releases it's shocking how bad the first runs are. Being as how there's slim to none chance of us getting the rest of the series, part of that being the best season in my opinion, I'm a little mad. They also completely screwed up the episode order on those disks. Yeah I kept buying them because something told me it was my only chance of owning them.

Should I start on Smash-up? Yeah at this point it's a dead horse but let's be honest they did a piss poor job on that game. We could have all guessed they would have but the fact of the matter is they lied to us. Laird might not know it but we were promised a game that encompassed 25 years of characters and what we got hardly scratched that surface. I didn't need the game to have obscure characters no ones heard of but me in it to make me happy but at least have a diverse roster. If they couldn't assemble a better or comparable roster to Tournament Fighters I'd say they failed pretty horribly. What they did to Turtles In Time was pretty sad as well.

How about the DVD boxset? They did a decent job on it but again they sorta skipped out on us. It would have taken them about 2 hours tops to transfer the Making of VHS to DVD and then rip that into a digital file. Did they take the time to do that? No. They somehow thought they'd profit off re-releasing the films together again. There was already a box set released with 1-3 in it and by the time I quit Best Buy almost 2 years ago it was selling for 20 bucks. Not they add TMNT to the mix and all of a sudden it's worth twice that. No one is going to buy that. The only reason I bought the set was for the Bluray copies. Not enough people care about Bluray to buy it for that reason.

If they want to wonder why they didn't make money in my opinion it's because they didn't listen to the fans. There are things we asked for that we would have bought and others would have as well. Because they refused to listen on many occasions, and this isn't Mirage I'm talking about, they lost out cash. The fact Playmates is still in the game pisses me off. They should have dumped them and started fresh with a company that likes to make figures actually based off the show.

Some one said that Peter was cool with it because of how they poked fun at the OT turtles alot when he read the script.

We are listened to by all parties, but NEVER taken into consideration. Fixed that for you guys.

Really... you and Zarius really seem to be the voices of reason here. I swear, everyone else is swayed by promises of a new nostalgia flavored show featuring all the characters coming out and giving us fan-service. And it really makes me feel ill as a TMNT fan... it really does. Especially when said people do NOTHING but crap all over 2k3.

Sure, sure... it might turn out for the best and all, but I've been there all before. I've seen companies buy up rights to shows, sit on them or ruin the franchise and then sit on them. I've seen false promises, supposed "fan" catering, and all that all turn into an annoying what could have been.

The argument is that the fans aren't being listened, and never have. I can't say I agree with either... but the fanbase did whine and piss and moan about FF, and it was canceled. The fanbase moaned and pissed even more about BTTS and the entire series was canceled. And don't forget all the TMNT toys we hated. Seems they listen to the negativity pretty damn well. And we at least gotta give 4Kids credit for sending a rep over here.

And here's another thing. Lets say that Nick TMNT is great... we get a great show, great merchandise and reps from Paramount to talk directly to us. Sounds good? But if it fails to click with the target audience of kids, that can't possibly be good either. Again, Invader Zim.

Y'know what I hate? When people constantly whine and moan about hating everything, but they still buy everything that comes out so they can go through all of it and then whine and moan in great detail about how much they hate what they spent all that money on. This isn't just a TMNT thing, either.

Really, if you don't want bad products to continue being released, don't buy bad products! Don't buy the re-re-re-release of the movies for twice the price and no real substantial extras that we wanted. Don't buy those games that fail to deliver what was promised. Don't buy those comics that have bad art and stories you don't like. Don't buy poorly-encoded cartoon DVDs that you could've done a better job on in your own home with some DVD-R discs and some downloaded files. Don't buy those toys that don't represent any aspect of the franchise you don't care about.

Vote with your wallet. They won't listen to my complaints, but they'll certainly stop making crap if we don't buy it.

I'm not saying that anyone who has said anything here does anything like that, but we all know that those people are out there.

I think the fear for those people is that if they don't make those purchases and don't support the franchise, they may not get anything.

I see what you're saying, but I'd rather have nothing but fond memories than have crap. If the companies releasing this stuff have any real potential, they'll rethink their strategy and come out with something better before they call it quits.

I'm pretty neutral to this sale as a whole unless Nick screws up the franchise for whatever reason.

It's really too early to tell if we should be happy or not.

You know, I'm gonna say yes to that. I've just seen this happen too many times, random sales of cartoons/rights going to people who buy things up for the sake of buying them up... there are only 2 possibilities, they could screw it up or do better with it than we'd ever hope. And really, at this point in the game, I just can't see anything but hypotheticals based on current trends in children's television. Nick really seems to be on the ball there, but we all know what they promote the most. So we really can't tell what's happening one way or another. But I've seen the former happen plenty of times, so excuse the fact why I just don;t see a valid reason to celebrate just yet.

I'm totally with you on that, but some people just don't see it that way.

Yeah...but we won't see any of this new stuff till 2012, which is still a hell of a long ways away.

We'll all be old fogeys by then, many of us may not even be following the TMNT franchise by then.

Well Peanut has it right to an extent. We might not have ever gotten NECA figures if we didn't show we were willing to purchase figures to begin with. Playmates has released some horrid toys over the years. As odd as it sounds sometimes the new toys they release are so bad they make the old ones look appealing. For someone whose a compulsive collector like myself I will buy them just to be collecting something.

I honestly can't stop myself. It's never become an issue to the point where I go broke it's just a bad habit. I've been directing my collecting at the DC and Marvel figures for the past year now just to ween myself off turtles. On top of nothing new really coming out I had a feeling turtles was about to end all together soon anyways.

But as far as stuff like DVDs go I do buy them all for fear that no more will be released. I also buy them as soon as they come out for fear they will run their course. That happens often. The Tick is an example of a series that never got finished and Invader Zim is an example of a series whose box set is so rare now it goes for a crap load used on Ebay. I know turtles isn't that popular so I always buy up just to boost sales that little bit in hopes we will get more sets.

If a company makes junk and you buy it, it tells them that junk makes money and they will continue to make junk for you to buy.

Well every once in awhile it pays off. However more often then not the would be pay offs never come out. This is what I was talking about to begin with. Either way one person isn't going to make a difference. Unless I bought hundreds of figures myself. Even I have limits on how much suck I will intake.

If you buy everything because you "can't stop yourself," you have problems far greater than the quality of the crap you're buying.