Being a TMNT fan in 1998-2002.
 

What was it like being a TMNT fan after the FW series ended and before the 2k3 series came along? TNM came after the end of the FW series but that flopped and most people didn't like. Also I'm sure many didn't even watch it at the time. I had not heard of TNM until 2005 or so. I know there's also the Image series in the mid-late 2000s but even less people knew of that.

Personally, I got into the Turtles around the time the FW series had already been over. So I was a big fan of the cartoon in the late 90s and especially in the early 2000s. I'd watch and record the reruns religiously.

It was a bit lonely being a TMNT fan at this time because the fad was pretty much dead. So if you were a young kid getting into the FW series at this time... there were no comics or action figures for sale on toy shops for you to buy and play with. I had to wait until the 2k3 series came along for me to get my first Turtle action figures... and good lord what a glorious day that was. :lol:

I had never expected for the TMNT to ever get a new cartoon. And I also feared the franchise would die for good once the 2k3 series was over.

What about the older users in here? For those of you born in the early 80s who were watching the FW series back when it aired, how did it feel being a TMNT fan after the fad was over and before the 2k3 cartoon began?

Weren't there a bunch of comics in that gap?

Yes, the Image series I believe? But again, Most TMNT fans weren't aware of that. I bet lot of people in here only discovered the comics after the 2k3 series came out. Or they knew about them for a while but only managed to truly get into them in the past 10 years or so since internet shopping and such made it a lot easier.

So yeah, not many TMNT fans were reading the comics coming out in 1998-2002, I bet.

TMNT was just a childhood memory for me at the time. Videotapes, comics and some action figures.

I never really thought about what it was like to be a tmnt fan back then, tbh. I kinda moved on to other fads such as Pokemon and Yugioh. I still watched reruns of the Fred Wolf toon every now and then on rte two, though I never thought there would be another tmnt cartoon either. Became interested in the franchise in 2002 when I started visiting this forum. It was a great surprise to find out that there was going to be a new cartoon starting in early 2003.

At that time most fans were either re-discovering the series through VHS tapes (remember DVDs didn't exist at the time for the original cartoon :lol: ) and there were all those old fansites and webrings like geocities sites beginning the earliest online TMNT fandom.

Overall you have to remember the age range of most fans back then was very young, mostly ranging in the 12-14 or so age. Most of us were barely entering our teens back then, besides some of the older fans.

I was born early '84 and got into TMNT during '89. So...yeah I definitely grew up with this franchise. I remained as invested in it as I could throughout the 90's. Enjoyed all 3 movies, owned a couple dozen Archie TMNT comics and even got a Mirage trade. I knew about Image in the late 90's, but only ever found issues 2-4. Comics were never my thing, so I probably could have found more, but i've never frequented any comic stores. I really loved the "Red Sky" seasons back in the day. Turtlemania never exactly died for me, especially throughout the 90s. I was hugely upset during the '95-'96 TMNT seasons where an episode was supposedly going to be shown but something else aired instead. Usually golf or something. I still was able to tape the entirety of season 9 and more than half of 10(including the entire 3 part story). I loved Next Mutation as it aired. It's ok now...what I've seen of it, just kinda bland.

During 2001- early 2003 I ended up starting to search the internet and used stores very often in the search for more TMNT VHS tapes(that I did not own). Even at this point I owned about 1/4 of the series and buying more of the tapes brought that up to maybe 1/3. I saw the premier of the 2K3 series and loved it. But mostly starting late in 2002 till sometime in '06, Anime largely became my main "franchise" of interest. In 2006 I got back into Turtles more, and haven't really stopped since. TMNT is hardly my only or even main "franchise of interest" but it is the oldest one for me and it meant a lot to me as a quiet, depressed, shy kid with very few friends.

My TMNT obsession never waned, so I didn't quite realize the "dead" period. I was still watching tapes, finding toys in Kay-Bee & other stores, eating pizza, playing with games/toys/prop weapons among friends, finding comics/books, etc.

I recall missing TMNT so much during those years.

As a kid time moved slower. Funnily enough TMNT was only "dead" for about 5 years, even less if you count Next Mutation.

But as a kid 5 years feels like an eternity. That's why when the 2k3 series started it felt like TMNT had been gone for so long...but it really wasn't.

1998-2002? I was in my late teens to early 20's. I just didn't spend a whole lot of time during those years focused on TMNT. My passion for action cartoons/figures during those years were filled with Beast Wars/Machines Transformers. Also during those years I transitioned from the Beverly Hills, 90210/Melrose Place era to Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Angel.

I should clarify that, while I did first get into the FW series around 1996-1998 or so(cant' recall), I then suddenly stopped watching it one day until I did it again around 2002-2003 when I found reruns on TV again here. So now that I think about it... the TMNT "dead period" also coincided with the time TMNT wasn't really that much on my mind.

Actually... it might as well have been gone for about 8-9 years, since Turtlemania was already on a fast decline around 1993. Many people didn't even know of Red Sky until many years later and TNM was the final nail on the coffin for TNMT. The 3rd live action movie from 1993 also most likely contributed to the popularity waning since it was clearly inferior to the first two movies.

So basically, even if the Turtles had only not been on TV for about 5 years, it makes sense their absence felt way longer than that since the last big screen appearance had been in 1993 and their tv and pop culture relevance died around that time as well.

FWIW my brother is from the generation that grew up with the FW series. He told me that the Turtles were HUGE in 1990-1991(the cartoon debuted here in 1990 after the movie only) and by the time 1992-1993 rolled in pretty much nobody cared about them anymore.

Did seasons 8-10 even air in Portugal?

Yes. The FW series rerunning here often in the late 90s and early/mid 2000s on a cable channel. Some years ago that channel was rerunning the 2k3 series. I hope they changed its name tho since the 2k3 series here was called "Novas Tartarugas Ninja" meaning.... the new ninja turtles :lol:

"Novas Tartarugas Ninja" in Portugal

"Tartarugas Mutantes Ninja" in Brazil

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenag...senho_de_2003))

I was a little too old to enjoy TNM, but I still watched it and it was sort of a guilty pleasure. I had kind of shunned the Red Sky seasons of the OT, so it had been a while since I'd had new material to watch. I really spent a few years reminiscing and wanting more. I only had a bootleg of the third film, so I was still watching it a few times a year, but honestly, that was it other than a few VHS's I had.

Well the original series had run it's course and I had stopped watching it. There was other stuff to see and do. I do remember rolling my eyes at The Next Mutation for how childish it was. I think liking retro cartoons or video games in the early 2000s made you look a bit of an outcast. It wasn't until the mid-2000s that it became trendy again to like that stuff.

I remember seeing Season 7 episodes dubbed and wished they were in English. :cry:

Why the heck is it dubbed for different versions of Portuguese? If a series is dubbed into English, it's not one different for each English-speaking country.

The FW series was never dubbed into European Portuguese. it aired here in English with subtitles. Dubbing cartoons was not the norm in Portugal until the mid-late 90s when DBZ and Pokemon got dubbed.

Well, why would the English and the Aussies dub American cartoons? In Portugal we don't dub a movie if it's from Brazil either... although we did watch Cidade Deus(City of God) in HS... with the subtitles on, because it's hard to understand the uneducated slang and expressions many characters in that movie used. If you dropped an American in rural Scotland he'd struggle too.

Not even during the reruns you caught by the late-1990's and early-2000's?

Was this period all that different from, say, 2009-2012?

Plus, I think Next Mutation was running from '98-'99 or so. I remember the VHS tape of the first set of episodes was a popular thing to check out at my library.

If that proposed series for the WB happened, the hiatus would have been even shorter.

Yes, because there was no internet, thus no insight as to what was coming or happening behind the scenes. During the period you mention, we still had comics, lots of new merch, events, speculation, updates, etc.

TMNT was considered a dead franchise since the mid-90's, most people didn't even know comics were going on. Then by the late 90's the huge anime craze like Pokemon and Dragonball Z started so that buried TMNT even more.

It's kind of the same reason the 2k3 series didn't make as big an impact as it should of, because it came out during the early 2000's when the anime craze was huge in the U.S.

No. The show had already been fully subbed, so why bother dubbing it years later considering the show was over by then and the Turtlemania craze of the late 80s/early 90s was dead?

It ran from September 1997 to March 1998

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_..._Next_Mutation

My mistake. Sometimes it all blurs together in my mind...

98-02 was a glorious time to be a fan. Early days of eBay, TMNT stuff was selling for a pittance. People were excited to be finding other fans online, there was a TON of stuff to still learn about TMNT history

Then again, I'm the type of fan that doesn't really give much of a hoot about having new stuff to consume.

July 2001
 

And the earliest posts in this forum still visible are from July 2001.

That was the best time for me, personally. It was right around 1996 that I sat down and ordered every Mirage thing, ever, and got up to speed. 1998-2002? Image TMNT was running from '96 - '99. Vol. 4 started in 2002. Fandom and the fan community was flourishing on websites, bunch of different forums, mailing lists, TMNT fanfiction and TMNT fanfiction communities all over the place. Even www.ninjaturtles.com was a constantly updated hive of activity. Who cares about NT:TNM?

1998-2002 was great. I'd take that era over everything since 2009 without any hesitation whatsoever. In a heartbeat.

I guess mostly just really happy for Peter that he was able to make it happen, and solo at that. That must have been no small feat, and from all his blogs it looks like he had a blast working on it. From the snippets I'd initially watched of it here and there I deduced, however, the show wasn't for me and when I watched a slew of them... boy was I right. I can certainly appreciate Peter's attempted course correction in the mass media from what it had been previously, though.

Nonsense, of course there was internet from 1996-2002. 1996 was when Image Vol. 3 came out and I implicitly remember Dan Berger posting updates on www.ninjaturtles.com about when Vol. 2 ended and when Image was coming out. Pretty sure I launched my first website in '96 and I know the "Ring of Green" was already around.

At least, you had to be happy for what we had.

I am in awe that I wrote that, & I wish I could blame it on being high or something, but I can't. I mean, dude, I was using the internet then my damn self... :tlol: Wow, alright, time to retire.

Definitely a different online climate, though. Not nearly as much info or as many resources, etc.

Well I'll give you that. I first read Mirage on the old ninjaturtles website. I found out about it around 2002-2003 or so, I think. I had watched the movies before, and had always found it odd how the origins of the Turtles, Shredder and Splinter were different in the movie. I was really SHOCKED when I found out that April was originally a lab assistant in the comics, and that being a reporter was a FW thing.


I didn't correct you because I figured that was what you meant. Also, I personally didn't start using the internet until around September 2000 or so.

Just because there was the Internet doesn't mean we used it so much, and there were less websites. Also, less people had broadband.

I never stopped liking TMNT, it's just that TMNT stopped putting out stuff so I kind of forgot about TMNT and moved on to Star Wars, Dragon Ball Z, The Simpsons, N64 and Pokemon which were the big franchises to me back then after TMNT.

I remember thinking the The Next Mutation toys and show looked freaking fantastic, I just didn't get to watch the show as a kid much. When there was nothing available I liked TMNT but like I said I just preferred to play with Dragon Ball/Star Wars toys or play Nintendo 64 and the turtles didn't cross my mind until 2k3 video games and screen shots started coming out which rekindled my nostalgia for this franchise I once loved.


So yeah, being a fan was ok since I had plenty of other stuff to keep me occupied and not jaded about it, also those being the final years of my childhood and beginning my teenage years likely helped me not caring about TMNT since it was that odd transition phase where you are "too old" for cartoons but not old enough to "not give a sh-t" what people think. It wasn't until I was 16 that I realized I still liked cartoons and that no one cared if I liked them or not, my social circles were all pretty open to "like whatever the hell you want to like", as long as you weren't anti-social about it, no one cares.

Why did you feel ashame for liking TMNT, but not Star Wars action figures?

I never wrote I was ashamed of TMNT and not Star Wars.

But yeah during those early teen years 12/13/14 you're in that spot where you "can't" like kiddy stuff. Some franchises like TMNT and Power Rangers just weren't in my radar so it didn't matter, it was franchises that were popular at the time that I liked but were for kids that I was ashamed of like Pokemon, YuGiOh and what not.

And yes certain things were cool even if they were technically for kids, Star Wars and video games were those things you could easily talk about in 7th or 8th grade without feeling like too much of a dork.

By the time I was in 10th grade I didn't care what others thought and others didn't really care, in fact found it cool that I was so open to liking Pokemon, I mean this was in the early/mid 00's, liking Pokemon was not mainstream, the fad had just died and it was just seen as a kids franchise, only kids and the most hardcore fans of Pokemon were around back then.

I wasn't so ashamed for friends. For them, I could just hide it. I was ashamed in front of my parents. I know they wouldn't care but still, I was.

I watched the OT up to the eighth season, then I lost interest in seeing the rest (maybe the majority of it was because I went through a stretch without a working television within my grand-parents house, to which I would spend a majority of my summers' at.. hmm.)

I somehow missed The Next Mutation despite it being aired on a local station.

I do remember being half-way disenchanted with a majority of the cartoons / shows that were running on-air within the 1998 -2000 time-frame, although there were a few of them that kept me happy. Satellite television would eventually become our main service, but no TMNT series of any kind was running on any of the channels.

But, my tastes in cartoons loosened up some as I got older: I came back to the OT and started to like TMNT 2K12.

I became a fan during this period. I was able to get a ton of tapes and toys for cheap at swap meets and thrift stores, so it was a pretty good time for me. Mirage comics were plentiful and cheap too.

Some of the fansites during these years were fantastic, continuing during the early years of the 2003-2009 series.