Was Turtlemania becoming detrimentally too humorous over time?

[Refractive Reflections]

One thing I've been noticing in hindsight with Turtlemania (during the late 80s-early 90s), is that it appears that the franchise was becoming progressively more and more comedic...and with some areas to the point of absurdity. Thus evolving the lean, green, aggressive fighting machine into a comedic side show that was all too easy to laugh off.

Here are some examples:

1) The direction of the OT had more comedy if you compare Seasons 1-2 ( 1987-1988 ) with Seasons 4-5 (1990-1991).

2) The progression of the movies from the first, second, and then the dreadful third movie seemed to transform the action fighting characters into a slapstick comedic troupe of sorts. What once started off as cool (being a turtle, eating pizza, and being a ninja) seemed to become corny and childish as the humor of each film seemed to excessively revolve around those topics.

3) Even in the arcade games you can observe this:
a) the voices, in the 1st the Turtle voices are deeper but in Turtles in Time, the voices are higher-pitched and "cartoony"
b) The speaking parts, with in the 1st they were: "Attack!" "We gotta save Splinter!" "Hang on guys!" "They aren't getting any prettier"; with Turtles in Time they had some corny phrases: "Now I'm too cool" or "I just took a shower" or "I feel seasick."
c) In the intros: with the 1st all of the Turtles looked serious, with Turtles in Time their faces appeared comical (also in the music intro) except for Leo when Shredder appears.
d) Even with Shredder's retro-mutagen attack: In the 1st arcade game, the Turtles raise their arms in agony before demutating. With Turtles in Time, the Turtles bulge out their eyes out of their head in a more animated expression.
(I put in these details to point out how they formed a cumulative tone shift.)

4) The action figures around 1992 seemed to become more desperate with sports themed and party themed Turtles that seemed to belittle/push aside the tough fighting character of the Turtles.


The reason I point out this progression is I'm wondering if the TMNT franchise became too humorous that made people subconciously lose interest and deviate from the franchise (both adults and children). Since adults or teens would be ridiculing these now comedic Turtles, it would cause children to gravitate toward "Power Rangers" or "Batman: The Animated Series" that had a more serious/cool feel to it.

Yes I do know that every fad has its time, but from a franchise perspective do you think the humor was pushed too far? And thus caused Turtlemania to end a few years earlier than it could have been? On that note, it could explain why Season 7 and the Red Sky Seasons of the OT were too little, too late for the franchise since the damage had already been done...