Turtles in a... half shell??
 

Heh, this might seem kind of dumb but my hubby brought this up recently and it totally made me wonder the same thing when I was a kid, even now...

they're in a half shell? I thought full shell, because they have the front part of the shell as well on their torso.

Daaaaah... :tanime:

LOL, well half shell because they look human kind of.

well they have a half shell on their back, I guess their torso doesnt count

I've often wondered this same exact thing. But I wasn't smart enough to post it.

hmmmm....... I'm pretty sure they were on drugs when they were making the old toon. Every time soemone yelled out staff meeting it really meant let's smoke some reefer in the board room.

I've thought of that too... But I just tell myself that "heroes in a half-shell" sounds cooler than the alternative. :)

The torso part of the shell is flat, where as the back part of the shell is curved, hence half a circle. If both sides of the shell were curved that'd be Heroes In A Round Shell.

Yeah, I've always wondered why they used "heroes in a half-shell". I'm not saying I could've done better, though. I guess it was because it sounds cool.
(or it sounded cool back then. I'm not bashing the original series here, so please don't get mad. I'm just saying that it might've sounded good in the late 80s when it was aired.)

Maybe they weren't referring to a turtle shell, but like a circular shell. They look kind of like clams on a halfshell.

Re: Turtles in a... half shell??
 

i think the whole reason for the "heroes in a half-shell" is a play on the term "half-shell" used when describing how seafood is served (or more specifically, seafood from creatures with shells). i figured they were just being clever with the wording. but that's just my take on it.

Okay now no bringing up topics I posted awhile back :-)

What's weird is that whenever I bring up TMNT to someone and they start singing the theme song they always say "Turtles in a half-shell" instead of heroes. I really wonder why, every single person that remembered the theme that I've talked to says that.

You're not the only one DK. Close to graduation time a guy in my economics class saw me wearing my TMNT shirt, and that's exactly what he did: "Turtles on the half-shell...turtle power!"

But then again he was an idiot anyway.

I believe that it was suppose to represent that they were half-human due to their mutation.

But the definition of a shell is: a hard rigid usually calcareous covering of an animal. So, while it is a half circle, it is not a half of a shell. The Turtles, even mutated, still have a full shell. My guess for that part of the song is their "half human half turtle," or it just sounded good to the creators.

Carapace-top shell, an outgrowth of bone
Plastron-bottom shell

I got this off a site...I guess they are both called shells so really its "heros in a half carapace" or "heros in a half plastron"

"heros in a half carapace" or "heros in a half plastron" heh heh

I was just thinking that it would be funny if they tried to market TMNT using those as catch phrases.

Hmm, maybe it is referring to seafood on a half shell....

Turtle soup... Shredder...

Shredder would be partly conducting cannibalism if he ate them in soup! :sick:

Wouldn't the mutagen in their bodies give him radiation sickness?

The mutagen isn't exactly IN their bodies (or even ON), so to speak.