Why were so many episodes produced in Season 4?
 

Season 3 took the show up to 65 episodes, which was expected for syndicated cartoons at the time. The whole series could have ended right there. Season 4 had 40 episodes, even more if you count the European Vacation episodes. Why did they produce so many episodes in a single year?

Its obvious Season 4 was the start of where the show suffered in quality a bit, simply due to the sheer mass of episodes. The animation was hit or miss, the stories weren't as memorable as other seasons, and the action started to get toned down.

Season 4 does have some good episodes, but I think its obvious they were just shocked at how popular TMNT had become, and at this point they were just cranking out new episodes as fast as they could.

By the time Season 5 started they slowed down and started putting a bit more effort into the episodes, even if it wasn't as good as Seasons 6, and finally Seasons 7-10.

More importantly, why do you make threads out of questions that you answer in the first post every single time?

Wasn't it this the point where it was also on almost 7 days a week at an hour a pop? I mean you'd need a lot of episodes to cover the show being on everyday of the week.

Well I figure my answer may not be the right one. :)

Yes, TMNT had become insanely popular by that time, but really, 40 episodes in 1 year? They had so many different writers and animators doing each episodes just to churn them out.

It really is a simple fact- TMNT had reached the "peak" of Turtlemania!

With all those toys, video games, the movie, comics, and being fully mainstream, why would you not produce as many new shows as possible to keep turtlemania going?

I've watched the whole series through twice, and yes, it does make more sense to watch the EV episodes after Plan 6 than between Seasons 6 and 7. Sure, some of the 1991 background music cues are introduced (I assume this was delayed as it means that inserting the music/sound effects comes after the animation or was delayed and re-mixed before the first airings in Europe in 1991, approximately a year after the episodes were animated), but you still hear lots of classic cues such as the cue heard on Case of The Killer Pizzas for the Venice episode, plus Mike still uses his Nunchucks on a few Europe episodes (and doesn't really at all on the CBS episodes). This gives away that those Europe episodes couldn't have been made past the summer of 1990 given the switch from the 'chucks to the grappling hook; but perhaps a decision was made by the producers, especially in the US, to delay the airing of those episodes. Still, it really was an exciting time with that "sky's the limit" feel. Paris, Dublin, AND Los Angeles were all producing TMNT episodes for "real Season 4". Of course during this season it does create the first true "filler" episodes given that meant storyboarding, recording, sound mixing, animating, and post-producing around an episode a week which is hardly enough time to make revisions! 1989 and 1990 were two hectic years at MWS/MW Dublin, and really shows their hard work during that critical period!

Secret of the Ooze came out during the production of Season 5, and given the somewhat less box office results, not as many episodes were needed; as the franchise gradually wore off, this meant that fewer and fewer episodes were demanded. However, it was most likely the Playmates sales (and to a degree FHE's VHS tapes) may have also affected the amount of episodes produced given that executive producer Mark Freeman oversaw the sales of those toys for Fred Wolf & Co; with booming sales in 1988-90, that meant more money for MWS provided by Surge Licensing and thus more episodes could be made by satisfying the budget, as the sales slowly tapered off, that meant less revenue, and thus fewer episodes could be produced. That's why the best way to keep a show going is to find out how the producers get their money and buy their products.

CBS only had 26, which was a standard season (13) x 2, because they played 2 per week. I doubt they expected or cared much about what the syndicated eps produced at that point (an additional 15 eps later in the year). Then, on Sunday, November 1st, 1992, to kick-off TMNT on the Cartoon Express, USA Networks had a marathon of some if not all Euro-Cruise eps that they had likely rescued from oblivion. So, it wasn't season 4 or 7. It was 6.