Hero Turtles Cuts
 

On a german Website called Schnittberichte.com there are two TMHT Episodes describtion about their cuts:

Season 1 Ep. 1: Turtle Tracks
Season 1 Ep. 2: Enter the Shredder
Season 3 Ep. 2: Turtles on Trial

There are Pics added so even english speaking people can see which scenes got deleted of the original TMNT.

wow thats pretty interesting. They really went through a trouble to censor out Mike's nunchucks and the word ninja. :o

I used to have "Beware the Lotus" that was edited like that...it's kinda funny when they skip the word ninja. They couldn't even call Lotus a ninja, sheesh!

Yeah the first season was pretty bad...but it kinda got better once Mikey stopped using the nunchucks and used the grappling hook. To be honest I was slightly confused when I saw the first movie cuz I was expecting the grappling hook. I had totally forgotten he used the Nunchucks being used to TMHT.

Always thought it was funny tho. Nunchucks are bad but a weopon that can skewer you is good??? Ah the paranoia of Europe in the late 80's/early 90's

One word: Gangs. Chucks were the weapon of choice by gang members in the late 80's and into the 90's, and as such poor Mikey had to be censored.

I just finnished the next cut report for the site, this time on the second episode of season 1 'Enter dthe Shredder' and that epsiode isn'z cut that bad! only the chucks, nothing more!

Hope it will get uploaded soon on the site so i can give you guys the link, if you wish!

Alright, here's the cut report for Enter the Shredder

This is confusing. Which are the uncut pictures and which are the cut versions of the Hero turtles?

I don't get the comparison, probably because I don't read German.

On the "Turtle Tracks" and the title sequence, it looks like the cut version is on the left. In "Enter the Shredder" and "Turtles on Trial," it looks like they just cut the whole scene. You can tell what happened by the "TV Fassung" or "Uncut Fassung" notification. If that isn't listed, the whole thing probably got scrapped.

A few Turtle Tracks scenes must have gotten cut entirely, though. I wonder why they cut the mutagen scene? Very strange! Perhaps, Mikey's nunchuck spinning at the end? That's a pretty crucial plot point, though.

Makes me proud to be an American. If nothing, I got to see TMNT in its full, controversial glory!

Ahh, I see now. Basically on the first section of Turtle Tracks, for instance, they cut the intro dramatically short and went right into the episode as to not show Mikey deflecting throwing stars with his chucks.

:EDIT OF LAST PARAGRAPH: Looked past the TV Fassung/Uncut Fassung on the "Ninja Pizza" section at first because it was thrown in the middle of others that had no categorization. My bad.

Wow... rediculous TV censorship... even we're not that bad. I wonder if they drastically tried to kill any references to Nunchucks in any other shows....

Was there even any other kids' show with nunchucks.

Really? That's nuts! Now I'm no "fellow 'chucker" but from what I understand, they're pretty hard to master, and don't gangs like to use weapons that even an idiot can master, like guns and knives? Perhaps gangs in Europe have got more dedication than lazy American gangs.

I always kind of figured the European bias against 'chucks and ninjas for semi-closeted racism, those being distinctly of asian origin. Even bo staffs and sais are not too dissimilar from many European weapons

It was probably because kids should not make them at home. I know a person who made a pair (Nobody cared, since he didn't use them).

But those cuts sucks, it's Michelangelos weapon. I also hate the "hero" censorship. The turtles are ninjas, and they hide from a society and world that fear the different (except their friends April and Irma). "Hero" would work from season 4, since the turtles were heroes then (after saving the Earth in "the Big" trilogy).

I also have a question here to you who lived in the UK back then: Did you already know back then about the ninja and nunchucks? How did they do to edit them in the video games? Were they cut from the Archie comics too? How is the scene in "Turtle Tracks" presented where Splinter tells April about the TMNT and the turtles are seen using their weapons?

I live in Belgium ,not the UK; but here we also had the hero turtles version.
Because I couldn't compare the UK version with the US version back then, I never realised they cut scenes. Also I didn't realise they didn't use Mike's nunchucks. I do remember though that in a lot of images of the turtles (in books and other merchandise items) the turtles where depicted 'wrong': Mike would be holding a bo staff or a sai. This always bugged the heck out of me.
It wasn't 'till I visited my father in the US that I noticed that the show was called NINJA turtles instead of HERO turtles. I have both the European and the US versions.

In Belgium we also had the Archie comics but in Dutch. It wasn't until I started collecting the US version that I noticed that they left pieced out of the story. But this was probably because they cut the story short so it could fit in one comic then for censureship reasons. I never noticed censureship on Mikey's chucks. I think they left those for the most part in.

I don't think the video games where censored, it only said hero instead of ninja. I always played as Mike in the games and he was always able to use his chucks.

Michelangelo
 

I also remember Michelangelo using a bo staff in some merchandise items and also thought: "-They are wrong", since I always knew about the "ninja" thing and nunchucks (we had both versions in Sweden).

You had both versions? That's neat! Did you used to compare both shows? I know I would have :)

Video
 

The 1987 cartoon aired under the "Hero" title in channels like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV3_(Viasat) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV1000. It probably also had nunchaku cuts, since it aired from London. This made them known as "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles", and so was also the 3rd movie and the comic books (featuring the Archie comics and UK comics). But the video releases always had the "ninja" versions, with no nunchaku cuts. The Swedish comic book had a page you could ask TMNT related questions, and this was sometimes mentioned. So I always knew what was going on. In Sweden, the TMNT was often just called "Turtles" so you didn't need to choose between "Hero" and "Ninja".

"The Case of the Killer Pizzas" and "New York's Shiniest"
 

How do they do in "The Case of the Killer Pizzas" when Michelangelo says he will sell his nunchakus the day he can't defeat a washing machine when training? And in "New York's Shiniest" when Michelangelo takes down a lamp with a nunchucku?