Official Reason for the Turtles' assigned Bandana Colors & Weapons?

[Refractive Reflections]

Hi everyone,

So I searched the posts on this forum about this topic, but most of them seem to poll whether people prefer all red or multi-colored bandanas, or people giving personal opinions for the meaning behind the colors.

But...
Did ANY of the comics/toons/movies explain why the Turtles had their assigned colors or weapons? (Either from the stories OR the writers/creators [Eastman and Laird]) I remember the Archie comics explaining it, but I'm unfamiliar with it. (For sure I know the OT and the movies did not.)

As for the bandana colors, we could trace it back to the development of the OT to tell the Turtles apart, BUT were they just randomly assigned or was there any implicit meaning behind them? Yes, I know we all have our personal opinions but was there OFFICIAL explanation from Eastman & Laird or from the OT's animation studio? Do any other comics/toons/movies explain this in their storytelling?

As for the assigned weapons, we could trace it back to the source with Mirage comics. Did the comics ever explain it? Did Eastman and Laird explain it? (It's just interesting to hypothetically consider the other Turtles using different weapons like Donatello using katanas, or Raph using them, or maybe Leonardo using nunchukas...any combination you guys can think of.)

Anyways though...the reason I wanted to ask this question is because I think it could have given the storytelling a lot of depth into the Turtles personalities in explaining exactly WHY Splinter gave those particular colors/weapons to each Turtle and what trait/characteristic he sees in them shine through. At the very least, it would provide an interesting backstory.

As always, thanks for all of the input and responses!

[Jester]

This old thread may shed some light.

Gah, that's what I used to post like?

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Jester

This old thread may shed some light.

Gah, that's what I used to post like?

I did check that post earlier, maybe I scanned through it too quickly... but it was all peoples' understandable speculation. I was wondering of any official explanation from the writers/creators or from the storytelling itself about those bandana colors and weapons...

[Candy Kappa]

I don't think there is any official explanation, it just is.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by JLS

I did check that post earlier, maybe I scanned through it too quickly... but it was all peoples' understandable speculation. I was wondering of any official explanation from the writers/creators or from the storytelling itself about those bandana colors and weapons...

Yeah, that wasn't meant to be one of those "Gah, this again!" posts, though it has been done before.

I don't think there's ever been a official answer. Weapons were done for the first Mirage issue, bandanas was probably Playmates' idea.

Archie's explanation for the masks was so Splinter, of all people, could tell them apart, and the weapons were a gift from one of Yoshi's old friends that he and the Turtles helped.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Candy Kappa

I don't think there is any official explanation, it just is.

Hmmm...interesting, LOL. You'd think the objects we see constantly that contribute the Turtles' identities (the multi-colored bandanas and weapons), the many years that passed by (over 25 years), and the many conventions these writers/creators attended that these two questions would have been answered already. ROFL... So interesting...

[Powder]

To my memory, Pete picked what colors they were to use (when required, of course) but not which turtles got which color. Pretty sure I read that somewhere.

[joefsas]

Originally Posted by JLS

Hmmm...interesting, LOL. You'd think the objects we see constantly that contribute the Turtles' identities (the multi-colored bandanas and weapons), the many years that passed by (over 25 years), and the many conventions these writers/creators attended that these two questions would have been answered already. ROFL... So interesting...

Perhaps the colours were just used to make the turtles more appealing to children for the tv series....

And as for the weapons....who knows

Still, think you might be looking into this a bit too much

[Shredded]

If we want to be technical, we could ask, why the hell are they even wearing masks at all?

Ninjas wear masks to conceal their identity, there is a purpose with that mask! But now we are talking about freaking human seized mutant turtles. And never in turtle history, not even in the Fred Wolf cartoon, has any-one gone.

"Oh no! he wears a mask, now I can't possible tell who that is! Who is that mysterious man whom is definetely not a turtle!?"

In fact, these face masks seems to serve the opposit purpose of regular face masks. As when regular face-masks are supposed to conceal identities, these masks are there so the kid audience can tell at ones who is who by looks only.

It's just one of those questions that aren't even worth answering it, because any attempt would undoubtly end up with a stupid explanation that would make the characters look dumb.

As for weapon though.. I kind of feel like the weapons fits the personality of the turtles pretty much.
It's just so hard to dis-connect any of the turtles with the weapon he always had at this point.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by joefsas

Perhaps the colours were just used to make the turtles more appealing to children for the tv series....

And as for the weapons....who knows

Still, think you might be looking into this a bit too much

I perfectly fine with a whole range of answers from the writers/creators choosing it from the top of their heads saying "Eh...we just randomly chose it" to something very complex like "Since the sword has always had some type of leadership aspect to it in entering battle so....and it's why Leonardo has katanas.... and knowing Leo and Raph's conflicting personalities it's why the sais were chosen for Raph....a defense weapons against his leadership(blah, blah, blah) etc." and likewise for the bandana colors.

It's just with any type of art/creation whether it's a comic/story/painting etc., sometimes the author/creators uses symbolism to get their point across and I thought something as iconic as these objects of the Turtles' personalities (colored bandanas and weapons) may have possibly had that. It's just I'm surprised these two questions were never solved on a factual level and it remains speculation after ALL this time, That's all...

[Cryomancer]

If anything it's probably lifted from either 1) Daredevil or 2) whatever reference material they had around back then about ninjas. In the first issue, they don't even have all that much of a personality yet, but they've got their weapons, so I doubt there is a particular heavy link between them (unless they later developed the personalities using the weapons as inspiration).

[CyberCubed]

Its pretty easy to see why the colors were chosen:

Blue = Positive, boy, leadership Not too dark or too bright a color

Red = Color of blood, rage, anger...fits Raphael well.

Orange = Fun "lighter" color, that fits Mikey's upbeat personality.

Purple = Dignified, less intrusive than other colors, royalty...fits Don's mind.


Green obviously wasn't chosen as it'd blend in with the turtles skin. Yellow probably wasn't "boyish" enough and brown/black would be too dull for kid heroes.

[Jester]

The original TMNT arcade cabinets made Mikey look yellow.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Its pretty easy to see why the colors were chosen:

Blue = Positive, boy, leadership Not too dark or too bright a color

Red = Color of blood, rage, anger...fits Raphael well.

Orange = Fun "lighter" color, that fits Mikey's upbeat personality.

Purple = Dignified, less intrusive than other colors, royalty...fits Don's mind.


Green obviously wasn't chosen as it'd blend in with the turtles skin. Yellow probably wasn't "boyish" enough and brown/black would be too dull for kid heroes.

YES....CyberCubed we all know that...and Jester pointed that out earlier in linking a previous thread with those reasonable possibilities. But the purpose of this thread was finding an official reason, or at the very least why no one ever brought up the question (of the iconic colored bandanas and weapons) to any of the numerous conventions to the writers/creators in over 25 years.

It's just that I'm a moderate fan of TMNT, and with clearly, many more devoted TMNT fans on these forums...it's just so surprising there are SO many threads about finding out the most trivial details of just a single episode on these forums, but yet ironic NO one can find a factual answer for these two pivotal questions that are associated with the Turtles' personalities. ROFL

[Jester]

We've asked...and got a "I dunna" as an answer. It's not like it's NEVER been asked or answered, it's just that there really is no answer.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Jester

We've asked...and got a "I dunna" as an answer. It's not like it's NEVER been asked or answered, it's just that there really is no answer.

WOW! ....Okay then... I guess from that response ("I dunna") I'm leaning toward the reasons as being more random then, but anyways...
LOL, I guess those two questions are going to remain like one of those abstract mysteries of life that never has a factual answer. (i.e. "What is the meaning of life?", "Is there intelligent life in outer space?", "Why is the golden ratio so aesthetically pleasing and found in nature?") ROFL

[Candy Kappa]

I think the weapons, role and color came first, then the character development based off those elements. There is some traits in the comics past #1, but they got more defined over time.

[HotJuicyBurgers]

Originally Posted by JLS

WOW! ....Okay then... I guess from that response ("I dunna") I'm leaning toward the reasons as being more random then, but anyways...
LOL, I guess those two questions are going to remain like one of those abstract mysteries of life that never has a factual answer. (i.e. "What is the meaning of life?", "Is there intelligent life in outer space?", "Why is the golden ratio so aesthetically pleasing and found in nature?") ROFL

How could you include is there intelligent life in outer space? Statistically, the answer is yes lol

Anyways, I think that what happened was, since Peter chose the colors (allegedly) playmates head honchos were sitting around, and just said, hey, divvy out the four colors among these 4 guys. And that's probably pretty accurate as to what happened

[Cipher]

Are you asking how various pieces of media have explained it "in-universe" over the years?

If so, there have been a few "Turtles get their colors/weapons" stories. TMNT Adventures did one for banda colors in the middle and one for weapons toward the end of its run, though I haven't read either. The 4Kids series had the episode "Fathers & Sons," in which the Ancient One assigned them bandanas according to ... their auras or something? In IDW, their mask colors were apparently just their favorite colors as humans in fuedal Japan. (Not sure if you've read the IDW series, but in this universe, at least according to Splinter, the Turtles are reincarnations of his sons from that era.)

If you're asking how they were first assigned their colors behind the scenes, I seem to remember an "Ask Peter Laird" session on his blog in the last two years where he basically said Playmates wanted different colors, so they (he? Playmates? Both parties?) picked some without putting much thought into it. Although I'd have to do some digging around to find it.

As for the weapons, I don't think there was a lot of deep thought going on there either, although to my knowledge, there's never been an official explanation. Remember that the Turtles in the first issue are nearly indistinguishable from one another in terms of personality. They were based on Eastman and Laird goofing around with sketches and intending to produce a one-off semi-parody. So more than likely they just thought of four different weapons that seemed cool. There can't have been any "matching to personality" when there were no personalities to match them to. For what it's worth, though, we see the Turtles with different weapons in their "pre-teen" flashback adventure in issue #9.

[Luigiperps]

Blue-calm controlled color, katanas calm focused weapon
Red-angry rage color, sais angry tough weapons
Purple, smart, peaceful color, bow calm peaceful weapon
Orange, random fun color, nunchucks crazy uncontrolled weapon