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Originally Posted by Eye of Sarnath
Yes, post it. I'd like to see it.
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Okay, but since I don't have a scanner, I'll just retype the whole thing.
Here goes....
" WE TEMPORAIRLY INTERRUPT THIS COMIC BOOK FOR A
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Did you ever have a secret, a really neat one, that you were just
dying to tell everyone right away...but you couldn't, because if you letit out too soon it could spoil things? Well, we've been in that quandry since last year - but now we can finnaly let the out of the bag (So to speak!).
It all started back in August of 1986 when, out of the blue, we got a call from a gent named
Mark Freedman, who was calling us because he had been talking to
kevin Siembieda from the Palladium Books role-playing game company; and, as he put it. "fell off hi chair laughing" whenhe heard the name
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... and now he wanted to be our agent for licensing! After a couple of meetings, we were sold...and signed up.
Whitin an amiazingly short period of time, Mark had lined up a potetial deal for a major toy line: action figures, vehicles, the works. So we were flown out to sunny La Mirada,California, to meet with the fine folks at Playmates Toys. Things went well, everybody seemed to think that the
TMNT's could be a really nifty toy line, and we returned home with visions of blister packed
TMNT action figres dancing in our heads.
Of course, what's a line of action figures without an animated series backing them up? After a couple of false starts,
Murakami/Wolf/Swenson was chosen to be the company that would produce the animation - initially, a five part miniseries in half-hour episodes. We went west once more to meet with these folks, and were happy to find out that not everyone in Tinseltown is a wingnut-these guys were nice
and talented!
So, for the last year these things have been in progress, and if things go as planned, you should see the toys star appear in stores in January of 1988, and the cartoon series the last week of December (we'll keep you updated as more definite dates come in). As you might well imagine, we were near bustin' at the seams with the urge to tell you all-but in deference to the wishes of our agent and the toy company, we agreed to keep it under our hats 'til now.
What's to come? - well, in the toy line there will be ten action figures to start with: all four turtles,
Splinter,
April,
The Shredder, a
Foot soldier, and two new evil characters-
Rocksteady, a mutant cammando rhinoceros, and
Bebop, a punk mutant warthog. (We had a lot of input on the design of these two characters, and they are
wild!). Each figure is poseable and comes with a weapons pack. Following these figures will come a redesigned turtle van, a turtle blimp (yeah, it sounds nutty, but wait 'til you see it-it's great!), the
Technodrome(The
Shredder's headquarters), the
Technorover (a ground car for the Foot soldiers), and the turtles' headquarters playset. Then there's the-two high stuffed turtle plush doll, with interactive voice box.
As for the animation,
Murakami/Wolf/Swenson has adapted our stories from the first few issues, with some of their own ideas thrown in. You'll see
Baxter Stockman and his mousers, the
Shredder and the
Foot, and an evil alien called
Krang who bears more than a little ressemblance to the
TCRI aliens. The five half-hour episodes stand by themselves as stories, but allcome together to make a neat five-part series. We've read all the scripts, heard all the voice tracks and seen the first two episodes...and they're
great!
While all this has been happening,
Mark Freedman was not twiddling his thumbs. Two more deals he's lined up are with
Random House, which will publish
TMNT coloring books (and puzzles and board games through their subsdiary, the
Warren Company); and with
Responsive Marketing, for a
TMNT fan club. Also on the boards is a full color comic book based on the TV series; currently, it looks like
Archie comics will be publishing that, and
Micheal dooney will be drawing it.
Lest it seem like we are counting our chickens before they've hatched , let us just say that we have our fingers crossed, hoping that everything that is planned (and in production now) will actually happen, But it looks good, and promising, we're dealing with good people. Of course, it wouldn't hurt if our faithful readers started going around to their local toy stores and started asking them if they're going to carry all
TMNT toys...!"
I also have the original ad for the FIRST TMNT toys. I could post it but I don't have a scanner. Sorry
