Baxter Stockman The Fly
 

Who's idea was to have Baxter Stockman mutate into a fly in the first place?

David Wise, probably. He was the head writer for the show.

I believe PL drew the initial sketches of Baxter fly though.

http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....uy-sketch.html

Here's the critter that Peter Laird drew, though he said he doesn't know if this actually had any influence on Baxterfly.

My assumption was always that the Baxterfly concept started with the toyline rather than the cartoon, though I have absolutely nothing to base it on. "Enter the Fly" aired the year before the toy came out, but it seems like all the marketing facets of TMNT were in pretty tight, so the idea might have been an action figure first.

I don't know, but he looks cool!! So that's all that matters to me!
But I think the idea came from playmates, and then he was shoehorned into the show.

Well the 87 Toon used a lot of sci/horror movie inspiration in the shows outline and characters so my guess his change was inspired by the 1986 Jeff Goldblum film The Fly.

Baxter even has a similar hairstyle.....

He probably was inspired by old sci-fi movies, but made into an action figure first.

Because I often have nothing better to do but think about these things, I came around to assume that Baxter Stockman was influenced more by the original "The Fly".

I love, love, love Cronenberg's flick, but the TMNT cartoon seemed to like spoofing the stereotypical old science fiction movie, so the original version of "The Fly" is probably more in their ballpark. That, and the teleportation thingie in the old film was called the "Disintegrator-integrator unit", and the trademark squeal of, "Help meeee!" is more associated with the older film (tho' it existed in the Cronenberg version).

But we'll never know for sure, and, uh, so, carry on.

Yeah, good call. David Wise and other writers on the show really loved homage the vintage 50s sci-fi stuff!

Baxter's hair in the cartoon was apparently inspired by Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Also remember The Fly was remade in 1986 just two years before Baxter Stockman was turned into a fly mutant.

As for the Doc Brown hairstyle Peter Laird did say after it was decided to play it safe by making Baxter white that they wanted to go for a sort of Doc Brown look. It was not the only one at the time, "Mad Scientist" short-lived cartoon was centered on the premise sans time travel.

I think I remember reading that on his blog once. Do you have a link to it?

No on the moment. I will go to his blog now and see if I can find it and edit this post.

Edit: Here is te entry we are thinking about from back in the summer of 2010. A sketch of "Fly Guy" as he was referred to when trying to create concepts for the toy line.
http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot....uy-sketch.html