Do we have Samuel Morse to blame for the Turtles' love of pizza?

[Jester]

I was watching a YouTube video about the history of pizza and it mentioned this historical quote:

When the American inventor Samuel Morse visited 19th-century Naples, the birthplace of the modern pizza, he described that city's preferred street food as "a piece of bread that had been taken reeking out of the sewer."

Pizza and Sewers mentioned in the same breathe I couldn't help but think of the TMNT, and I couldn't help but share.

[neatoman]

I always figured the pizza was just a substitute for beer, like how the turtles seemed to enjoy beer and other alcoholic beverages in the comics but since you can't really have a kids' show where the main characters get hammered, another popular and unhealthy thing had to be used instead. As for where the specific thing about pizza comes from, Kevin claims he and Peter came up with the idea but given that the comics rarely featured pizza and I don't think they were ever shown eating any before the cartoon started, I seriously doubt it was his or Peter's idea. The idea most likely comes from Playmates or (yes, I know, this is one of the few times when he might not have been stealing credit) David Wise.

[Jester]

Whoever's idea it was, they were they were a real student of history. Renaissance artists, 19th century code inventors....brilliant!

[superstaff]

I think their love of pizza is cute and endearing. Besides, everyone loves pizza.

[Leo656]

I do once again NOW, but for several years in my teens when we were poor, my Dad worked in the kitchen at a pizza place. So for about 5 years, we had pizza for dinner almost every night. Not even "good" pizza, but the stuff that was gonna get thrown out at closing otherwise. So even if it was plain or pepperoni it was cold, dried-out and stale.

It got to a point where it was literally years before I ate pizza willingly. Nothing will kill your love for something faster than having no choice but to eat it almost every day for years upon years.

As for the Turtles... the constant meme-ing of it and the jokes about pizza overtaking the entire show very quickly pushed it from "funny and endearing" to "Good lord, just f*cking STOP" very early on, for me. "Should we write, like, an actual joke, here?" "Nah, just have Mikey say something about 'peanut butter and pineapple pizza with extra chocolate sprinkles'. Our audience is a bunch of morons." "Hah! You're right, that's excellent!"

I f*cking hated it. To this day I've never marathon'ed the FW cartoon because that sh*t just breaks me before I get anywhere close to the halfway point of the series. It stops being funny some time in Season 2 but they NEVER STOP or even slow down until Red Sky and Red Sky has its own problems.

Other than the fact that it's a convenient and iconic video game power-up, I sincerely wish they never went there at all. I find it to be one of the more annoying and insipid parts of the entire franchise, and the fact it's all ANYONE equates with the Turtles or can cite about the Turtles from memory makes it even more annoying for me.

It maybe bothers me more than it should - most things admittedly do - but I REALLY can't stand it.

[Coola Yagami]

Not just referencing pizza itself, but also similes and metaphors. Stuff like 'oh no, this is stickier than melted mozzerala' and the like.

Reminds me of the Super Mario cartoon. Every other sentence out of those two was related to either pasta or plumbing.

[Leo656]

Yeah, sh*t gets old. Fast.

Like how insufferable would that kinda thing be in Real Life if people talked like that? If you literally couldn't go two sentences without inserting (Favorite Thing) into conversation? They'd lock you up. It's not endearing, it's ANNOYING.

"Wow, man, that girl's got more enchanting eyes than Henry Cavill!"
"Stop."
"What? Don't be a grouch. You're as grumpy as Ben Affleck Batman!"
"Stop it, I said."
"What?! Geez, man, you've got as much sense of humor as General Zo-..."
"I promise you, I will shoot you in the goddamn face."

That's how it works in Real Life. It's not funny, nobody thinks it's funny when people get all single-minded obsessive. It's indicative of a mental disorder.

[Coola Yagami]

Yeah, I never noticed that but I guess it's part of that limited one or two note personality a lot of kid cartoon characters had.

Like, this one guy loves pizza so make his entire personality and everything he says related to pizza, otherwise how will kids know he loves pizza?

I guess it's because 'its for kids and kids are dumb' but like, just because the turtles favorite food is pizza or Sonic likes chili dogs, it doesn't mean that is literally the ONLY thing those ****ers eat.

Now that I remember, I know Sonic loved chili dogs but I don't remember him talking about it 24/7. I think his metaphors and whatnot we're mostly related to speed and making fun of Robotnik.

And I agree, in real life someone talking about only one thing and consistently or tying everything into that one thing would get annoying quick.

[Leo656]

He did make a lot of chili dog jokes in both AoStH and SatAM. I recall there being slightly fewer in SatAM.

Whenever I write the Turtles, I make it a point to have them eat a ton of other stuff besides pizza, and furthermore have them remark about how sick of pizza (and hearing about pizza) they are.

I throw tons of shade at that entire cartoon throughout, because I'm petty like that.

[Coola Yagami]

I remember in one of my comics I made April invite the turtles and Splinter to a new Mexican restaurant that just opened to expand their horizons. I did want to broaden their scope but it still felt weird to me after all that conditioning.

I did like Leo and Raoh daring each other to eat jalapenos to see who'd crack first as Mike and Don were like 'Go! Go! Go!' with April facepalming.

[Andrew NDB]

As far as I'm concerned the Turtles have no love of pizza. Maybe a couple of slices in the comics, no "love," per se.

[Prowler]

I've honestly never thought it made much sense for the Turtles to be so obsessed with pizza. I mean, it would have been fine if they ate more traditional Italian pizza and such, but they eat the most unhealthy kind of pizza imaginable. They add ingredients to pizza that would make it the most horrible fast food imaginable. Italians hate pineapple on pizza. But try going to Italy and show them the kind of pizzas the ninja turtles make and they'd probably assault you.

Why is it a problem that the Turtles just seem to live off unhealthy pizza? Because they're ninjas and spend their days training to fight Shredder and other bad guys. That's not the kind of food you'd expect "athletes" to eat. What sense does it make for Michelangelo to eat 5 pizzas with peanut butter and chocolate per day and then still being able to have a lot of speed, mobility and also great cardio?

And I don't know what made the powers that be decide that pizza would be for the Turtles what lasagna was for Garfield. And even Garfield doesn't obsess over lasagna as much as the Turtles do about pizza. Garfield will genuinely eat anything except mice. He doesn't just eat lasagna.

Anyway, if it wasn't for the Turtles, I'd not feel compelled to try pizza when I was a kid. But nowadays... I can't remember the last time I've eaten a pizza. Must have been 5 or more years ago already. I never order pizza nowadays nor do I by frozen ones from the supermarket. So I kind of just forgotten it exists? I mean, sure I like pizza just fine, but it's not something I have very often.

[IndigoErth]

I'm not bothered by the pizza thing, but in moderation please! As a cheap meal for a family full of people who need the calories and can only scrounge for dropped pocket change... okay, it's reasonable sometimes, but surely they'd also more often be resorting to whatever tossed out leftovers they might find when they haven't found enough loose cash, or whatever a human friend my share.

I jokingly "believe" their old "Say no to drugs, yes to pizza!" inadvertently had a negative consequence on America's waistline.

Originally Posted by Leo656

Like how insufferable would that kinda thing be in Real Life if people talked like that? If you literally couldn't go two sentences without inserting (Favorite Thing) into conversation? They'd lock you up. It's not endearing, it's ANNOYING.

Oh some people do, but society looks the other way over it. *cough* religious fanatics *cough*

[Prowler]

Eating the same thing everyday eventually gets boring, no matter how good it is.

As a kid, I had a phase where I no longer could stand eating yoghurt. Because I ate one every morning for breakfast for several years before going to school. One day, around 9th grade, my mother asked me why I didn't touch my yoghurt and I was honest with her. So she told me "well OK, how about instead of a yoghurt you drink juice?" and then my breakfast slightly changed.

Too much of the same thing ends up burning you out or making you get tired of it. Not just food. Pretty much anything.

Hell, I'm sorry to go there, but ever wondered why so many people with attractive spouses cheat of them, sometimes with uglier ones as well? There's a saying that, more or less, goes like this: "For every hot woman there's a guy who's sick of ****ing her".

And no, I'm not defending cheating

[Leo656]

No, it's a point. I've heard plenty of people compare sex partners to breakfast cereals in their explanation for why they don't think monogamy is achievable; "No matter how much you love Corn Pops, do you really wanna eat ONLY that every day for the rest of your life?"

It's a point. I find cheating despicable because human beings are supposed to be able to override their most base programming, but I admit we're not really wired to settle for The Same Thing Forever, whether it's about sex or breakfast food. We're programmed to want variety.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

No, it's a point. I've heard plenty of people compare sex partners to breakfast cereals in their explanation for why they don't think monogamy is achievable; "No matter how much you love Corn Pops, do you really wanna eat ONLY that every day for the rest of your life?"

It's a point. I find cheating despicable because human beings are supposed to be able to override their most base programming, but I admit we're not really wired to settle for The Same Thing Forever, whether it's about sex or breakfast food. We're programmed to want variety.

Thanks for understanding what I was trying to say. I knew you would. But I just added my last sentence as a disclaimer to clarify before someone jumped me or something. You know what's it like nowadays.

Yes, I agree.
Originally, humans might not be programmed to be monogamous, but we should try our best to be so. We are animals but rational ones. We can't just go around murdering or assaulting everyone we hate since we live in a society with laws and rules.

[Leo656]

I probably could eat Corn Pops every day, though. If you get sick of eating them in milk you can just eat 'em dry like candy and it's an altogether different experience.

I could not, however, eat Corn Pops on pizza. Although I bet FW Mikey would/has.

And now we're back to topic!

[IndigoErth]

Push come to shove, if one had to choose a "weird" topping to include on your own, I suppose Corn Pops at least prob wouldn't be a totally disgusting flavor combo...though I'd likely still hate the added crunch aspect.

[Leo656]

I think the grease and the cheese would completely overwhelm and ruin the Corn Pops flavor. And the mouthfeel would probably be wretched.

Corn Pops were delivered to Earth straight out of the vaginas of Heaven's Own Angels so they don't really need the "help" of being paired with anything else. We're lucky enough to have them in their base form. We really don't deserve them but I guess there's gotta be some things that make life worth living.