Outdated technology in the OT from today's perspective
 

As the years pass, more and more things from the OT pick up that "nostalgia" feeling. First it was the lingo, then it was the production style, now we're getting more in-depth with it as the OT really feels more and more like a period piece. There are many gadgets in the OT that really feel out of place with the present, that if they are included in future incarnations, they can be subject to jokes about coming from another era.

Here are just a few:

-The typewriters used by Irma/Burne in Channel 6 in the earlier seasons
-Dot-matrix printers
-Payphones (still a few here and there, but far less common today then they were even 5 years ago)
-Of course, CRT-monitor computers
-TVs with dials on them (no wonder saying the channel number is hardly present anymore in actual newscasts, back in the '80s/early '90s, it was much more common to say "Channel X News". There were still quite a few people without cable back then. Thus, local programming was more important with fewer channels to select from).

BTW, Turtlecom technology even looks a little basic compared to other smartphones; all it can do is transmit images; smartphones today would make Donnie jump for joy compared to the turtlecoms they used.

The turtlecoms are pretty damn advanced for their time though. Cellphones were not that big of a deal yet, and especially not ones that would do video, and whatever other random feature the plot decided it needed. Not to mention that Donatello somehow knows how to work on cars from dimension X...the series had a really weird elastic grasp on technology.

And this is only slightly related here, but...I always liked that the technodrome had a giant portal / TV screen. But I bet it sucked having part of the image covered up by a control panel. I wonder how many times that thing got broken by rock soldiers driving tanks too close to the corner when using the portal?

Oddly enough the OT had technology even more advanced than the modern era.

There were countless intelligent robots in the old series, even ones made by normal humans like the police officer robots, the robot meter maids, etc.

I think the funny thing is how advanced Donatello's computers were.

Ha, even the Technodrome is outdated. Today's Techonodrome would have their dimensional portal screen in HD. :D

No boubt that Nick will have to update the technology.I know they did this on the 2003 version.DVD and Blu ray have replaced VHS tapes.The internet is a facto of life now.The think the internet was used briefly in THe OT.

April uses the internet in Seasons 9 and 10. That was 1995/1996, when the internet was first being used by the public.

Laser blasters too! I always thought that was quaint, but I liked it. :)

Hey it worked in GI joe.:D

Wasn't it to please the censors? Something about not being bullets let them get away with using guns in the time slot it was running.

Mike and Don play Pong in one episode, that's always funny.

I know in a couple episodes Channel 6 offices had landline phones with cords attaching the reciever to the unit.

I would say that just recently have we gotten the turtlecom with video to video chat in smartphones like that. Sure they can do more than that but that feature is still fairly recent. As far as TV's with dials that was outdated even in the late 80s they were just there for artistic reasons not because it was cutting edge technology.

Outside of a few things the OT really isn't that outdated, I mean CRTs are still fairly common, heck they even use the internet in the OT. It's more stuff like videocassettes that really date cartoons/tv shows than say typewriters which may just be a personal choice as far as you know.

Yeah, the VHS tapes and the occassional episode that still had them use floppy disks on computers. I never heard of a device that is a 2-way image thing like the Turtlecom. I just know they made the TurtleCom like a high-tech walkie-talkie while the new toon made the Shell-Cell into a high-tech cellphone. I wonder if Nick will make them use Smart-Shells.

Well it's not as though there's still businesses with those anymore. :-?

At the start of the episode "The Gyrbyx", Donatello and Michelangelo are playing Pong, which in 1989 was already thought of as "so '70s" compared to the present NES stuff.

Well that's there to make a point, just like the stack of books being used as a TV leg. They use what they can find in or near the sewer.

To echo Cryomancer's statement, you've got to hand it to the writers of the OT, they made the Turtlecoms the size of today's cell phones with video to video capability, during a time when cell phones were the size of a VCR.

I don't think the Turtles will frequently be making video rental runs anymore. They would probably get NetFlicks now.

I don't know if this counts but you do see the Twin Towers in the background of several episodes. Not counting when it was used for the main plot of one epiosde either.

I guess April was about 10 years behind the times in terms of upgrading her phone in her apartment: In the episode "Four Turtles and a Baby", April's green landline phone has a rotary dial; in the next episode, "Turtlemaniac", April's phone has a touchtone dial, but still isn't cordless.