There’s a great episode of “The Simpsons” in which Roger Myers Jr., a cartoon producer who runs the hit show “Itchy & Scratchy,” tries to introduce a new character to the show to rejuvenate the ratings. listening down. Poochie, the dog wearing sunglasses and a surfboard imagined by the studio, is “a dog with attitude”, explains one of the leaders of the network who pushed the idea. “He’s pissed off, he’s in your face. Have you ever heard the expression “let’s get busy”? Well it’s a dog that gets biz-zay. Constantly and thoroughly.
Poochie is a parody of many different cartoon animals that have a group-friendly “attitude”, from Sonic the Hedgehog to Tony the Tiger. But perhaps the best examples of the archetype are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – anthropomorphic reptiles with superpowers who live in the sewers beneath New York City, where they practice martial arts, eat pizza and throw slogans 1980s hipsters like “bodacious” and “cowabunga.
Originally created in 1983 by comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were envisioned as a sort of postmodern, semi-ironic sendoff of popular superhero comics of the era. , especially Marvel’s Daredevil and X-Men. With their punky, biting, creepy, laid-back attitude, they were the epitome of a certain brand of savvy Gen X cool that peaked with the onset of the 90s: sarcastic and streetwise, borrowing elements from mainstream trends like surf and hip-hop culture.
The ninja turtles felt extremely trendy, capturing the zeitgeist in a way that is irresistible to children. What is remarkable is that the moment has not yet come to an end. Since its inception, the franchise has reinvented itself many times with new iterations: action features, after-school cartoons, video games, graphic novels. It’s now back on Netflix with a new animated feature, “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.” The continued rejuvenation of a franchise that could have easily become a pop culture relic raises an important question.
How did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stay popular for so long?
When I was a kid in the early 90s, my most prized possession was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Launcher, a battery-powered toy truck the size of a soccer ball that made an incredible noise and emitted a faint smell. hot rubber. , and whose “motorized disc fire action” I used primarily to terrorize my much-aggrieved little sister.
The Pizza Thrower was the crown jewel of a huge collection of turtle-related merchandise that covered my suburban bedroom, which included not only figures and accessories, but also coloring books, costumes, lunch boxes and PEZ dispensers. When I was 5, I had Turtles sheets; When I turned 6, I threw a turtle-themed birthday party. I was, in short, obsessed with turtles.
I was far from alone. From the time the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book by Eastman and Laird was adapted for broadcast syndication into an animated series of the same name in 1987, the four superpowered and wise reptilian heroes at its center – Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo, named after Renaissance artists in a way that’s typical of the franchise’s wink humor – have become true matinee idols, cartoon superstars adored by kids all over the world. North America and beyond.
Like “GI Joe” and “Transformers” before it, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was created primarily to promote the various tie-in toys produced by Playmates, a company that also made “Star Trek”-based action figures. Even by those standards, Turtles merchandise was hugely successful: In the first four years of what was called Turtlemania, more than $1 billion worth of Turtles toys were sold worldwide, making it the third best-selling toy franchise at that time. .
The success continued in the 90s: the animated series “Turtles”, in which the characters trained under the direction of their sensei, a rat called Splinter, while fighting their nemesis, the evil Shredder, lasted 10 seasons. A trilogy of live-action films aimed at slightly older audiences – “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (1990), “The Secret of the Ooze” (1991) and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III” (1993) – became a surprise box office sensation, earning nearly $350 million and breaking box office records for independent productions. One of the first “Turtles” video games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, for the Super Nintendo, became a bestseller and was ranked among the best games of its generation.
The Turtles’ versatility across a range of media properties has helped amplify their popularity. Other adaptations – including several efforts to entirely overhaul or reboot the franchise – kept the Turtles fresh throughout the 2000s, albeit to varying degrees of effectiveness. A 2003 animated series on Fox and a 2012 digitally animated series on Nickelodeon both ran for several seasons and had their own enthusiastic fans. A 2007 animated film, simply called “TMNT”, and a pair of big-budget blockbusters co-produced by Michael Bay, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (2014) and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” (2016 ), all achieved some commercial success, but were poorly received by critics and longtime fans of the franchise.
There’s no doubt that these more recent iterations of “turtles” — including the latest for television, the animated reboot “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (2018), which revamped elements of the basic premise and implemented some pretty drastic character redesigns – introduced the franchise to younger viewers, many of whom no doubt sought out new “Turtles” merchandise.
But a key factor in Ninja Turtles’ continued popularity are those same fans who adored “Ninja Turtles” when they were kids – kids of the 80s and 90s who never outgrew them. Their nostalgia effectively fueled the continued relevance of a franchise that might otherwise have descended into quirky obsolescence, becoming another He-Man or Garbage Pail Kids.
I know a guy in his early 40s who recently got a giant ninja turtle tattooed on his right forearm. I know a CrossFit trainer in his late thirties who names his workouts after Turtles settings and villains: the Sewers, Shredder, Bebop, and Rocksteady. A new video game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, is being built from the ground up as a faithful replica of the Turtles games of the early 1990s. And Netflix’s new movie, while certainly goofy, is surprisingly dark and violent for a movie aimed nominally at kids – until you realize it might not be aimed at kids at all.
As a child, I found the seemingly grown-up style of action and humor in “Ninja Turtles” essential to the appeal. It was a family cartoon, sure, but there was something about the attitude – hip, defiant, a little subversive – that made the kids feel like they were being exploited in something more ambitious than the rest. cartoons on television at the time. I think it’s that feeling of tangy freshness, what turtles would have called bodaciousness, that kept so many fans coming back.
