The Third Great TMNT Renaissance
 

I'm curious what the old timers like myself think about seeing the three great booms in TMNT popularity. The first of course I consider the original 1980/90's TMNT TV Show and Movies, the second the 2003 4Kids series and TMNT CGI movie, and now the third with the Nick series and Michael Bay live action film.

In the perspective of pure numbers of people alive on the planet the third seems like the biggest, but somehow the first felt like it was much more incorporated into the public zeitgeist. Then again maybe that was because I was so young at the time, a TMNT lunch box would be hard to explain during a corporate meeting today. Unless your company is awesome I suppose. ;)

So those who have lived through all three, how do you feel watching the TMNT grow up with you through the years?

The "failure/dark era" of TMNT was 1997 during Next Mutation and then a dead period which went on till 2002.

I'm glad there was only one dark/failure period in TMNT history.

It's been really cool for me because I was 4 when the original series debuted, so I watched it from day one all the way through season 10, and was one of the millions of Turtle fanatics growing up in the late 80's/early 90's. It's not just nostalgia talking when people say that TMNT was huge and that it was everywhere, because it's true. I couldn't go anywhere as a kid without seeing some Turtles product to beg my mom for. Even at some lame cake decorating store she drug me to, they had TMNT candle figurines that I begged for..... because they were Turtles.

Between the original series and the 4Kids show is when I got into the Mirage stuff, and god bless it because it gave me "new" TMNT to enjoy during a pretty dead period for the franchise. The downside of this however was that due to 4Kids being so heavily adapted from that material, I either already knew where a lot of the story was going, or I was let down because the adaptation didn't hold up to the book (City at War).

Now, I'm a dad and getting to enjoy the Nick series with my daughter, and it's like my life has come full-circle. I'm now going on Turtle toy hunts, but in the role my dad once filled. Now I'm the parent being begged for TMNT merchandise in every store, and I get great enjoyment out of that. I'm so thrilled that the Nick series has so much heart and charm to it, because I'm getting the feeling that it may bring us closer to the original Turtlemania than we've ever had the chance to before.

Yes, same here. Also don't forget most of us followed the Archie run during the OT days and it was like a secondary series based on the original toon universe.

Then we discovered Mirage during the early 2000's and caught up on that. And now we have IDW going on alongside Nick.

People often forget we have 3 main TMNT comic continuities going on along with the 3 cartoons, Mirage/Archie/IDW.

There is something incredibly fulfilling in seeing a new generation discover TMNT.

During the Toys for Tots drive last year I bought a bunch of the new TMNT toys to donate, and it felt awesome seeing them under the christmas tree.

Just yesterday my wife and I went to go look at a house, we were driving through the area trying to get a feel for the neighborhood when we saw the local kids playing TMNT with bandanas and toy ninja weapons. Immediately flashed back to doing the same thing in the late 80's.

I don't want the dark years back, but I'm glad the 2012 show is popular as it is. Remember the original hysteria years. Violent kids were blamed on popular TV shows rather than social problems, and during season 4-5, a lot of cool butt-kicking action was written down. (Thankfully, since the TMNT don't run around using pistols and rifles (except cannons sometimes on their vehicles), so school massacres can't be blamed on it)

I think it's awesome. It's great seeing kids wearing Turtles clothes and carrying the toys around. Thanks to the new show my nephews have got into them big time and every time they see me they want to talk Turtles and that doesn't bother me a bit. Kids, and brave adults, see my shirts and start talking to me, a complete stranger, about the new series and how it brought them back in. The new show has really started something.

I think most of us thought TMNT was like dead and would never return between 1998 and 2003 (Image stopped in 1999, and Mirage begun again in 2001, but most of us probably didn't know about that).

Thats how I felt, that the TMNT was done and it would slowly fade to obscurity as many other franchises have. Very happy to be proven wrong.

Next year's 30th anniversary. By 2014, TMNT will be as old as Spiderman was in in 1992, or Superman was in 1968.

It wouldn't call the 4kids era a reniassance, it wasn't as popular as the OT era but it had a strong following, but not as wildly known.

I'm lovin' it.

As a kid when I first got into TMNT, both of my parents were drug addicts - TMNT was an escape for me then, but my enjoyment was always tempered by the fact that I never knew if something bad was about to happen. Now that I'm an adult, I can enjoy it at my own speed, and seeing it around me instead of just in dark corners of the Internet (no offense, guys) makes it feel almost like do-over of my childhood. My family and boyfriend think I'm a little crazy, but oh well.

Glad your able to enjoy it now. It must've sucked having drug addicts as parents.

It is honestly so cool to see so many kids walking around in TMNT gear nowadays, especially when I hear that said kid was first introduced to the Turtles by their parents before the Nick show even started. I never really realized that so many from my generation STILL liked the Turtles.

But it's obvious that kids are loving - or at least watching - the new version, and I think that's awesome. I drew a picture of Mikey on a whiteboard only to come back the next day and find that someone had added a word bubble that said "I eat gum off the ground!" lol I've had people ages 5 to 20-something say they love my Raph hat. Another kid just stared at my TMNT shirt I was wearing until his teacher asked him if he liked it, to which he just nodded with this look of wonder at the fact that an adult was into something he was.

So yeah, it's really fun to see kids getting really into a franchise that I grew up loving, and I look forward to being able to share it with my nephews. This Halloween should be fun, lol.

Gotta disagree with you there. TMNT was essentially dead for about 4-5 years in the late 90's and early 2000's. The 4Kids series brought the franchise back from the dead and was (at least in my opinion) the best TMNT series to date thus far.

I love that I've lived long enough to see TMNT brought back three times. When the OT came out, I was in elementary school, and by the time it died off, I was getting into other things, though my love for Turtles never really died. When the 4Kids series came out, I was in college, and I thought it was awesome to see the Turtle back again. Now with the Nick show, I'm out of school for good, and I think it's awesome that the Nick show has brought along a new generation of fans. Even my BF's nephew watches Turtles sometimes, though not as much as I do. Still, I try to bring the DVDs over in case his niece or nephew are there so that they have something they can watch with us. It's just so cool.

When I think about that I get excited at the thought of how many more times we'll get to see new life breathed into it in our lifetimes. Just look at Batman, for example. :tsmile:

Well I consider each TMNT cartoon series to be a different generation of TMNT. As for the first 3 movies, they're part of the FW toon generation, the 2007 movie is part of the 4Kids toon generation, and lastly, the upcoming movie will be part of the Nick toon generation.

As for my personal experience, I was born in 1990, so naturally, I did not experience the FW toon craze. My brother did and he says it was insane, unfortunately he has joined the Dark Side and is not a Turtle fan anymore. He's one of those who don't give a damn about the Turtles outside of the FW toon and the 1st movie. Bah. Anyway, I was lucky enough that countless reruns of the FW toon have aired in my country between 1996-2004. So I watched the show in that time period. A few of my classmates liked it as well, but I was the craziest about it. The lack of toys and merchandise as a whole sucked, obviously.

I however have experienced the 4kids toon generation. Well, more like I lived during it. Most of my classmates didn't care about it and I have a feeling I was the only one who actually watched the whole thing and bought the toys. But I was finally experiencing turtlemania, and as a 12/13 year old boy, it was awesome when my mom got me the 4 turtle toys for Christmas. Call me silly and all but I was a turtle fanatic as a kid and always wanted turtle toys, so it was like a dream that came through lol.

I am very happy that the Turtles are still alive and well. In fact, I'm starting to believe they're immortal and will stick around forever. When I was a kid, I sorta saw the Turtles as older brothers/friends of mine. I looked up to them somewhat. Man, it's hard to believe I'm older than them now. Now I see them more or less like younger brothers/friends. I can actually imagine me breaking up a fight between Raph and Mikey and acting like a voice of reason to them. Makes me feel old.

Yeah, my BF and I were joking about that. Back in the day, I was old enough to be the Turtles' little sister figure. In the 4Kids era, I saw myself as their big sister figure. Now, with the Nick show, I see myself as their mother figure since they're so much younger now, and my BF agreed with me. I could see myself admonishing Mikey about his pranks or something like that. It's so funny to think about.

And the UK Hero Turtles comics where huge in Europe too (but not considered major).

This is really just the second great renaissance, since the OT/Golden Harvest Movies were basically the initial wave of popularity. It is and will remain the golden age of the franchise. I find it interesting though that people don't say that they're currently living in a golden age until its over and look back upon and appreciate when they felt the times were better. But we should be thankful that the franchise is literally more important than ever, even if it doesn't have quite the share it did back at the beginning of the '90s. The 4kids era did a good job of giving the brand some respecitibility, but it was still too soon for many to feel nostalgic about the franchise, and the new series was too different from what they grew up with enjoy, save for the Mirage comic fans.

Think about how many franchises have gone become obscure over time. Feivel. Beethoven the dog. Heckle and Jeckle. Samurai Pizza Cats. The Littles. Mighty Mouse. The cartoon characters based off of Scooby Doo clones. All of those never had the passion that TMNT, Batman, Superman, or Transformers ever provided to deliver to a new generation of fans. Even the greats all have dark/dork ages at some point, and it can be difficult as new crazes (Angry Birds is to today to what TMNT was in the early '90s being mostly "kids stuff") crop over, but in the end love and trust shows how much support we have and may our fandom for the Turtles continue forever.

That's greatly undercutting the importance of the 2003 reboot in the history of Ninja Turtles fandom.

Ninja Turtles was a diminishing property until 4Kids picked it up and rolled out their multi-tiered plan to make Ninja Turtles a household name again. For several years 4Kids and Playmates made bank and 4Kids was able to sell that show all over the world.

Nothing can compare to the original generation of Ninja Turtles fandom but despite easily getting better ratings I'm not seeing a distinctly larger presence for Ninja Turtles in the US now than it had when 4Kids and Laird were handling the property. Perhaps in the long run it will be a more significant age for TMNT fandom than the 2003 era but it's at the very least too early to call. That show lasted over 100 episodes, when the Nick cartoon makes it to 78 (it's supposed to) then we can really compare the two.

But I honestly feel like anyone who undercuts the the 2003 era's significance in TMNT fandom just prefers that the current TMNT series takes more elements from the 80s cartoon but is Ninja Turtles really that much more popular today than it was in the 2003 era or are people of the first generation simply more willing to see TMNT as popular again now instead of in the 2003 era?

The 4kids series definitely ressurrected the franchise after the Next Mutation killed it in 1997.

Its quite possible the 4kids series could have bombed. It might have only lasted 1 season like the new Thundercats, or He-man, or Voltron or other 80's revivals that failed as quickly as they came back.

When you stop to realize that the show started in 2003 and went on till 2009....that's almost an entire decade. It also had a huge toyline, a huge set of videogame, and the 4th movie was only made because of the show at the time.

The 2003 series was very important for me. It was also the first cartoon to show some of the Mirage comic story lines, which was very appreciated.

Wasn't there supposed to be a series back in 2000-2002 made by Warner Bros.? Whatever happened to that? I didn't like the turtles' designs, anyway.

Yeah, back when the 3rd season was announced and I heard/read rumors of Shredder being defeated for good, I expected it to end there. I never thought it would surpass the 100 episode mark. i guess the Ninja Turtles truly are something special, eh?

Before the deal with 4kids was stuck, Mirage was trying to partner with either WB or Rainbow studios to make a new series. WB passed on the series after some character designs and the Rainbow Studios CG pitch was never picked up.

After that Mirage settled with 4kids which was for the best.

The 4kids series is also the longest running action cartoon of the 2000's. Almost all DC and Marvel superhero shows don't go beyond 52-65 episodes. And that's if they're lucky, many of them are canceled after only 26 eps.

Yeah we ended up getting a TMNT cartoon, so it didn't matter in the end. And from what I've heard, compared to the other Fox cartoons, TMNT was pretty damn good. So I guess we were very lucky.

Not even 99% of the anime these days is that long. Hell, most reach 26 eps at max. Obvious exceptions are series like One Piece, Naruto and such.

I feel blessed and truly grateful to be alive and witnessing it all. Ain't nothing come close to this great franchise.

Ok, I loved the turtles, but for me, It was Batman though Justice League, That was amazing to witness though my child hood, I lived though the Turtles era in the late 80's, early 90's. Loved the first movie, than Batman TAS hit, and I loved it more. You had the Joker, Twoface, Posion Ivy, all great villians, than they top that with Superman and the Darkseid arc, and the Batman Superman team ups, and just when you thought it was over, Justice League and JLU came, I think that had a stronger showing imo.
Yeah Batman and Robin happen, but it was still strong and getting high rankings. The turtles failed to the next top gun in town, and that gun happen to be Batman and the power rangers imo.

MAN! It's actually weird to think about - but consider the level of success the TMNT franchise has had in its 29 years. Three long-running series (the Nick show's already been renewed through season three), four feature films (with a fifth on the way), almost countless video games and scores of merchandise. It's natural to think of the TMNT in the shadow of the classic comic properties (like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, etc)... but they're right up there with them at this point. And they keep coming back. They're a permanent, everlasting part of popular culture! That's kind of amazing, right?

Seriously. 156 episodes and a movie finale? Don't ever sell that short. That's an incredible run, especially in the 2000s.