The First 25 Years of TMNT

[Michaelangelo]

25 years of TMNT... wow... 25 years, and in those 25 years we've seen a lot of amazing things happen.  Though we hear a lot people's fears and thoughts about the sale of TMNT to Viacom, just before they hit their 26th Birthday (Nov 19th), this topic is not for that.  This topic is a reflection topic to those first 25 years.  Where things came from, how they went, and just who made it all happen.  How many names have came into the world of TMNT and left, how many people did it take to make these four Turtles the heroes that we've known?  Just where do we as fans stand and have we ever really held a place in making choices?  Let's take some time to reflect on these past 25 years as a group.  Share our personal stories, share history you've learned from behind the scenes of TMNT that you thought was important to where they are.  And share tales of how people you know were touched by the Turtles.  Let's show just how strong the TMNT were... and remember that this is only the first 25 years.


I'll like to start off with a tale we all know, one that has been told in a million interviews and on thousands of website:

Nov. 19th, 1983 Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were sitting around watching some "bad TV" doing drawings back and forth to top each other.  Kevin did a drawing of a Turtle up right with chucks strapped to his arms, Peter did a drawing of his own version.  They went back and forth with this till they came up with a drawing of four Turtles with different weapons.  Kevin wrote "Ninja Turtles" on the drawing, Peter than added "Teenage Mutant", they chucked the drawing to the side for the night... the next day decided to come up with a story for these "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".   

With their tax refund and borrowing money from Kevin's Uncle, they were able to publish issue 1 of TMNT, it came out at a Comic Book Con in New Hampshire on May 5th, 1984. This comic sold out in 3 weeks from that date.  They did reprints and started to get other offers in.  Getting such things as the Dark Horse miniatures, the iron T-Shirts, the first set of TMNT Buttons, and the Palladium RPG Book.  Palladium owned by Kevin Siembieda, really did take an interest in the TMNT, and shared this with one of the people they were working with, a man named Mark Freedman.  Mark wanted to know more, wanted to have a part in Ninja Turtles.  He would call Siembieda asking for contact info for Eastman and Laird.  It took about a year before Siembieda finally got Mark in touch with Eastman and Laird.

When Mark went to his first meet up with Kevin and Peter, he was dressed in a 3 piece suit, walking in to meet two guys in normal clothes, covered in paint.  They went out to eat, and while out they did not have any paper so all the notes taken during this meeting was done so on a napkin. Mark at this point got involved in Ninja Turtles, he went out and brought on Playmate Toys and Murakami Wolf Swenson, Inc.  They toys began to be made as well as the original cartoon series.

Bringing on writer David Wise to do the first five episodes. David had a lot of other work going on, so he asked his soon to be wife to help with the episode Patti Howeth, though David got himself into writing it more than he thought so according to David, Patti didn't really work on the script at all. David wanted to give them all different personalities, though he was having a problem getting his ideas through to the people at MWS, so he added a few hints here or there in the script for the voice actors to pick up on.  He really liked how Townsend Coleman picked up on Michaelangelo's personality when the word "Cowabunga" was put into the script of the first episode.

On December 28, 1987 the first cartoon aired on TV.  It became a hit and started to get the Ninja Turtles to go World Wide. 

These are the ones who kicked off the Turtles, for all of us.
Kevin Eastman
Peter Laird
Dark Horse Miniatures (If not for this, we may not have had the RPG game )
Palladium - Kevin Siembieda
Surge Licensing - Mark Freedman
Playmate Toys
MWS  - Fred Wolf
David Wise

I would now like to take a minute to say THANK YOU to these people... those who were there in the 1980's that brought this together.  True many others came along in the next 20 years of Turtles to bring us many other things like the movies, the tours, Next Mutation and 4Kids Series.  But this first chain of event is what made it all happen.  It is what brought us together.

I personally did not hear of the Ninja Turtles till October 1989, as I found one of the Playmate toys of Michaelangelo at a friend's house.  Than later that week came home and my brother turned on the episode "A Thing about Rats" written by David Wise.  I fastly got into the show, started to collect and than the things that I needed in my previous years started to come to me.  I got interest in learning to read for the first time in my life, I learned that people don't need to be super heroes to defend themselves, and than I found all of these wonderful friends through the Turtle fandom.  These past 20 years has been amazing for me, so many wonderful memories.  So many things that stand out as outstanding and unbelievable... I could not be where I am now, with all of these great people in my life, all of my friends here on TMNT-L, if these past 20 years did not have the Turtles. 

So now I want to thank all of you reading this.  My fellow fans, together we are a great group.  When we put all of our differences aside, we all love these crazy Turtles, we came here to talk about them with others who feel as we do about them. These have brought us together as friends.  No matter our age, sex, color, or even what country we're from... we have this wonderful ground to unite on.   No matter what we're fans of, the comics, cartoons, movies or any of the other many worlds of Turtles, we all have Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, and Splinter as a part of our lives.  Thanks to them, we have lots of friends here who don't only listen to us talk about the fandom itself, but have gotten to know each other pass who's turtle is who's favorite... but got to know us each for who we are.  Friends united by the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" how funny that sounds, but how true it is.  I can honestly say that my best friends outside of my family, is here on TMNT-L.

Thank you everyone!  And I hope we all can stay together as friends for a long time to come!

TURTLES FOREVER!

Please, share your feelings and thoughts on the first 25 years of TMNT here...

[Amicitia]

I think the thing that has characterized the TMNT, through their first 25 years, is their weird kaleidoscopic nature. Right from the beginning, their universe was very inconstant. Eastman and Laird wrote the early comics as a rapid-fire tour through different scenarios, skidding their storytelling truck around huge gaping plotholes, barely establishing the rules of one situation before moving on to another.

And then, the cartoon. Seriously, how did the franchise go from a version seen as "dark and gritty" (even if it wasn't always) directly to the bright colors and silly mood of the '80s toon, and still survive? And more than survive - both versions were, and continue to be, very popular.

Yes, the opening miniseries of the cartoon was more serious and had some really good storytelling in it. But after that things devolved very quickly into light, fun adventures involving villains who were mostly incompetent and heroes who thought eating weird pizzas was just as important as saving the world.

And every incarnation after that brought its own mood, its own style of storytelling, its own interpretations of the characters.

Honestly, if the characters weren't so distinctive-looking (and even their appearance has changed a lot over the years), it would be hard to say that all the incarnations belong to the same multiverse. Their personalities change; their world changes; their backstory changes. They constantly reinvent themselves.

And this, maybe, is why they are so successful. Don't like the old toon? Try the new toon! Not a fan of that either? How about the live-action movies? Surely you will like one of the many universes.

There are so many themes inherent in the canon, and you can pick the incarnation that most strongly brings out the theme you prefer. You can like it for the family values. You can like it for the examination of what it means to be an outcast in society. (Okay, maybe that's not in there anywhere, but you sure as heck can read it in.) You can like it for the ninja butt-kicking action.

And, surely, among the scores of Turtles that exist, you will find one you identify with. One that you respect. One that inspires you. It seems like every fan has not only a favorite Turtle, but a favorite version of him. And that's okay. Maybe we lose something in purity, by having so many wildly-diverging visions of the characters, but we gain something by throwing the doors wide open and inviting everybody to the party.

These are things we should remember as we look to the future of TMNT. There will be new versions of the Turtles. We may not like everything about them. But maybe somebody else will, and they'll get the same joy from it that we found in the comic books, TV shows, movies, and role-playing games of the past.

As they say... change is good.