I know this is an old subject but...
 

When I was a kid I I thought it was weird that Mikey lost his chucks after season 3.

What pissed me off later was the fact that they removed it because of the UK censorship. So it's ok to shoot lasers and carry swords but nunchaku is offensive? SMH.

So blame the Brits. The UK ruined everything.

Not what I'm saying.

I just think the censorship was stupid considering how many other weapons were on the show.

I also wondered why the word "Ninja" was taboo during that time.

I'm Irish, and I am way the f*** ahead of you. :lol: :tgrin:

I know it's a cliche, but dudes it's been over 20 years now. I think it's time to...
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...-let-it-go.png

I thought nunchucks were illegal in the UK at the time. I guess it was easier and cheaper to ditch the chucks than to keep them in one version and constantly edit them out in another.

The name is nunchaku instead of "nunchucks". They are still illegal in New York, yet you can carry a katana without a problem.

Hahaha...That's funny....I see..I see what you did there...

At first I thought they got rid of it because it was "too violent" of a weapon and then thought it was stupid because Leo has swords which are much more dangerous than nunchucks and then realized it's because nunchucks were illegal in some areas. Still pretty stupid nonetheless.

It's also a fairly easy weapon to make yourself, and after the Bruce Lee boom, there was a lot off misconduct. It's still illegal here in Norway, although the law specifically states, directly translated: "Karate Sticks". Which can mean a lot of things...

you can possess them if you're a member of a ryuha. Although, it used to be that you could only own training nunchaku, I don't know if that's been changed.

Likewise, I never understood how that is so terrible while other things are a-ok.

Weapons laws seem pretty absurd in general. Case in point, in my state a lot of blades are fine, including swords, daggers, etc. I could own throwing knives no problem - but a throwing star? Dear god no, that's illegal to possess. :roll:

Pretty sure my area isn't the only one, and no removal of them from the shows?? lol

Weapons that kids could conceivably get their hands on or make I can kind of understand. I mean, I don't support the logic, but at least I can see that it exists.

It's when they began to edit the end of RoadRunner cartoons so you couldn't see the Coyote hit the ground in a cloud of smoke that puzzles me.

"Won't Someone Think of the Children."

The UK ban on chucks were so bad, that when they released their Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles series 1 card set based on the Cartoon, they removed several of the cards, including Mikey's character entry, to prevent chucks from showing up. There is a significant reduction in the number of cards in the Hero Turtles vs. Ninja Turtles sets.

And yet Donnie's broomstick is just fine. Despite being by far the easiest TMNT weapon for little kids to copy. :lol:

What I don't get is why the UK had such pull to change an American produced cartoon. Nobody in the U.S. had a problem with nunchucks, so how did Britian affect an American made cartoon show?

It really doesn't make sense for them to have such "pull" if you know what I mean.

It's not just UK though. They are illegal in Chile, Norway, Canada, Poland, Russia, Spain and in Australia New South Wales you need a permit to own Nunchaku. And in Hong Kong you need a license to own proper Nunchaku.

It's illegal in California, New York and Arizona as well.

Probotector :x

UK censorship was an annoyance to anyone living in an English speaking PAL region. A lot of times, companies wouldn't want to fork out to do an extra version, so we got the UK edit even though the uncut version would have passed locally without issue.

It's not a big problem any more, but there are still a lot of 'UK cuts' floating around, and they sometimes release them by mistake. For example, when Ninja Scroll came out on DVD here it was supposed to be the R 18 rated, 'uncut' version, and the box was printed as such, but the movie on the disc was the UK edit, which was released here earlier with an MA 15+ classification.

More recently, a Blu-Ray of Conan the Barbarian was released with some crusty old UK edit on the disk, from which some of the more extreme violence had been artlessly clipped out, as well as a few shots of horses falling over.

The nunchucks weren't a problem here as far a I know, and we didn't have to put up with Hero Turtles either, so that's a good thing.

As annoying as I'm sure it was for the rest of you, some of us actually had to live here! As a kid I literally had no idea the cartoon was called TMNT not TMHT, I thought the ninja part was just associated with the films.
As for the 'pull' the UK had well it's like CK said, it's not just us that had a ban on them and no cartoon with a toy/merch line is going to endanger potential sales because let's face it, that right there is the bread and butter.
Gotta say I still love my Hero turtle stuff from back in the day though, it's unique!

As a kid, I had some idea that the cartoon was called tmnt at times, as some toys had the ninja turtles branding on them and a few episodes of the ninja version aired in Ireland, but I didn't know that a lot of scenes were cut from the Hero version. I still like the Hero intro. At least Hero Turtles helped separate the OT from other versions that use the same name.

So stupid:

1. The turtles don't live in the UK (even if they visited it)
2. Even if the turtles don't break into buildings and steal, rob banks and beat up innocent people for nothing, they're not part of society and don't follow the laws 100 %

May, I assume, just have been a big enough of a foreign market they couldn't afford to miss by being unwilling to tweak it if necessary. At least it stayed 'Ninja' and otherwise unchanged here, sans Mikey fans being disappointed.

In my country we got both episodes titled "Ninja" and "Hero". But the Portuguese name for the franchise has always been "Tartarugas Ninja". In Spain, France and Italy it's always been known as "Ninja Turtles" as well. So ye, the UK is to blame on this one.

Censorship is not big here, but we can't help it if countries like the UK or Germany(video games) get their hands on a product first and decide to censor it for stupid and paranoid reasons.

You want a product to sell to the widest possible market, and sometimes that means changing the content to suit the needs of the buyer.

Rather than edit the shows to omit the parts people elsewhere find questionable, it's just easier...and not to mention cheaper, to just not put those parts in in the first place.

For instance:
The lesbians were omitted from Sailor Moon when it was dubbed in English for American audiences.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone became Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Office didn't do nearly as well in the ratings when they were beat-by-beat copies of the British original, because most Americans aren't really fans of that kind of dry humor.

Then there's changes that make no sense. Like in my country... they switched Luna's and Artemis' gender on purpose. Like what why

It's just senile people made that decision being under pressure by overprotective uneducated parents. Thank God for us nowadays, actions and violence without their intervention (much).

It's no different from a show that's been brought to the US from another country and changing things so that it'll follow the censorship rules of the US.

Look at the first Sailor Moon dub by DiC. When Sailor Moon and the others were in search of Beryll's base, the girls all left Sailor Moon alone. Later on, their spirits helped to give her the strength to defeat Metallia...I mean giant Beryll. *rolls eyes*. As a child seeing that 20 years ago despite being 13/14 at the time, confused me...especially with Mars' fight since you only heard fighting sounds and then, "See you later meatball head" or whatever it was with Sailor Moon looking on with a horrified expression on her face. Death wasn't allowed in shows aimed at kids. To me, it felt like the other four abandoned her, since the girls' deaths weren't shown. Apparently, American kids couldn't handle death or characters being killed, unless done in a comedic way, like Daffy drinking nitroglycerin and TNT and swallowing a match for a trick only to get praised and come back saying that the only downside is that it could only be done once. Pretty sure it's more lenient now.

Yeah, this was during the height of the censorship craze of the 80's, not confined to, but including: G.I. Joe's omission of Duke's death (and using the creed of "non-violent violence" to protect the kiddies from seeing things like Cobra soldiers getting killed in blown-up vehicles), Robotech changing the title and contend of the episode in which Roy dies, Starblazers, Dungeons & Dragons (the game) being labeled "Satanic" and subversive, the comic book ratings board, and many others. So it's not surprising that TMNT fell victim to this, too.

Even as a little kid back in the 80's, it really annoyed me that after a little while they barely used their weapons and Mikey lost his nunchuku, no Foot Soldiers etc etc.

Oh well :lol:

No Pineapple salad for you, Fokker :D

Wasn't the cartoon partly produced in Dublin? That might explain why.

I don't think that's the case. Some episodes from seasons three, four and the Vacation in Europe eps were made in Dublin, but I'd say the reason why Mikey's nunchucks were removed later on in the US version is because the censors on the UK show might have got tired of having to cut them out.

There were the same number of cards, they just changed the image. They did the same in the TMHT sticker album (Mikey's sticker had him with a pizza from a later episode instead of "Turtle Tracks").

Ah, Cubed being Cubed as usual.


Thank you. And before everyone boos and hisses us any further, can I point out that - on terrestrial television - WE NEVER GOT ANY EPISODE BEYOND SEASON THREE ANYWAY!!! (Didn't get season 1 either; just season 2-3)

So, if the producers had removed them "just for the UK", it was rather a waste of time...

As pointed out above, this was a far bigger issue than just the UK. Some of you resent other countries having such a sway over a US production... I think the truth is the "almighty dollar" has more sway over there, and you get more of them if you can shop your product around to more countries.

There's the reason. It's not like the prime minister called up Pres. Bush and said "we gotta talk about those Turtles..." - this was a business decision, not a lobbying decision.

Check my user name. So do I :D

Yeah I never understood why post-season three episodes weren't shown. I mean it was a ratings winner for the BBC so why not buy more? At least Sky One showed it so I did get to see new episodes.

I didn't know that the BBC only showed seasons two and three until I found out around 2005/2006. In Ireland, the entire series was aired on the Irish tv channel RTE Two, so I don't know why the BBC didn't show more episodes.