How did you first leave and then rediscover your TMNT interest?
 

The title says itself, how did you first "leave" your TMNT interest and then rediscover. I never lost my left interest, by the mid-1990's, feeling ashamed for still liking cartoons. But I always wanted to know how it ended, both the cartoon and Archie comics.

One day in late-2003, some days before Christmas, I surfed the Internet for TMNT (still not had broadband then). Still only knowing the cartoon, Archie comics and three original films. I discovered a lot of fans being in their early-20's, laos rediscovering their TMNT interest. I also learned of the 2003 cartoon, and then it all began.

I got into the Turtles more or less in the mid-late 90s when reruns of the FW started to air here, having watched the first 3 seasons since my brother wanted to re-watch some Turtles for the nostalgia sake, him being a teenager by then. And ofc I had to suffer through the 1st NES TMNT game at the time as well.

But I only truly became a big TMNT fan around 2002-2003 when the FW series was rerunning again on cable and then the 2k3 series would debut on local tv.

I think I first bought a DVD with the first three episodes of the 2003-2009 cartoon in mid-2004, then finding the series on Cartoon Network in early-2005.

Cartoon Network didn't air the 2k3 series here. We got the UK Cartoon Network up until late 2000s or so. UK CN which ceased its emission at 21h00 for Turner Classical Movies.

OK, but it Cartoon Network Sweden aired the 2003-2009 series for at least a while.

I didn't know CN programming was different for each country. OK being different in the USA I can believe but among European countries? Quite surprising.

Portugal
 

Did Nickelodeon air it in Portugal?

What the 2k3 series? No idea. Hell I don't even know if Nick was available on cable here in the previous decade. In the 90s Nick was a satellite/parabolic channel. As was CN for a while for that matter until it became available on cable later.

I never left TMNT. Got into it around 1987 as a 3 year old and remained interested every day for 25+ years. Even in the "dead years" from 1997-2001 when all we had was Next Mutation and Image I still followed those until the revival in the early 2000's. You don't "leave" TMNT.

Once you go TMNT you never go back.

Nickelodeon Portugal
 

Nickelodeon Portugal was started on 1 June 2005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_(Portugal)

But which channel did you use for watching the 2003-2009 series?

Wait, only in 2005? Because I remember watching Nick in some hotels back in the 90s when I was a kid. Although I think Rugrats and Ah Real Monsters aired on terrestrial TV... as did Ren Stimpy for that matter, but that one was in English.

I watched on a terrestrial channel. SIC aired it in the early Saturday mornings iirc. It sucks that it was dubbed. Man I miss the days where most cartoons were not dubbed here.

I don't think you care much for it as a child.

I was already 12-13 when 2k3 aired here. So yes, I did. I mean ofc I still watched but wished it wasn't so.

Back in the 80s-early 90s kids here would watch 1987 turtles and Tiny Toon Adventures in English and didn't complain, Just like me and my classmates were playing Pokémon and other video games in English in 4th grade and managed to survive.

In some countries they even dub live action tv. No wonder people in France, Spain and Italy have such insufferable English.

Was a casualty of being first generation when the "kids thing" sigma was strongest and entirely lacked older fans or internet to support the concept that it's fine to still be into them at 15 (around '94/early '95). Esp as a 15-year-old girl, who I guess is only deemed 'normal' if you only like stereotypical mid-teen girl things. Parents who think it's fine to try to shame their child out of liking a harmless thing like TMNT are jerks. I'm glad times have changed, that older support for such things is easy to find, that it's cool to like superhero stuff, and fun stuff in general, as an adult now... And that newer generations of fans will always have older ones in existence to stand by the notion that it isn't just some "kid's thing"... they are so lucky and have no idea.

Nick's series takes the credit for getting me back. Thanks to my mother I actively avoided any discussion of or anything to do with the Turtles for nearly two decades, which I feel bad about now; guilty for ever allowing myself to feel ashamed as they never deserved that, but it was forced against my own will.

But I came across 2012 sometime in the first few months of 2013 and decided stop and give it a chance. It hooked me and I proceeded to catch as many repeats as possible to catch up.

Glad I gave it a chance. And, at the risk of sounding cheesy, dare I say I needed them back; esp my beloved fave and kindred spirit unlike any I've ever found elsewhere, real or fictional... something a bit morale boosting about that, and stuff you don't realize what you lost until you have it back. Just glad I got my butt back here in time enough to enjoy seeing them hit 30 and get these new movies and attention because of it. Had I not been forced I don't think I'd have lost them to begin with, but I have to say it's a nice experience getting to rediscover them from an older perspective.

Well, there wasn't a lot of new material released between Turtles Forever and the IDW series, that's pretty much it. I got back into TMNT after I started reading IDW around 2012.

Europe
 

Here is the dubbing map of Europe.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...in_Europe1.png

You got the wrong url but it's this one right:


Blue subbed, red dubbed.

I briefly lost interest my junior year in high school when I started liking girls, but then around graduation in 1999 while working at Wendy's I started going to Blockbuster and renting old VHS tapes of the original cartoon and would go online to look up fan sites, which lead me to meeting Ivey, Andrew and the other members of the fandom at the time. Sometimes I look back and wonder what might have been if I had invested more in people from my high school days instead of people I met on the internet.

But it's just two years between them.

I first got interested in tmnt during 2007 when my dad took me to see the film in cinemas. I was 9 at the time. The film sparked my interest and I began playing tmnt video games and watching the 2k3 series which in my home country was airing on Cartoon Network. However, I lost interest as more popular franchises like Pokemon and Dbz overshadowed turtles.

It was about six years later I discovered the Nick series airing on tv and I instantly got hooked after giving it a chance. From there, my interest in tmnt bloomed as I discovered FW, the original movie trilogy, more than a hundred 2k3 episodes I had not seen and Turtles Forever. My interest in the franchise is still going strong and I don't expect it to die down anytime soon.

I've always rode heavily with TMNT but it was the 25th anniversary that inspired me to get back into collecting & interact with the fandom.

I started to like the turtles since I was a little kid so I don't even know how but I loved them, of course this was during the turtle fad so it probably wasn't difficult to get into the turtles. I continued liking the turtles even after the fad ended and even if other shows came along that took some of the attention of the turtles like Power Ranger, Saint Seiya, etc.

However the lack of turtles merchandise/video games/show didn't help me stay huge into the turtles as the other fads/franchises that were big at the time had my attention. I was 100% in with The Next Mutation when merchandise came out. But as I grew older as a kid other things had my attention, Dragon Ball Z was now my favorite show as it was more "mature" and when you're 10=12 that's what you want, video games took more of my time and Star Wars along those things were more acceptable and everywhere even if I still liked TMNT. Pokemon became huge and got all my attention even if that wasn't as "mature" :lol:

after Pokemon well I became a teen so I was no longer interested in cartoons I just grew out of them and preferred video games in my early teens and later just music however when I saw the OT TMNT DVD of season 1 it made me really nostalgic but it really wasn't until volume 2 (or 3?) that I really got into TMNT hardcore as this nostalgia rushed of when I was a kid and saw there was this new awesome show that was a bit more "grown up" and it's around this time that I registered on the Drome. Since re-discovering the turtles I've never stopped liking them again, they're just something I like a lot and that will never change. Now I do go on breaks with franchises so I can go months or years without consuming any TMNT media or news and then I get the itch to get back into the fandom because of some big news or it's been so long TMNT just seems fresh again. I rotate a lot from franchise to franchise like this until I get burnt out and go the the next but that doesn't mean I don't like them, I just take small breaks.

Its funny how I never wavered from TMNT. I still plan to be here decades from now when we get the 4th, 5th, or 6th TMNT cartoons and educating all the future kids/teens in the fanbase the history of the franchise.

There's only one person I trust to share the history of the TMNT with future generations: Michelle Ivey. As much flak as she's gotten about the internet, she's the one true TMNT fan and loves all aspects of it, no matter how trivial or corny as they may get. She's actually had conversations with the creators of the comics, shows, movies and toys we're all so fond of!

oh boy. I think the fandom rather have the franchise they love die than that ever happen.

Well, when I was a kid I was all about TMNT, the SNES Turtles in Time, the playmates toys, the FW wolf cartoon, original movies and the Archie comics was all I could think about, then I kinda wandered off mainly because of Biker Mice From Mars, around the time where Next Mutation came around I think (don't even rememember anything about the Red Skies FW years), but TMNT was always a part of me, but only as fond memories, even during my Dragon Ball fad (impossible to escape that here, it was evewhere and it was huge, bigger than anything else around here until then and ever since, for kids and adults alike).

Then the TMNT became a inside joke between me and my girl, with me always asking her to buy me a Turtle everytime she went shopping, until she bought me the 25th Anniversary re-releases of the Playmates toys, then the Nick show came and I was pulled back, tracked out every cartoon, every movie, every comic and every canon figure of the boys I could get my hands on, then the movie finally got off the ground and that's where I joined this forum, and here I am, having my life orbiting around the TMNT again, like I was when I was just a little kid...

I never understood how Biker Mice managed to get a cult following in our country.

when i was a kid, one of my friends introduced me to TMNT through the first movie on vhs... and my dad went to the flea market to find some more cartoon episodes. I think my brother was more into it than me.

Then there was a very long gap, and I did check out the 2003 4kids series on fox box from time to time and also the 1997 next mutation when it aired. But I never really "got into it". I was more into Pokemon...

Then... as I found my way to University, I made a trip to zellers... and bought Season 1 part 1 for $2 of the 2003 series in 2009 and that's how it all began. I become obsessed with gaining TURTLE POWER - 9 years and counting.

TMNT started off as a kid thing for me. The FW cartoon eventually waned and so did my interest for the franchise. I eventually obtained the TMNT Challenges book from a former friend, but very little happened to bring me back into the TMNT vibe.

That mostly changed when I came across this thread http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/sho...s+avery+passed. After reading through that thread, I pushed myself into watching the old toon just 'for the heck of it.' Therefore, I re-watched many of the episodes of the old show through YouTube.

Even though I do not have a huge collection of TMNT stuff, I continue to read comics from both the IDW and the old Archie universes (whenever I can buy them!), bought a few shirts, and so far have most of the DVD's from the old show.

The Biker Mice became successful, but it was probably the Power Rangers who mainly reduced the TMNT-fandom for many children around the world.

Yes, that's true but there wasn't much else for me to experience for the first time, at least not much I deemed worthwhile. I had seen all of the 2003 series, the movies, I wanted to read the Mirage comics but they weren't easy to find internationally yet (thank you IDW), I didn't think the Fred Wolf cartoon was worth watching without a better show to fall back on when it got too tiresome, I didn't feel like tracking down the out of print swedish translation of Adventures and I had been told too many bad things about the Next Mutation too check it out.

What's the point of being into something if you only have the bad parts left? It may only have been two years but it was two years where there wasn't anything interesting to check out.

TMNT Adventures would have been woth it meanwhile if you didn't read them before.

Yeah but then there was the issue of tracking down a bunch of out of print comics from the 90's, it seemed a bit too much without the trades.

I bought some at a shop in Stockholm, Sweden around mid-2014.

Comics Heaven or Serieboden?

Serieboden

I can't say I ever really "left" TMNT. They always remained among my favourite characters. But, there were a few years where the only TMNT media still being produced were Next Mutation and the Image comic, and then not even those.

I watched Next Mutation, even though it was really bad, but I wasn't sad when it got cancelled. It was a misfire at best. And, I avoided Image comics like the plague because they were full of "Edgy, X-treme" nonsense back then (though I wish I had made an exception for The Maxx, as I've really been digging the MTV cartoon lately, and that one seems different). It turns out there was some good storytelling in Volume 3, but the "X-treme 90s" element is there too and turns me off the Image series (and most Image-published action comics) to this day.

So, I'd still watch the movies and read the Archie and Mirage comics from time to time and still considered myself a fan (I was never ashamed to like cartoons and never fit in with my classmates anyway, so I didn't care). But, there just wasn't any current material to be interested in.

But, that changed when I found out there would be a new show on the "Fox-Box" that would be more Mirage accurate. I got excited about that and looked it up, and found out about Mirage vol. 4 and this place, and the rest is history.

I never left tmnt either. My first introduction to them was in the early 90s when I started watching the Fred Wolf cartoon as a kid. I stayed interested in watching the show in my teens when it was regularly rerun on RTÉ two in the 00s and watched the 4Kids series at the same time later on in that decade.

It was badass, we went from toons like the FW turtles to an action packed toon with bikes, aliens and action, what more could a kid that was going through puberty want? Sure we also had things like Rurouni Kenshin, Gargoyles and Saint Seiya, but those where too serious for their own good for someone coming from FW TMNT, they wheren't for us back then, not yet at least.

I left at the age of 10 at the end of 1991 because I fell in love with Super Nintendo and Kelly Kapowski on Saved By The Bell. For whatever it's worth, all of the boys in my 5th grade class were going through the same thing. TMNT just wasn't even on any of our radars in 1992. The last memory that I have of the original series was the Technodrome leaving Dimension X and getting stuck in the frozen arctic. Then in 1996 I rediscovered my love for action cartoons. As a teenager I found the Beast Era of Transformers and the Red Sky Era of TMNT to be extremely entertaining.