Was Turtlemania becoming detrimentally too humorous over time?
 

One thing I've been noticing in hindsight with Turtlemania (during the late 80s-early 90s), is that it appears that the franchise was becoming progressively more and more comedic...and with some areas to the point of absurdity. Thus evolving the lean, green, aggressive fighting machine into a comedic side show that was all too easy to laugh off.

Here are some examples:

1) The direction of the OT had more comedy if you compare Seasons 1-2 ( 1987-1988 ) with Seasons 4-5 (1990-1991).

2) The progression of the movies from the first, second, and then the dreadful third movie seemed to transform the action fighting characters into a slapstick comedic troupe of sorts. What once started off as cool (being a turtle, eating pizza, and being a ninja) seemed to become corny and childish as the humor of each film seemed to excessively revolve around those topics.

3) Even in the arcade games you can observe this:
a) the voices, in the 1st the Turtle voices are deeper but in Turtles in Time, the voices are higher-pitched and "cartoony"
b) The speaking parts, with in the 1st they were: "Attack!" "We gotta save Splinter!" "Hang on guys!" "They aren't getting any prettier"; with Turtles in Time they had some corny phrases: "Now I'm too cool" or "I just took a shower" or "I feel seasick."
c) In the intros: with the 1st all of the Turtles looked serious, with Turtles in Time their faces appeared comical (also in the music intro) except for Leo when Shredder appears.
d) Even with Shredder's retro-mutagen attack: In the 1st arcade game, the Turtles raise their arms in agony before demutating. With Turtles in Time, the Turtles bulge out their eyes out of their head in a more animated expression.
(I put in these details to point out how they formed a cumulative tone shift.)

4) The action figures around 1992 seemed to become more desperate with sports themed and party themed Turtles that seemed to belittle/push aside the tough fighting character of the Turtles.


The reason I point out this progression is I'm wondering if the TMNT franchise became too humorous that made people subconciously lose interest and deviate from the franchise (both adults and children). Since adults or teens would be ridiculing these now comedic Turtles, it would cause children to gravitate toward "Power Rangers" or "Batman: The Animated Series" that had a more serious/cool feel to it.

Yes I do know that every fad has its time, but from a franchise perspective do you think the humor was pushed too far? And thus caused Turtlemania to end a few years earlier than it could have been? On that note, it could explain why Season 7 and the Red Sky Seasons of the OT were too little, too late for the franchise since the damage had already been done...

The short answer: yes.

From the looks of things Turtlemania was on the decline when things went really campy. The 3rd movie, Turtle Tunes, and We Wish You a Turtle Christmas all sprung around the same times as the emergence of Power Rangers and the drift away from Turtles.

Didn't they also switch where it aired? I could swear I lost track of the new episodes and was surprised to see it one morning flipping through the channels.

You're not wrong, but was the 3rd movie really campier than the 2nd movie? The five-ten minutes in TMNT 3 where things were serious and had heart still seems like five-ten more minutes than contained in the entirety of TMNT 2.

I know a lot of people seem to see the 3rd as the weakest of the live action movies from the 90's. I might disagree, but many of the arguments for it being the worst, aside from the non-Henson costumes, was the campy humor, even if it wasn't quite as cheesy as Secret of the Ooze, which is debatable.

There may be more serious moments in III as opposed to Ooze, but the humor that is in III might just be cheesier/campier than Ooze.

The OT never really changed much after Season 1 to be honest. There are plenty of episodes in Seasons 3-6 that are just as "action oriented" as the first season was. Of course Season 7-10 is when it started to go moreso toward action.

You have to remember that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the Mirage comic) was originally intended as a parody of Frank Miller's Ronin.

Humor was always the main driving force behind Ninja Turtles. It was never meant to be a serious franchise. Peter Laird might disagree, but I know that Kevin Eastman would acknowledge this.

The main problem with Turtlemania wasn't that it was becoming too humorous. It was that they had run out of ideas. Also, about five years had passed (1987 - 1992). Kids who loved the Ninja Turtles discovered Mortal Kombat and girls. The Simpsons had come out in the meantime, which turned prime time animation on its head. The Ninja Turtles lasted a long time at the top, and there was really no where else to go afterwards but down.

(I'm a fan of the original Mirage comics and Seasons 1-3 of the original show. The balance between the campy humor and the exciting action is what made TMNT so good.)

Season 8 makes the change. Season 8 is the best of season 8-10.

Season 7 changes the story style....8-10 also change the art style.

Yes, yes it was.

Season 6 starts heading in that direction though even if it wasn't fully there yet.

People can say that all they want but according to both Kevin and Peter that's just not true. Does it contain "elements of homage" that could even be construed as parodic? Yes. But that doesn't comprise the whole thing.

The thing about TMNT is it took the ridiculous idea of 4 "walking talking Turtles" who know ninjutsu and played it totally straight.

That WAS the joke.

Season 6 removes the solo adventures.

Exactly, the darker and more serious you take it, the funnier the homage/parody is.

However, I would say that the Mirage comic very quickly dropped any attempt at humor, once they saw they had an audience for serious stories. TMNT is a funny name and that's always going to lend itself to being a self-aware parody and a dose of ridiculousness.

Many issues post-RTNY and pre-City at War were inherited by more casual artists who had less knowledge about the earlier issues, and usually made a parody about previous adventures, and in particular issues 39-41 is an embarrassment to the Turtles in Space issues. Poor art, flat humor, and very cheesy unlike much of the Mirage comic, and by the time City at War happened, it was too late. Unlike the OT, Mirage vol. 1 either took itself too seriously or felt lost relative to the earlier plots. There was also media overexposure which meant that everyone took the Turtles for granted and got sick of seeing the same old Turtles just with a derivative of what had been done. Some pop cultural references, such as Frankenstein became repetitive in the OT, and Tournament Fighters was seen as a weak Street Fighter clone ending the video game franchise. Of course after the franchise was given a dormant period in the late '90s/early '00s, it came back with a darker, more pure tone with 4kids.

That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that the majority of 'mainstream' Ninja Turtles stories have been written in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, regardless of the original intent of the creators.

There are exceptions, of course, but I think that it's likely that more people know about the light-hearted "Archie Comics" Turtles characterizations as opposed to the darker Mirage ones.

Personally, I like humor. A humorous tone is fine as long as its balanced out by good action and an engaging story. After all, what would Batman be without the Joker?

But back to the original question:
After Season 3, the Ninja Turtles moved from its original prime time slot to CBS. I think Season 4 is when the episodes sort of began going on cruise control with the writing and animation. My guess is that before the TMNT became a hot commodity in 1988 or so, the Fred Wolf Studio was more concerned with episode quality because they wanted it to be a success. In the prime time slot, the show was made to appeal more to both kids and adults. After the first movie came out though, it was pretty obvious that they had all the success in the world and the impetus to produce quality episodes was lost. The CBS programming block was Saturday Morning, so you could guess the intended target audience there. Also, CBS censored the show a lot more (see Michaelangelo's grappling hook) which took away from the show's original bite.

Outside of the obvious nunchuck replacement, the show was never really toned down at all. Most of Season 4's episodes have just as much action in them as Seasons 2-3.

Season 4 was the start of those evil mad scientists characters popping out, but many of those eps are still quite good.

You forgot to mention Next Mutation, which is probably the answer to your question.

Next Mutation hit long after Turtlemania was dead. So it has nothing to do with it.