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IIRC the creators of TMNT, originally said that their idea was they were black humans who would wear a turtle shell for protection and fight crime. Are you really going to grab an OG Donatello action figure from playmates and say that's not meant to be a naked bald black man wearing a turtle shell?
That was the original pitch, playmates just said "why not make them actual turtles" and things went from there.
The turtles have always been black coded, just like piccolo, and April was always black, same as Baxter stockman, the FW show just whitewashed the characters. Thankfully we live in a better era now where we can just exist as who we are. TMNT was always an African American franchise, the fact that we allowed white people to also like it is a different thing.
Hip Hop and Rap are in the DNA of this franchise.
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