In the latter years, did the OT ever have its own official website?

[Refractive Reflections]

Obviously the OT couldn't have had its own website in the beginning (1987-1988 ) since it was before the internet, but I was wondering in the last few years of the OT's run (around the Red Sky era) if the cartoon had its own official website. (The OT cartoon mentioned about the internet in general in a couple of its episodes in 1996.)

Was there an official OT website similarly to how Nick has it for the 2012 series? When was the website launched? Do any of you remember going onto the website and its content if it was there? ...And of course, what could you actually access with the dial-up connection at the time?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

[DarkFell]

Not really sure. According to the other fans here, the OT cartoon was losing fan interest steam in the mid nineties. If there is / was an OT site and if it is operational is anyone's guess but I would like to see more info about it. Only TMNT site I know is TurtlePedia. There is an OT section in there. That's all I really know.

[IndigoErth]

Good question. Kind of doubt it though since the internet wasn't really seen as a vital must have yet and many households didn't join the internet right away (or couldn't). Too bad the Wayback Machine only seems to want urls, not keywords. Not sure if the thing goes back that far with websites anyhow.

Wouldn't be surprised if there were early fan sites though, and considering how many early websites tended to look it would be great to see old screen shots. lol

[Candy Kappa]

I don't think there was an official Fred Wolf website, th closets would be the old ninjaturtles.com, and even they had issues with hosting FW screenshots iirc.

[CyberCubed]

No. CBS didn't have an online cartoon section for their shows, which is the only place an OT website would be.

CBS didn't have a cartoon section on their website

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Candy Kappa

I don't think there was an official Fred Wolf website, th closets would be the old ninjaturtles.com, and even they had issues with hosting FW screenshots iirc.

Yeah, there wasn't much FW content on the old turtles site. Just episode lists and summaries.

[sdp]

Well I'm guessing NinjaTurtles.com was seen as the official website, but back then in the early 90s many companies didn't see as much use of the internet so it was actually fans who made fansites and there were plenty of them. By the mid 90s almost everything had an official website though but there were still plenty of fansites which I think have actually died in the past decade, you have one or two "big" sites including the official one and not much else, kind of sad actually. But yeah this next part I don't know for sure but I'm guessing that Ninjaturtles.com even had screenshots of the FW show and whatnot in the beginning and they got in trouble for it which is why they had the disclaimer of not being able to have images of the website and the general apathy they had towards the OT later on on their website.

Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation's official site was pretty much NinjaTurtles.com, it even had letters from the characters and whatnot, it was the place to go for information about it. Then again did TMNT 2003 really have an "official" site? It was just the tmnt section of the 4kids website, I'd still count NinjaTurtles.com as the ninja turtles website for everything including news about the show which it had more than the actual "official" website. I'd say the same for the Nick turtles site, they just killed the awesome official website for this barebones "section" of the Nick.com website.


So in retrospect, NinjaTurtles.com was an amazing website that archived most Turtle information and it was actually better than most fan sites in back then and I'd argue even now there is no better website, it was truly a loss when Viacom killed it and made it route to the halfassed TMNT section of their Nick site.

Originally Posted by Refractive Reflections

Obviously the OT couldn't have had its own website in the beginning (1987-1988 ) since it was before the internet,

The internet was most definitely around back then.

[pannoni1]

It's interesting seeing stuff about the early days of the Internet, as on a VHS tape from November 1995 (nearly a year before the Internet Archives start), I noticed that Cartoon Networks' Jonny Quest already had an official website on a promo of theirs. It really wasn't a necessity to have a website for a certain show or production company until 1998, 1999 at the latest. Fred Wolf Films didn't have a website until late 1998, two years after the OT ended. Your best source to find out early website information are in TV promos and various official print publications. That said, its part of the reason that gives the OT its own nostalgic mystique, airing essentially before it had a real Internet presence. That said, some of the oldest information regarding the OT (in more of a thetechnodrome.com matter) was through the newsgroup rec.arts.animation in the very early '90s with alt.fan.ninja-turtles online in the summer of 1996, with most of the early posts by Terrence C. Briggs and a very small audience. Around the time TNM started, a few more fans started joining, but it wasn't until around the time TNM was ending that a considerably larger online fan presence began to surface, which was rightly timed as it allowed fan fiction to be prevalent and popular throughout that Dark Period. There were also some listserv discussions (remember those?) around that time, including the original TMNT-L.

Here is a link that I found that lists most of the Fansites as of August 20, 1999. Aaahhh, the days before Social Media.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001204...r23/links.html

Interestingly, the oldest powerrangers.com hit from 1996 comes from an independent toy seller. I do remember a website for their movie, though.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by pannoni1

It really wasn't a necessity to have a website for a certain show or production company until 1998, 1999 at the latest.

That's actually quite false; by the late 90s not only were you already way late to the game but the internet bubble was about to burst. It was in the mid-90s that companies that had missed the boat in the 80s and early 90s were now buying their domain names for a lot of money making any smart enough geek who got the name rich. By the mid 90s companies knew the internet was the next big thing and almost everything had a website, I remember visiting the Nintendo website before the N64. I remember always getting those AOL floppy discs in those Toys R Us gift boxes they used to give out to kids.

The internet most of us remember is from the late 90s early 00's which is when the internet started to look a little more like the one we know today and when it started becoming more and more mainstream for people to have. I mean I had the internet pretty much all my life because of my father being a computer engineer and it wasn't as common then but the internet was far from "new" by the mid 90s even from the perspective of a "regular" user.


As far as the internet archive, fantastic website but yeah a search engine would be amazing, remember when google had a "surf the web from 2000" or something along those lines as a joke? They should implement something among those lines. But even then the internet archive as awesome of a job that it does it still doesn't archive everything.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by sdp

but the internet was far from "new" by the mid 90s even from the perspective of a "regular" user.

Well, I dunno about being far from new for some/many of us, maybe somewhat less new. First year of school I had that actually taught us about the internet was my 9th grade year, later half of '93/early '94. My family got it's first connection sometime the following school year. I vaguely recall hearing about the internet before 9th grade, but not much.



Anyway, yeah.... I suppose the concept of screen caps and whatnot may not have been around all that much back then. Darn. Would love to go back and see old fan sites hosted on the likes of GeoCities, etc. where all those rough looking early personal sites usually were. lol

[MrPliggins]

Around 1996-7ish there was a TMNT mailing list, the newsgroup mentioned above (which was along with thousands of other newsgroups, bought by google. It's still archived in google groups), an mIRC channel, and the TMNT Ring of Green, which linked a bunch of fan sites. But no official cartoon site.
Also, the internet was around long before 1987. It just wasn't widely used until the advent of America Online and monthly pricing rather than hourly pricing. Man, things were so limited back then.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by sdp

The internet was most definitely around back then.

You know what I was implying. Or I should say before the commercialization or widespread public use of the internet.

But yeah, the internet was there in the 1980s except it was used in the academic and scientific fields.

Originally Posted by sdp

The internet most of us remember is from the late 90s early 00's which is when the internet started to look a little more like the one we know today and when it started becoming more and more mainstream for people to have. I mean I had the internet pretty much all my life because of my father being a computer engineer and it wasn't as common then but the internet was far from "new" by the mid 90s even from the perspective of a "regular" user.

The internet was not newly created by the mid 1990s, but for the average public individual it was considered "new".


Here's a video guide back in 1997 for children :

2:20 "...and it's not just for boys either."

[DarkFell]

"Oh no...it's movie time..."

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Refractive Reflections

Here's a video guide back in 1997 for children :

2:20 "...and it's not just for boys either."

Year I graduated high school, that video makes me feel really old now.

"What's a web page? Something ducks walk on?" Is that really what he said? Wtf? I'm not sure even modern Google could explain this joke. lol (Webbed feet joke maybe? Stick to the spider jokes, kid.)

Wonder what year it stopped being popular to have the computer set up in the center of your living room... lol And how did I know she was going to mention something to do with cooking. Oh '97, how easily you feel like 1980 now.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Year I graduated high school, that video makes me feel really old now.

"What's a web page? Something ducks walk on?" Is that really what he said? Wtf? I'm not sure even modern Google could explain this joke. lol (Webbed feet joke maybe? Stick to the spider jokes, kid.)

Wonder what year it stopped being popular to have the computer set up in the center of your living room... lol And how did I know she was going to mention something to do with cooking. Oh '97, how easily you feel like 1980 now.

I found the video from Teens React To:


It's hilarious how today's teens react to that video.

[IndigoErth]

Hahahah

I don't know what's funnier, their reaction or their cluessness to basic stuff like, oh I dunno...the modem? *points at it* It's still right there!

Funny though that they're old enough to have slight memories of the fight between phone and internet use. Welcome to feeling old, kiddies.

[Leo656]

I've seen a few videos like that, almost positive those are at the very least soft-scripted and the kids ham it up for the camera.

Otherwise, if they're "real", I don't see how anyone could dispute the idea that people are getting stupider, when it's kind of right there.