What was Turtlemania like?

[sdp]

I always thought I had lived through the turtles fad but after thinking about it, the timeline doesn't make sense I would've experienced it when it happened, I got to live some of it but it's like joining the ~Pokemania Pokemon Fad after Gold/Silver came out, which is after the fad had peaked.

I mean I remember the wave 1 turtle figures but I'm guessing those were re-relesed plenty of times, I had the TMNT 2 NES game and played Turtles in Time in my SNES/arcade. I had a Burger King VHS of the original show but I never really caught the show much on tv since there weren't many re-runs. I remember everyone loving the TMNT but i also don't remember seeing any of the movies advertised, I first saw the first two movies on PPV back to back. I remember turtle stuff everywhere and shelves always having tons of TMNT figures.

So I'm guessing the turtlemania I lived was more of 1992-1994 which is when the Power Rangers fad began and after that turtles stuff started slowly disappearing. I'm guessing the golden years of the fad was more like 1989-1990.

[CyberCubed]

I mean it was basically the Pokemon of its day. It's the best comparison I can think of. Just look at everything we had and still have.

Besides the Mirage comics which mostly only adults knew at the time, the original cartoon exploded in popularity and went on 10 seasons and 193 episodes which was unheard of for a western cartoon. It was also rerun like 4 times a day too, so it aired constantly. I remember watching it in the mornings and after I came home from school during the week and new eps on Saturdays. The movies especially the first two were huge and broke box office records for a comic book movie.

The Playmates toyline was massive and spanned a decade with the most popular toys. The Konami videogames were all huge hits and every TMNT videogame was almost as big a release as major Nintendo franchises. Then this is not counting all the other merch like T-shirts, book bags, candy, ice cream, etc. It was basically everywhere.

[Prowler]

Born in 1990. Therefore not old enough to have lived through it.

I remember Power Rangers being the most popular thing around when I was 4 or 5. After that came DBZ which took Portugal by storm. After DBZ came Pokémon. After Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh was popular for a while. After that, WWE became popular here again with its return to Portuguese TV after a decade, and my generation was now getting into wrestling. While the previous one has watched it in the early 90s.

I assume Turtle Mania was similar to the fads above. Basically, toys and merchandise all over the place, everyone watching the cartoon series and the first couple of movies, and it being the most discussed subject during school recess.

My older brother lived through it. He said we first got the 1990 movie and then the cartoon. I vaguely recall him telling me the Turtles was the most popular thing among boys of his generation in 1990 and 1991. But by 1992, the fad began dying. What was popular with kids born in the early 80s before the Turtles here. I dunno. Ghostbusters and Captain Tsubasa?

Might have been slightly different in other countries.

[Andrew NDB]

It was neat, but I kind of just accepted it as normal that 98% of all other kids were into exactly the same thing as I was. Because they were. But it really was just TMNT. When I'd bring out my Ghostbusters toys and talk, that's when it'd break down into like... 1/4 of the people I knew were into it, and maybe they were just watching the cartoon and not buying the toys. Everybody had TMNT toys. Even in the classroom, I was trading TMNTA comics with other people who had them.

[Leo656]

The weird thing to me was that TMNT was the first "fad" thing I'd experienced that had a longer shelf life.

Before TMNT it was like, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Ghostbusters, in chronological order, were all the "Big Things". And they were all REALLY big (with some crossover spillage; they were all mostly out at the same time so they were all fighting for space but all still overwhelmingly successful), but they all had no more than a two-year "peak" even if they hung in longer. Like, the Real Ghostbusters line got a little boost from the second Ghostbusters movie in '89, for example, but that didn't even last a year and even before that the writing had been on the wall for at least a year or two that Ghostbusters was "over". The show was still on, the toys were still out, but '88 was probably the apex.

And when things were "over", I mean they were DONE. You never talked about them again unless you wanted to be made fun of constantly for liking "old" things. "You still like ______? Dude, what the f*ck, that was forever ago! We were babies!" It was literally a year or two prior, but you know kids and hyperbole.

So with TMNT, two weird things happened. First of all, as I mentioned, before TMNT there were a lot of "Fad Properties" all competing but co-existing for years upon years. MOTU, Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe and Transformers all made tons of money for an entire decade, and none of them "killed off" the others or even bit into them too much. But then TMNT came in and killed off EVERYTHING, all at once. ALL of those things were now suddenly "lame", and you didn't admit to liking them still, you HAD to like TMNT if you wanted to be "cool". Now granted, all of those things were pretty much nearing the end of the line, anyway (MOTU for example was pretty much done in '87 and the "New Adventures" experiment was dead on arrival in '89), but it was unprecedented for one hot new thing to suddenly come in and become 100% of the boys' toys marketplace overnight.

One might wonder if "TurtleMania" would ever have even been a thing, if it had been competing with a bunch of other properties at their PEAK of popularity rather than their nadir. We'll never know, but I have to suspect it was a bit of a perfect storm. If TMNT comes out in '85, does it wipe out MOTU? Again, we'll never know, but I wouldn't put money on it. The TMNT franchise benefited GREATLY from being the first of a "new breed" in boys' toys and cartoons. All the old guard were dying off after many years of success, and its only real competition - Batman: The Animated Series - was still years away. So they basically had the entire market to themselves, early on. Worked out great for them, but again, it was weird to see because I'd never lived through that before. I grew up with a bunch of Popular Things coexisting; suddenly, there was just ONE Popular Thing, and the older ones all vanished. It was weird.

But the other weird thing is, that not only did TMNT have a longer peak - roughly 1988 through 1992, although I guess you can stretch it out to 1993 if you're feeling generous - but it also wasn't (in my experience anyway) one of those things you "weren't allowed" to talk about having liked, once it was no longer popular. Like, nobody made fun of you if you still liked Ninja Turtles in 1994, the way they did if you still liked Ghostbusters in 1990. Maybe the kids simply matured, I don't know. All I know is, that was the first fad thing you were "allowed" to still talk about once it had passed the expiration date, and people wouldn't make fun of you over it. That was weird, too.

Looking back, it really seems to me like a perfect storm of events that could never be recreated, AND I feel like they had twice as long a run of any other "fad" because they spent the first two years of that period running mostly-unopposed. The only thing close to the popularity of the TMNT cartoon was the Batman movies, and those movies barely had any toys so they didn't really cut into the TMNT line's success all that much. Once the TMNT brand actually had real competition from the Batman cartoon (and subsequent toyline), and then X-Men, "TurtleMania" fell fast and hard, although it still hung in there and made a respectable showing until the end.

Not trying to diminish the phenomenon or anything, because it was indeed that. BUT, it wasn't anything that hadn't been done before. He-Man was just as mass-marketed on just as many consumer products as TMNT, and in more countries to boot. BUT, it existed at a time when there was a lot more parity and competition in the marketplace, so it didn't sustain that momentum for as long as TMNT did. But TMNT also had a two-year run in the beginning where they didn't have much competition, so it's not hard to see why they were able to sustain such a huge juggernaut of merchandise for so long. But again, they weren't the first, so it wasn't so unusual to see something blow up that big. What was unusual was that it had a longer tail than anything else had, up to that point in time.

It was a weird time. The worst was how only the rich kids would get the "good" toys, like the Technodrome, and those kids always had short attention spans and broke/threw out their toys in short order. And all the while you'd be fuming because you actually wanted that thing, couldn't have it, and would have to watch some unappreciative dickhead get it and do nothing with it, instead. Sh*t drove me nuts.

[Andrew NDB]

It was a perfect timeline of events. The cartoon hit, it was a phenomenon, and even when other properties would usually wane, it was still going strong... and then BAM, first movie hits. Even if you went up a few grades, now there's something relatively grown up you can go and see. And when you leave the theater and still want your TMNT fix, guess what there is? Still new cartoons, toys and TMNTA comics everywhere. And everyone's still into it because why wouldn't they be?

I'd say right around and shortly after the release of TMNT 2 was the height of it, just talking from the ground as a 10 year-old kid at the time. Such a corny movie... but it was like a communal experience as a kid.

[sdp]

You guys are clueless to how big pokemon was and yes the anime was bigger than TMNT or dbz and even more popular than the games

Some things are difficult to gauge since as a kid things seem to last way longer but yeah by fad I mean the whole "mania" movement, it wasn't just a big quick rise of popularity among a certain group but with everyone. It culminated with Pokemon since that was pretty much agender unlike TMNT that while there were female fans it was still a minority, Power Rangers had a few more female fans because of the girl rangers but still mainly for boys. Jurassic Park was way bigger than Ghostbusters but I wouldn't call it a fad either even if there were tons of dinosaur related stuff right after. Batman TAS and other popular cartoons also weren't fads in the 90s. I mean Rugrats was huge but it wasn't a fad like tmnt/power rangers/pokemon, I suspect it was the same for other 80s cartoons, you never hear about "He-Manmania or Transformersmania" like you do for the big 3 of the 90s, I think marketing had also reached a peak in the 90s and they were able to exploit anything that became popular far easier than before which will never happen again because of the internet segmentizing stuff so everyone is into their own things now.

I do remember the shelves always having new cool crazy TMNT figures, which I now realize were some of the later waves when it wasn't as dominant but to me TMNT was still the king of action figures and didn't really notice a decline in general until Power Rangers was a thing, but I was so busy with Power Rangers I didn't stop to think about it. I never realized as a kid TMNT had died and was excited when The Next Mutation stuff started coming out, I was still very young so it was up my alley. I do think the peak of turtlemania was around 1991 so I seem to have barely made it to experience the fad which was good, I was also able to experience the Power Rangers and Pokemon fads as a kid and those were great experiences as well. It seems most generations either experienced only the TMNT fad, TMNT and Power Rangers or Power Rangers and Pokemon or only Pokemon, but only like people born in a very specific time frame got to live the 3 fads as a kid (if you were a teenager it doesn't count even if you enjoyed it, nothing beats enjoying something through a kids eye)

No 80s show ever reached the level of turtlemania, there's a reason those franchises aren't as fondly remembered and have never had s successful reboot. Transformers being the exception but it never became a worldwide cultural phenomena known as transformersmania. I'm not saying it wasn't very popular, but the closest thing from that era that would qualify was likely Star Wars but it being stuck to only movie3 movies over a few years never let it become as huge as a cartoon would to become a giant fad.

Turtlemania never reached the heights of Pokemania either. Pokemon was a whole other beast on a different league that TMNT could never hope for.

Power Rangers mania vs TMNT mania is a fairer comparison, but I've believe i already made a thread about that a few years ago. Worth noting Power Rangers sold for higher than TMNT, had always had a tv show running, appealed to girls more. I think PRs peaked earlier but was higher while tMNT just lasted longer while during it's fad phase.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Leo656

If TMNT comes out in '85, does it wipe out MOTU?

I believe it could've happened, since She-Ra was debuted that year and was not the same success as He-Man.

But I think a 1985 TMNT cartoon would've needed a couple of early space adventure episodes (not just Krang and the Technodrome coming to Earth). At the time, Star Wars was still a fresh memory, something it wasn't in 1987.

[ABrown]

As a child of the 80's, I grew up with the "toy commercial" cartoons: He-man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, and Silverhawks. I really don't remember TMNT being THAT MUCH bigger than any of those. Also, I don't think the franchise was really a huge hit for much longer than any of those franchises either. TMNT was really big from about the Fall of 1989 through the Spring of 1992. Prior to the Fall of 1989, TMNT was around. But it didn't become the phenomenon that it was until it went into five day a week syndication, followed by the release of the first live movie. Then after the fifth season, the majority of kids seemed to have stopped watching. I mean I went from fifth grade to sixth grade, so everyone my age had pretty much stopped playing with action figures and watching cartoons. Our interests had changed to video games and sports. Though, for some reason, the show continued to air for an addtional five years, despite being FAR less popular than it was during its peak.

[Sumac]

In Russia we didn't had a lot of TMNT merchandise, only things like toys, comic books and sticker albums.

In general, we were pretty late for Turtlemania - TMNT officially has been introduced here in 1993, basically, when Turtlemania on the West was dying out, so we get some embers, but nothing super major.

Nevertheless, being our formal introduction to 80s (commercial) cartoon series and superheroes, Turtles had enormous influence on Russian kids.

I think, Transformers eclipsed Turtles in popularity here, since their toys were sold everywhere throughout 90s, even though, until Beast Wars, none of big Russian channels had broadcasted any Transformers series. An, obviously they were not released on VHS in any capacity.

Things like G. I Joe and He-Man were mostly unknown here. Though, some G. I Joe toys were sold in the beginning of the 90s.

[CyberCubed]

TMNT was huge all that time till Power Rangers hit in 1992 and killed off a lot of TMNT's popularity. That's why by 1993 when the third movie came out the franchise was in its waning phase. Power Rangers was big all those years till Pokemon hit in 1998 and then the same happened again.

Ironically enough I was born at the right time to enjoy all these phases, as being in a kid in the 80's and most of the 90's and an early teen after that.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Sumac

Things like G. I Joe and He-Man were mostly unknown here. Though, some G. I Joe toys were sold in the beginning of the 90s.

I guess the October Guard (the Soviet equivalent of the GI Joe Team) action figures were sold there?

[IndigoErth]

Turtlemania... simply put, the point in which toy sales and popularity were super high and the evangelicals started yelling about the evils of Ninja Turtles.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

TMNT was huge all that time till Power Rangers hit in 1992 and killed off a lot of TMNT's popularity. That's why by 1993 when the third movie came out the franchise was in its waning phase. Power Rangers was big all those years till Pokemon hit in 1998 and then the same happened again.

I think, Power Rangers were mostly unknown in Russia until late 90s, when one of the channels had started broadcast them as part of the kids block. But even, then they hadn't become here as big as Pokemons.

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

I guess the October Guard (the Soviet equivalent of the GI Joe Team) action figures were sold there?

Never heard of them.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Sumac

Never heard of them.

The October Guard appears in the GI Joe episodes The Invaders and The Great Alaskan Land Rush.

[Galactus]

Ah Turtlemania. It was a wondrous time of revolution. A time when feminism was entering the mainstream and the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. When people shook off many long established bonds of conformity and found the courage to protest unjust wars. For a brief moment there everyone thought we could change the world with peace and love.

Oh wait...that was the sixties.

Turtlemania was lots...and I mean LOTS of turtles stuff everywhere. Multiple aisles of toy stores were devoted to just TMNT (or TMHT here in Britain) and not just kids toys there were every thing. Pretty much anything that you could stick their logo or likeness on I mean over here they had a tie in with tea bags of all things. No other 80s craze seem to ever reach anywhere near that level of ubiquity. I think it helped a lot that TMNT could be portrayed as cut and edgy and each relevant product needed. One thing that will always stand out to me is that turtles were often mentioned on the news were all the important stuff was reported on. The craze in general, the commercialisation of it all, stories of parents fighting over turtles toys, the alleged violence of the cartoon and movie even reports of kids going down in to the sewers looking for the turtles. Even newspapers that my grandparents read had articles on them. Another thing that I will always remember is that my grandparents would sometimes take me for days out to Manchester. The train there would always pass by a wall filled with graffiti and at the center was a painting of Leonardo with a red bandanna. Little did I know at the time this was a recreation of the pose from Mirage's Leonardo #1.

I definitely think that TMNT was the peak of these toy based crazes. What is what is funny is that unlike Transformers, MOTU, Power Rangers and Pokemon is that is was never designed to be.

[Prowler]

Leo's post made me think...I wonder if the main problem with TMNT overall is the fact it wasn't initially designed to be popular/mainstream? Think about it. All of the other very popular franchises and fads such as Star Wars, Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Batman, He-man, etc. we're clearly meant to be big heavyweights from the get-go. But TMNT was just an obscure independent comic book series that most of the world population still isn't aware of to this day.

I don't think Eastman and Laird ever thought their creation would become the monster it did. Which brings the whole idea that the FW Toon was a "deal with the devil" to a whole new levelm

TMNT belonged to a small company for most of its history, Mirage. And its most successful incarnation, the 87 cartoon series, had little to do with the source material and not much creative input from its creators either. I'm not sur eif Mirage ever owned the FW series. I remember the old Ninja Turtles Mirage website not having much info on the 87 toon besides a lost of episodes and the synopsis for each of them.

It's quite impressive how TMNT managed to become so massive for some years despite its humble roots. But that probably explains why it hasn't been able to become a regularly popular thing throughout the years either.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Galactus

No other 80s craze seem to ever reach anywhere near that level of ubiquity.

I can't speak at all to Over There, but in America just about every Toys R Us had a "He-Man Aisle" until at least 1986, and some through the line's end in 1987. Stuff like G.I. Joe and Transformers were also very popular, but stuff like that mostly shared an aisle. Like there was a general "Boys Action Figure" section and an aisle that was 100% He-Man stuff. Or otherwise like 95% He-Man stuff and 5% like-scale or similar-theme stuff like Galaxy Warriors, Warlord, etc. It varied by region and store, some Toys R Us places would stock the knockoffs in the same aisle as the He-Man stuff since they were nearly identical, but some Toys R Us stores had an aisle for all the various knockoff or "no-name" toys and so the He-Man rip-offs would go over there and the real He-Man toys would have their own completely dedicated aisle.

So figure the line was hitting its stride over here around '83/'84, and some stores still had a "He-Man Aisle" through 1987 (although a lot of the stores shrunk it down to just a section of the Boys Toys aisle by the end of '86 when the line was cooling off). That's still about three years give or take where the line had its own dedicated aisle while a lot of the other "iconic" lines all shared one. That's objectively a pretty good run.

I think one reason for that was the MOTU line had these big colorful display backdrops and decorative banners the stores would put up, which most other lines like G.I. Joe rarely got and it made the He-Man stuff always seem like it was important even after it had peaked. The stores always presented it like a Big Huge Deal even after sales dipped, just like they did with TMNT later on with their own big dedicated displays in many stores. That kind of thing definitely helps a line stand out amidst a crowded sea of other toys.

I wish the he-man.org merchandise checklist was still online for perusal, but sadly the website is under renovation and likely will be for some time. But yeah, I am sure it varied by country and region but even globally, if He-Man didn't have as much or more various merchandise on the shelves from '83 to '87 as TMNT did from '88 through '93, it was a tight race. To this day I'm still discovering stuff they slapped He-Man and Skeletor on back then that I never knew existed. But like TMNT, it's kinda like "Literally Every Single Thing you can imagine, they licensed products for." It had never been done on that level before, a toy line with quite as much global licensing and merchandising, and every big toy franchise thereafter benefited greatly from MOTU "going first" into that arena.

But yeah, as far as any line being anywhere near as ubiquitous as TMNT at its peak, MOTU at its peak is definitely in that conversation. But not in every single part of the world to the exact same degree as here. Still, it had to have SOME serious market penetration in England and the UK, because there were a ton of books and magazines that were only made and sold over there in that specific region, totally independent from the stuff we got Over Here, different artists and publishers and everything. I think their British-produced He-Man Magazine lasted longer than the American version, if I'm not mistaken, just for one example. It might not have been AS big as it was in America but it must've been pretty big all the same.

All of which fascinates the hell out of me, by the way. Kinda like how TMNT was received differently in various parts of the world as well. Or as I've often mentioned, the whole "Sega was a non-factor in Japan but huge in South America, while Nintendo was big in the US but ignored in the UK" type stuff. We had no internet back then obviously so I'm still learning about all this stuff just now, and it's pretty wild.

I was discussing this with someone yesterday, but one thing that puts TMNT over the other iconic '80s franchises was its successful video game franchise. That's a huge thing, and it's one that G.I. Joe, Thundercats, and He-Man didn't have the luxury of getting for various reasons. There were games for some of them but no "big" ones, and He-Man never got an NES game which still puzzles a lot of people. There's a working theory among He-Man fans that if there had been a decent NES game, the franchise might have lasted longer during its first run. We'll never know, but my theory is that at the time Mattel would have been reluctant to dabble in video games after they almost went bankrupt with the Intellivision. So even licensing their Golden Goose out to someone else for an NES game was probably something they saw little value in, because Mattel at that point saw video games as a failed fad, having suffered a serious failure firsthand during the Big Crash, and by the time the NES was a proven winner the whole He-Man craze was over and a game wouldn't have mattered anyway. Again, we'll never know, but that's what makes sense to me.

That whole era was a pretty wild time. Toys in general were a MUCH bigger deal back then, I don't think anyone can dispute that. Like, we get better stuff now but the emotional investment isn't the same for kids Now as it was for us Then. And that makes me sad.

[Galactus]

Leo:

Interestingly when I moved to the UK permanently was when MOTU was on the way out. The Filmation show was still airing but there was really no representation on toy aisles...but there was still quite a lot of ancillary material. Usually all British made stuff like story books and the comics. I wonder if there was still a market for it here even if interest in the brand had waned in the US and elsewhere.

I do think TMNT had it beat in terms of sheer presence. Like they would have aisles of the action figures and playsets but they would also feature in the soft toys aisles with plushes and puppets, then the general merchandise stuff and they were on way more things than I wonder if that was because MOTU was owned by an actual toy company so they focused more on than whereas with TMNT the toys were only one part of the huge mass merchandising blitz.

Interesting thoughts on the video games. I get the impression Tournament Fighters was a much bigger deal here than in the rest of the world. I remember buying it and the guy at the store told me everyone had been asking for it. All the video game magazines raved about the SNES version and even though most of my friends were over turtles by that point most loved the game (and could still pop in the Turtles in Time cart too).

Prowler:

I don't think there is any major problem with TMNT that hasn't been of Nickelodeon/Viacom's own making. TMNT has a better track record than MOTU, GI JOE and Thundercats and the like at revivals. There's no reason to think there couldn't be a successful version out now if not the last two products (The Bay movies and Rise) being generally bad.

While I do think TMNT at it's peak was bigger than Power Rangers and Pokemon it doesn't have the same inbuilt regeneration mechanism. Like every year there's a new set of Power Rangers and Zords, every few years there's a bunch of new Pokemon so it never goes away. TMNT doesn't have this built into it. They tried to put them in new settings and the like but ultimately the characters were never built for that.

[Leo656]

Well, on some level there's a factor of "Things Change Over Time" and not all types of merchandise making sense for every single property.

For example, plush toys for "boys' characters" weren't a thing during MOTU's run, nor would those characters have translated well to that particular item. I don't think any boy wanted a plush He-Man doll, although some might have. But TMNT makes sense for that type of toy, and by then it was a bit more common in general.

But MOTU absolutely had about 99% of all the same ancillary merchandise that TMNT had. The puffy stickers, Panini sticker albums, coloring books, shoelaces, school notebooks, backpacks, lunchboxes, record players, talking electric toothbrushes, play tents, bedsheets, cake pans, board games, model kits, etc. etc. etc. There are very few types of merchandise that TMNT had that MOTU did not have, honestly. I do think TMNT had more items - I don't recall MOTU ice cream bars, for example, and again there were hardly any MOTU video games where TMNT had many games, and I'm sure there's things I'm forgetting. But again, if some people have the idea that TMNT had a LOT more different licensed products... no, that's completely false. A few more or different ones, yeah. But it's very nearly 1:1. Again, if the checklist on the .org ever gets restored I'll gladly link it. The sheer amount of stuff MOTU was pasted on back in the day is insane.

What skews the data and makes it hard to determine which brand really had more different licensed items is that globally, the franchises were licensed out to different companies so not every product came out in every single country that hosted the brands. Not everyone got the TMNT Birthday Party kits, not every country had the MOTU cake pans, etc. etc. Plus, people are still finding new regional vintage things that existed for both MOTU and TMNT to this very day, incredibly. It's hard to find a truly comprehensive list for either brand, but the list of known items for either brand is quite insane.

Is TMNT ahead by a few plush dolls and ice cream bars? Yeah, probably. By an overwhelming amount? No, they mostly had their respective brand logo on almost all the same stuff, just a few years apart from each other.

They're probably the two most closely-related 80s toy lines, honestly, just based on the sheer merchandizing blitz for both. They both had all the stuff other brands like Ghostbusters and G.I. Joe got, as well as a ton of stuff NONE of them got. Pretty wild.