Childhood memories invovling TMNT

[Misfit]

For those of you who were turtle fans when you were children, what memories do you have invovling TMNT?

My EARLIEST memory was watching April's Foolish on BBC, I think on a Saturday morning way back in the early 90s or late 80s. I was already a TMNT fan having seen other eps I think and I remember how I'd wait every time for the show to come on. I'd watch TV laying stomach down on the floor and have my eyes glued up close to the set. April's Foolish is the first TMNT ep I ever actually remember seeing.

I remember when my mum would take me to work with her (between around 89 and 1995ish she worked as a housekeeper for various people) when I was young and she'd let me rent video's to watch while I was there. One video I'd rent constantly from a local video store that's no longer in business was a TMNT one that had Enter: The Rat King and The Fifth Turtle episodes on it.

I remember when I went to see the movie in 1990. Seven years old and incredibly excited. I remember how shocked I was when Raph was so different from his cartoon self but I adjusted quickly to the change and LOVED it (for ages I went round saying "damn" constantly, much to my elders displeasure!).

And back to the cartoon, I'd not only video tape episodes sometimes, but I'd also make audio tapes and listen to them when I was in bed or in my walkman when I was out.

I remember how I'd play with some of the boys in my neighbourhood sometimes and when we'd play TMNT I'd always try desperately to be April (I idolized her as a child just because the turtles liked her and I wanted to be a reporter). I had this little home made microphoe and video camara that I'd made out of cardboard and we'd all run around the street playing TMNT but too often the boys would waste all the time fighting over who got to be which turtle.

When I was about eight I wrote a love letter to Raph. I wanted to send it to him but didn't know where so I kept it for years.

When I turned ten I drifted away from TMNT for several years but I'll always look back on my few childhood memories with great fondness.

[Leonarda]

I was 10 years old when I found the Turtles. I remember walking home from school on a really beautifull day. I think school was just starting for the year and I was having a tough time. I went and hid in my parents room and turned on their tv. I believe the first ep I saw was Sky High, at least I remember the turtle blimp. I was shoked at how cheesy it sounded and suprised that I couldn't get enough. And here I thought I was the only one who made audio recordings. Later on my mom actually suggested I get some video tapes and that was it. I migrated to the basement where the VCR was kept and didn't emerge for about 3 or 4 years! talk about a couch potato. Every one was worried becuse I haven't had a tan since and I'm afraid I just incapeable of it now. Pastey white girl!

I remember the concert. I was 12 and sat in the 3rd row I think. I actually got to high five Leonardo, the total high-light of my life, up to that point any way.

I remember being totally turned off by the previews of the first turtle movie, but became instantally addicted after finally dragging myself to see it. It was 2 weeks after it had opened and it was still selling out shows. Got a third row seat there, too.

After that it was on to the comic book to answer the age old question; What the hell was up with Splinter. With that solved I never touched another Archie again. I had felt so betrayed by the cartoon, but since I was raised on it I still dream in color instead of red, but occasionally draw in red anyway.

And through it all was Leo. Though I never admitted it, even to myself. He wasn't the cool turtle and I was a slave to peer preasure. I did buy a Leo plushie at the concert and constantaly worked to perfect my yard-stick Katana, and when I finally matured a skosch 13 years yater, I embraced him fully and am now a Leo-aholic! Wonder if they have an LA program yet? Leonardo Annomous, HA!

[Mobius One]

I have so many turtles memories. I remember playing TMNT with my friends in pre-school (I always wanted to be Raph, but I always had to be Leo, whonis now my favorite turtle), and I remember whan I first got the first movie on video. TMNT always reminds me of Florida, because I lived there when I was little and when I first discovered TMNT. I had to have been like 2 or 3 when I first started liking them. Aw, Jeez, I'm getting all nostalgic.

[TheRATKING]

i remember in kindergartin we had a show and tell game where you picked a letter out of a hat then had to bring something in that started with that letter. i really wanted "t" so i could bring in my raph fig well i got "n" i was so upset. i told my mom and she said well what if it was a "ninja turtle" i was so aww struck of course ninja turtle it was so obvious and yet overlooked. well the next day no one was able to guess my letter and i won the little game but even better i was allowed to bring my raph to school

[Zelda]

I remember my dad and I fighting with my mom to let me go see TMNT and Adams Family movies and my dad calling from work to tell me when he found out they were making another one then me calling my friend Nitasha to tell her and us wondering if this time they'd put in Krang&co and how neat it would be to see a talking brain and how it would have to be all dark and creepy and series Krang like the movie versions of Shredder.

I remember going to my grandparents house and since the adults had all their junk to talk about and the TV didn't get whatever channel turtles was on, my parents would rent the tapes and EVERY time I see my grandparents they still ask if I like the turtles and still say how silly they think it is.

I remember going to the shore (LBI, off NJ) and spotting issue 1 of the comic that came complete with audio tape that I listened to every night until it mysteriously disapeared.

I remember my mom insisting that TMNT was making my brother violent and the mysterious disapearence of the first movie (followed by most trips to see Nitasha also including us watching her copy and plotting to make a copy off hers).

I remember my brother telling me "you're shredder, I'm mikelangelo, we're gonna fight!" and him never being able to pronounce Mikey's name..usually it was "Mikey-angi-o"

I remember rocke, sockem robots molded after the turtles and a trick I used to win

I remember that damn water level in the nintendo game >_________< the dam takes most of my life and that level RIGHT afterwards has always been just hard enough to get the rest of it. and the missles. and how I totally had no clue where most of the monsters came from--the guys that shot moons?! ftw??? and the bugs? o.O And April always had really big boobs that stuck out of the ropes ^_~

THE ARCADE GAME <33333 with pizza signs and that giant ball.

My raph plushie that mysteriously disapeared ;_;

(for ages I went round saying "damn" constantly, much to my elders displeasure!). <-hahaa my brother did that and my mom couldn't figure out how to explain why it wasn't good to say so he'd ask why and she was just like "it's just not a word you're going to say as long as you're in my house!" )

Glad I'm not the only one that wrote to Raph ^_^;;;;;;;;; I put it down the sewer though. And I remember always hoping that someday there'd be a giant box in my room and the turtles would pop out of it ^_^

I also remember having a couple thin books with turtle adventures, something about them going into space but not with aliens and stuff more like sneaking around in NASA.

I must've played TMNT roleplaying when I was younger too but I can't remember it though I definitely do remember rehersing scenes from it. I was obsessed with the April fainting thing in TMNT1 ^_~ not sure why. And my mom had THE YELLOW JUMPSUIT. I guess those things were fashionable or something, I can't figure out any other reason she'd be able to get one. I begged her to use it and be April on Halloween but she's no fun I wish she'd kept it because I would've used it once it would've fit o.o

wait....roleplay...costumes....

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I JUST FIGURED OUT WHAT I'M GOING TO DO WITH TOILET PAPER ROLLS.

nunchuks. SHELL YES. ahhahaa. my housemate and I are lazy and never take the empty toilet paper rolls out of the bathroom so they collect and I keep saying I'm going to make something out of them. NUNCHUKS oh man. coolest thing ever. that just made my day

[Zelda]

ALSO I had the COOLEST EVER snow hat. You could turn it inside out. And. IT SAID TMNT ON IT <3 I was so thrilled ^_^ I had that thing for YEARS.

[Jarrah White]

I remember one time, mu friends went chasing and fighting each other through my the old apartment building I used to live in over a TMNT frisbee

[Brodie]

I used to record audio tapes of tmnt, and life with louie for when my dad would take me for the weekends.

[Brinatello]

All my memories with the TMNT were great ones. Discovering the cartoon the first time at the age of 9, seeing the movies in the theater, playing with the action figures with my sister who acted so weird with them, reading the comics in school when I wasn't supposed to! The list goes on. One memory I'll never forget was when a good friend died at school from an aneurysm. I remember the date, too. Monday, November 26, 1990. My mind was in a fog, and I kept thinking to myself that she was still alive, or I wanted to think that she was. I came home and turned on the TV to watch TMNT, and even though I cried half way through it, I was still able to enjoy some of the gags. The point was, they were there when I wasn't feeling too great, and I was very thankful for it.

[Akira]

Yeah, let's see here, 1988, I would've been 7 years old then. That's when I got into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my friends. We never argued much over who got to be who though. I liked Raph the best (and still do), my best friend liked Leo the best, his little brother liked Don, my other friend was Mike, and my little sister was April.

At home my sister and I played with the action figures all the time. Not content with just the Sewer playset alone, we'd get numerous boxes and leftover giftwrap rollers (Remember the bigger ones that had a plastic red plug on each end? Those were big enough for turtle figures to fit through!), string, some old lincoln logs and other stuff. I remmeber we had an elaborate setup. Numerous sewer and sity sections all made out of cardboard and decorated with crayola markers. We even had some boxes that sat up top and were buildings. Those included Channel 6 and April's Apartment. I have one box that connected off the back and had an old metal grate (Probably a small shelf of a toaster oven I found somewhere) and had a door that swung down to let the turtle van out into the streets.

We were pretty creative, and we had a lot of fun with it too. All my friends came over to play Ninja Turtle stuff at my house. If they brought some more boxes and materials I'd let them add onto the city and sewers with thier own sections. I remember I even got some small plywood sections from my dad's stuff in the garage and made the four bunk high bunk beds for the turtles.

It was a ton of fun. I remember seeing the movie and then calling my cousin to see if he had seen it yet. I was 10 or so at the time an dmy cousin was 5 I think. My uncle got on the phone and told me when the Turtles attacked April's muggers in the first scene and then the lights came on that my cousin stood up in the middle of the theater and screamed "COWABUNGA DUDE!". I wish I could have been there to see that, I would have laughed myself silly.

That dang NES game, trying to make the jumps on the rooftops in Level 3 drove me nuts. The one time I actually made it past that and to the airbase level we had a power out! Oh man, I've never been able to get that far again since. Turles Arcade and Manhattan Project both rocked something serious and me and my cousin still play them once per visit until this day. That's the only time we ever get those games out is when he comes over. It's kinda a family visit tradition for him and I to go to a side room and play both of those games through to the end.

Well, that's more than enough out of me for now. Thanks for hte chance to remind myself of some good times.

[Aaron]

My earliest memorey of the episodes is where Donatello meet Krang. But I remember buying a lot of the toys and watching the movies as a kid.And although I don't remember it the first movie I ever saw in a theatre was the first TMNT movie.

[Shreddette]

I'm not sure I recall exactly the first time I saw TMNT but I do remember getting addicted really fast. I woulda been about 11... and every saturday morning I'd be sure to watch it. Finally when it came on every day I was elated to say the least.

I became very engulfed in the show, by the time I was like 12 or 13 my brother started to play gags on me. I'd always be in the basement watching it on the large tv (which I have now, to this day in my condo with my husband it works great ) and he would set the tv to block it when it was halfway through the theme song!! He didn't do this a lot but when he did I'd start screaming and he'd run down to fix it, but not after laughing about it. I even threw stuff at him I was so mad.

Then one day it happened and he WASN'T HOME TO FIX IT so I was screaming and throwing a tantrum til I was too tired. Then when he got home my parents gave him grief and told him never to do that to me again. I guess my screaming and crying was too much to bear

Now I look back and laugh but... damn I was p-oed. Don't mess with my show!!

I also remember this guy I was in school with and he was on the same bus as me and we'd talk about TMNT and he even traded me a few of his action figures for 5 bucks. I got Usagi Yo Jimbo and a foot soldier, aaaand I think I got one more... I forget which, though. Maybe Krang. I know for a fact my first action figure was store bought, and was Shredder.

On my 13th birthday EVERYONE gave me a TMNT toy. I got Casey Jones, that Croc character (I forget t he name) and one or two more. It was hard to get the really cool ones because they always sold out like gangbusters.

I also remember trying to make a shredder costume out of cardboard and tin foil but it didn't work out. Why can't ya find a good Shredder costume back then-- even today?? You'd think they'd be on the ball with that.

I also always wanted to meet Shredder. I woulda died for that opportunity. I knew he didn't really exist but I had fun imagining he was out there waiting for me.

[Shreddette]

Oh yeah one more thing (sorry about the double post, I am making this seperate because it pertains to all of us in a way) remember back when the Ninja Turtles were deemed as dangerous entertainment because kids were starting to go into the sewers to try to find the turtles, or to play in when they were roleplaying TMNT-- and it even made it on the news, apparently.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mom asking me all concerned if I have or would play in the sewers. I looked at her like she sprouted another head and said "No, why?" (even though I knew what she was eluding to) and she told me about the news and how kids are going into the sewers and dying because of the show. I then told her that the kids who did that were idiots, and I'd never do something so gross or dumb, because I know the difference between fantasy and reality, and TMNT is not reality.

She was of course relieved, I was a bit annoyed she'd think I was that simple... I think it's kinda funny now though, and I remember hearing about that news was kind of frightening because I think they were toying the idea of cancelling the show!

[Akira]

Oh yeah, Shredette, I remember that stuff. In our neighborhood, there was a sewer that was above the actual sewer I guess. You know where the rain drainage goes and whatnot. Me and some of my friends found a side enterance where we could crawl in through a pipe in this one guy's back yard and come out in an area we could kneal down in and move through under our street and come up through a smaller manhole cover that was lighter than the standard ones. We played in there for a few days one week until we came up through the manhole with our homemade nunchucks and the guy was out mowing his yard. He told us never to go in there again and to get off his property!

I remember a couple years later a girl was playing around it after we had had serious rains and got sucked down into the pipe while playing in the big rain puddle in her back yard. She stopped breathing and a fireman had to get her out and use CPR. She nearly died, it was all over the news. After that they bolted a grate over the pipe to keep people from going in there intentionally or by accident.

That neighborhood was cool but all the people were stuck up people that thought they owned more than just thier own yard sometimes. There was a standard manhole cover right out front of my house there. But it, as those things tent to be, sat flush with the street. So the only way to lift it up would have been with a crowbar. I wanted to see what was under it, but never got around to lifting it up and checking.

I wasn't an idiot, just curious, and careful when I did check things out. Boys are just more daring at that age. I'd never try that stut now. Rock climbing, climbing huge pine trees at the park, riding my bike down steep hills. That stuff seems crazy to me now at the age of 23. But when I was a kid we thought it was great.

[Misfit]

About sewers, my friends and I once got together to try and lift off a manhole cover in our neighbourhood so we could go searching for the turtles. We took flashlights, food and everything preparing for some huge adventure but we couldn't even lift the cover off! We were bummed for days and I still have urges to walk around in the sewers just to see what it's like down there thanks to TMNT.

[Krangfan]

Well, I of course watched and worshiped the orginal show. I also collected the toys and found A LOT at garage sales And I also loved the first two movies. Good times

[Brinatello]

I always look down to the sewer grates, but never dared to venture underground. I'll leave that to numbskull characters in my fanfics. At a young age, I did do quite a lot of exploring. Roof climbing, fence hoping, nature-dwelling, pissing off neighbors, that sort of thing.

It was during my sixth grade camp when, almost every night in my cabin, I got bizarre dreams with the TMNT and the surrounding woods. It was of the original cartoon because this was back in 1991. Even when I was awake, I liked to imagine they went with our group on the nature hikes. The longest trail we took was before the end of camp and that was when I had my falling-through-the-ice accident. Not as bad as April from "True Stories" when Leo had to rescue her. My leg only fell through and the worst that happened was I got laughed at by the other kids! One of the councilors came over to pull me out and I pretended I was reaching for the hand of one of the TMNT! Yeah, I had it bad with them back then.

[Zelda]

I don't remember the kids in sewers news story...scary though. I tried to lift a few manhole covers but to no avail ^_^; I also peered at those 'slit' ones on the curb but I figured, even if I could fit I couldn't see far enough down to determine the safety level. I was (and still am to the utter confusion of some of my friends ) all over every place else though with the tree, rock, dirt pile, and any other type of climbing But very cautious about it, I've never gotten more than slight scratches from my adventuring ^_^

The point was, they were there when I wasn't feeling too great, and I was very thankful for it. <- I can definitely relate to that... whenever something bad happens that I can't do something about or can't immediately do anything about, it's to the TMNT or Nintendo to cheer me up... and always TMNT when I get nightmares, no matter how bad it completely takes away the ick and paranoia.

[Jephael]

I always loved playing Ninja Turtles with my second cousin Joey, I would usually play Donatello and he'd be Michaelangelo. I also would play video games with my cousin Wendy over at her house and when we went swimming I had a big bag of action figures to take along.

[Orochi Chimera]

It's interesting to hear that other people listened to audio recordings of the show as well. One day my VCR stopped recording sound and I really wanted to keep recording the show. So I put a regular audio tape in my answering machine and used that to record the sound and the VCR to record the video. Later on I listened to the tape by itself. By using the answering machine I got a few extra sounds on the tape but I blasted the TV so it still sounded pretty good. This was over 15 years ago. Strange stuff.