Love for one-shots?
 

Now I do this myself so I'm not complaining about it, but why is there a decent handful of one-shot or otherwise obscure Characters (particularly the OT) that seem to have a decent fanbase behind them?

Mona Lisa - 1 episode, 1 toy.
Metalhead - 1 episode, 1 cameo, 2(ish) videogame appearnces and 2(ish) toys.
Slash - 2 episodes, 2 game appearances, 1 toy and some Archie Issues.
Ninjara - Buncha Archie issues.
Tokka and Rahzar - 1 movie, 1 episode, a few toy releases each, 2 games.

Of course I forgot some characters, but you guys can add some more.

I guess I can answer my own question: These guys are just all cool. I suppose this thread would get more discussion out of "Why are these guys used so sparingly?"

"Why" they were used so little? Not exactly sure. I always just figured they were created soley for the purpose of selling an action figure of them. Otherwise they probably would not have been included at all. Why else would they create a character for a single ep?
I have to agree with you that I wish there would have been more appearances even though it got to be mutant overload at some times.

There is also Lotus, who was only in two episodes. Same with Usagi.

I like them because they added something new. As much as I love the main cast, it's nice to have some other characters for them to interact with apart from April and Splinter. Goes for the bad guys too, of course, but at least we got some variety there (Stockman, Rat King, Leather Head, etc.).

That's most likely. That happened in every show back then, characters introduced just to promote the toyline.

If they were used to sell toys why only use them in one episode?

Why not make episodes of most of the toys then?

The OT is not that much of a mutant fest actually, IMO it lacked mutants. Most of the episodes deal with robots/mad scientists/aliens/lame shredder plots. And the toyline didn't really benefit from those.

I would have loved to see more mutants and the few mutants that appeared more often.

True, but they never made toys for Lotus Blossom, Keno, Pizza Monsters, Rock Soldiers, half the Punk Frogs, Rex 1, Howie, Alpha-1, Ray, Kerma, or any of the goofy Mafiosos. And those are just a few off the top of my head.

They only made 1 of the punk frogs I think.

Who's Keno? :ohwell:

They made Genghis accuratley, Napoleon looked like hell.


Keno's the pizza boy from TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze. He was a lame replacement for Casey (or Danny Pennington I guess) but I thought he was cool as a kid. And he's a really good martial artist.

Napolean looked like a Horned Lizard, correct?

And, a REX-1 toy would've kicked ass!!!

I suppose it is a matter of opinion as you pointed out. I prefer fewer mutants because it makes the guys so special. When there are dozens and dozens running all around, it degrades the turtles' existence. But that's just how I feel.

It was just a regular practice back then. The rest of those characters would have been created by the cartoon writers, as where any made just for selling a toy the writers would have wanted to get out of the way really fast. Every show did it back then.

Transformers, G.I.Joe, Masters of the Universe, etc.

Understandable.

Yeah my thinking is totally opposite, I think in a world were something like mutagen exists and is in your suspension of disbelief on that series might as well use it for other stuff.

Which is a reason non-mutant anthromorphic animals on TMNT bothered me since there was already a good explanation they could have used. I guess this also applied to aliens/sci-fi on TMNT to a much lesser effect.

Nah, toy companies are just clueless, in too many series and toylines they always mess up by not making toys of major characters or popular ones and instead do it to a generic one shot character. It boggles my mind every time it happens, I mean it really is like they have people who have no idea what is going on in charge which I doubt is actually true but who knows.

I once asked Dan Berger why Playmates never made a Keno action figure and he told me it had something to do with play value. Like a kick-ass martial artist/pizza delivery boy wouldn't have made a good action figure wheras Irma the nerdy assitant at Channel 6 somehow made the cut?

I loved my Vernon Finwick action figure. Let the cooky sniping begin.