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Originally Posted by bwwd
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I know they are not the best designs but let's not get carried away here.
The Bay designs didn't even do what they were supposed to do and let people who didn't know much about the turtles be able to tall which one is which. Gaudy and over the top as they were other than Donatello none of the outfits made a lick of sense to someone didn't already know which turtle had which personality.
Why is the blue one wearing samurai gear? I thought they were all martial artists. Why is the one in read got a doo-rag and loin cloth? Is he supposed to be a barbarian? Why is the orange horny one got chains and sunglasses he can't even wear? Sure, fans who already know the characters can intuit what they were going for but for the uninitiated it's even harder to tell them apart. At least the Barron designs effectively convey (stereotypical as it is) they are teenagers in a then contemporary urban setting.
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Originally Posted by Andrew NDB
I guess that'd be fine. Though I don't imagine four guys raised in a sweaty sewer for all their life to grow up and kill a guy would be terribly worried about concepts of "normalcy," "family life," or "self-expression."
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Well...you're not wrong but there's always been a charming conceit with TMNT that despite being raised in the sewers isolated from humanity the turtles and Splinter are a "normal" family.
This goes back to #2 of the Mirage series were it opens to the turtles living room doing normal domestic things like Don is soldering a circuit and Leo is reading a book while sitting next to Splinter on the coach while he watches TV. Even Raph and Mike are more rough housing than properly sparring. Even in the first issue it's implied with the look of the lair being very home-y that the live a life that approximates that an actual human family despite their unique circumstances.
Just how "normal" TMNT should is debatable. I think at least some regular societal concepts should elude them but the idea that things like "normalcy," "family life," or "self-expression" are not things the turtles would be bothered with doesn't bare out. Arguments of realism aside it's antithetical to how the characters have been presented since the beginning.
Not saying I was ever in love with the clothes from concept art of the Barron picture but like the bandannas (multi-colored of otherwise) have no real purpose in-story it serves a practical one of being a visual shorthand for them being teenagers in an urban setting. I can appreciate what they were going for even if I think there are better ways of conveying that.
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It's probably like Batman wearing a yellow circle on his chest when that was the only part on his costume that was bulletproof... if you're aiming a gun and the Turtles are darting around in the dark your eye might train on the flowing bandannas and not any fleshy parts.
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Something which was only given an actual purpose decades after the the oval was first introduced. The real reason Bats has it is are for legal purposes, heck the only reason he has any chest symbol at all is because Superman has his S. If someone wanted to they could come up with an in-story purpose for the turtles bandannas, heck as much as you might hate it someone could easily come up with a reason why they could be multi-coloured. Not sure why they'd want to be it's there.