What A Cartoon! - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "Shredder & Splintered"

Haha we posted about Pizza Slice on the same day. Glad to hear confirmation from a New Yorker that it’s legit amazing pizza.

Adam Esat

Note about pizza in japan. I’m from NYC, purveyor of the slice pizza. Japan absolutely does do pizza right till a few years ago when I was walking around Omotesando, Tokyo and I read “Pizza Slice”. I walked in and I was immediately transported to NYC with the smell of the place. They managed to make and have it taste like an actual nyc pizza and you can order by the slice.

If you want to go deep on the McFarlane/Gaiman Angela lawsuit, transcripts of depositions from the suit are publicly available. I consumed them in the form of multiple episodes of the Henry-endorsed YouTube channel Cartoonist Kayfabe - they are the first handful of episodes in this playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLclmZ5KRrb8_2JZ3pTT_2gigMjyz0Tywd

freemer

With all the focus about the skin color of rhe voice cast (particularly the cringey comment about Tress McNeill "fortunately voicing [the cleaning lady] as a white person") it seems like you missed calling out a glaring purity test casting failure: Bebop is voiced by Donatello's white voice actor. It also seems weird you gave a free pass to James Avery voicing a Japanese man. Am I missing something that makes it okay for a black man to voice a Japanese man given how stringently you focused on every other cast member's race and what race they "sound like"? Would the reverse be ok? Oh right, its voice acting and the performance should be what matters. And Avery's is a damn good performance. It's too bad this otherwise fun commentary had to wade into those tired virtue signaling waters.

Ryan Atkins

I have a teenage mutant “hero” turtle mug - I wonder if it’s worth anything nowadays??

Alistair Shand

To say that I was into the Ninja Turtles is an understatement. They were the thing that I was most into prior to The Simpsons. I played their games, ate their cereal, and saw them live at the mall. Donatello was my favorite, but I'm not sure why. Whatever reason it was, it definitely worked in my favor at the arcade where his staff had the longest reach.

littleterr0r

Thanks for the kind words!

nina matsumoto

I was a big time turtles kid when this cartoon aired (I still have the old toys that my young son found at one point and loves playing with). What makes me happy is that all the reboots of this property all seem really fun and true to the spirit of TMNT without being weirdly 'precious' to the previous iterations that a lot of nostalgic shows can fall into

Sean Riley

Northampton, MA, has surprisingly few remanants of Turtlemania. There's a TMNT mural on the side of a building that used to be owned by the one of the creators as a cartoon art museum. The museum is no longer open and now it's just shops. Mirage Studios was still headquartered in Northampton until shutting down a few years ago. The town has recently commissioned TMNT manhole covers, though!

Marty

Growing up, from around 5th grade thru middle school, I was "that kid" who was obsessed with Ninja Turtles. I also had most of the toys up until 1990 or so, but kept on with the cartoon, comic books, and merch thru the mid-90s. One of my favorite fan moments was meeting Kevin Eastman at a comic convention in Los Angeles shortly after the first movie was released. He hosted a panel about independent comics for adults, but was mindful that kids were there to see him too. After the panel, about a dozen fans, including myself, swarmed him and his then-girlfriend, April Fisher (who was the basis for April O'Neil). She stepped off to the side to give us all room and was about to light up a cigarette. Kevin Eastman was quick to notice and politely asked her, "Please don't smoke in front of the kids." That has always resonated with me. Like Bob, I was a little shaken when seeing the movie for the first time, but not as big a shock cuz I'd already discovered and became familiar with the Mirage comics a year or so prior. The greater shock for me was when I'd seen how unrecognizably violent and bizarre the Mirage comics were compared to the kid-friendly toyetic cartoon.

Sean Ryan

Now that you've covered the original animated Turtles, it does open you up to looking into a lot of Turtles series and movies, as it's one franchise that hasn't had much downtime during it's entire existence. I'm glad Henry mentioned some nice things about Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as I only really watched it because my kids were in the right age range when it aired but I really liked it. It seemed to get looked down upon due to the popularity of the 2012 series and they probably should of had some breathing room between them. The ending suffers from being a bit rushed due to it getting cancelled (just like other recent shows like Owl House and Amphibia) but combined with the movie it's a really good package. Looking forward to hear you doing a podcast covering the Turtles/Power Rangers crossover for your live action April Fools episode.

David Thomson

Thank you!

Theo Flood

Always with the good tidbits. Thanks for that and your an amazing artist. Love the animated power couple you guys are now:):)

Michael Branson

Hey check the Wrestling Bios channel on YouTube. It’s a great show with tons of knowledge, not a podcast, but so good. Start from the beginning and get caught up. Wrestling with Wregret is also good, but not as.

Michael Branson

(Behind the Bastards*)

Theo Flood

Hey I have a completely unrelated wrestling question for Henry. Henry, thanks to you and also befriending wrestling journalist Keith Greenberg, I have realized that wrestling is awesome, and I want to learn more about it. Fortuitously, Behind The podcast is 6 episodes deep on Vince Mcmahon rn, but where is there another podcast where I can get caught up on wrestling lore?

Theo Flood

Your takeaway at the end of the podcast is mine as well: it's really nice to see at least one mega popular franchise where the original creators didn't get screwed over, even after selling to a massive media conglomerate. It seems to be one of the better-managed nostalgia franchises, too, because every time I check in to see what they're doing with the comics or cartoons, they always sound at least somewhat interesting, and they don't usually come off as desperately pandering. How many people in the late eighties and early nineties would have expected that the Ninja Turtles of all things would still be doing perfectly OK over thirty years later? If you have the Cowabunga Collection, I'd recommend checking out the section with screenshots from the 1987 series—it looks like they intentionally chose the most ridiculous images, and they present them without any context. It's a guaranteed good time for all! One interesting piece of history: the popularity of the original Mirage TMNT comics led to a comics collector bubble for independent black & white books that eventually burst and took down many comics store with it. That was the first of two financially devastating comics collector boom-and-bust cycles that took place in a ten year span. Also, you can find illustrations of the Ninja Turtles by Jack Kirby online. I imagine that must have been one of the greatest gifts Eastman & Laird ever received.

Christmas Ape

On the subject of names: Oroku Saki and Hamato Yoshi definitely can be real Japanese names. They got the order right too (surname first, given name second)!

nina matsumoto

April was always envisioned as a white individual by Eastman and Laird. The confusion stems from Eastman being married to a woman named April at the time who was mixed race and obviously that's where the name came from. She also gets a new hairstyle during the early part of the Mirage run which was a perm, not an uncommon style at the time, and Eastman is on the record as saying he used his wife's hair as a model of sorts and I think that's where most of the confusion stems from. It's not really important, but it basically came about over the past few years as a "gotcha" to shout down racist assholes who were upset that April was made a black woman for the latest show Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'm all for shouting down racists and making them look stupid, but April never needed to be black in another version of the franchise to justify the choice for the new one. She can be whatever they want her to be and if racists have a problem with it they can go fuck themselves. They're not worth anyone's time. Hopefully one of the new versions of the franchise put Raph and Casey in a gay relationship so they can have an even bigger meltdown. The ending of the Toys that Made Us episode was pretty sweet, though less so when you realize it was the exact same ending as the Turtle Power documentary from a few years earlier. It's on Paramount+, last time I checked, but they must have just assumed no one saw it. TMNT was my jam as a kid. I was right in that happy zone when this mini series showed up and I got way into the toys. Tons of figures, playsets, vehicles - I didn't have it all, but I had most. It's kind of shocking though when I look back on it because it really wasn't a huge amount of time that TMNT was my life, but it felt like a long time because a little kid has no concept of time. Once X-Men showed up I was pretty much done with it and I don't think I watched the show much past 1991. I'm making up for it now though as I am one of those man-children with an extensive TMNT action figure collection now. I have a ton of the NECA stuff and some Super7 and it's a hobby I am enjoying immensely as I quickly run out of space to adequately display everything. As for the show, I never go back to it. I tried to when my kids expressed an interest, but it's just not very good past the first season. The 2012 show though - that one is pretty great and I did watch that through with my kids and we all had a good time. I should check out that Rise series, but from what I've seen it at least has some great action. Hopefully the new film is better than Mario. The trailer is all right, it doesn't look special, but it apparently works on the target audience as my children have told me they want to see it so it looks like I'll be finding out, one way or another, if it's any good.

Joe Hodgson

Costco in Japan are not on military bases; they're for civilians. In fact, none of the military bases there have Costcos. I haven't been to one there, but I heard they have great curry rice!

nina matsumoto

Donatello was my fave turtle, both in games and show. Also was the toy I had

Frank Grimes

Puff the Magic Dragon was not about drugs and the creators are sick of that assumption. Just gonna drop a paragraph about it from the wiki article here (which has many citations): "The authors of the song have repeatedly rejected this interpretation and have strongly and consistently denied that they intended any references to drug use.[11] Both Lipton and Yarrow have stated, "'Puff, the Magic Dragon' is not about drugs."[12] Yarrow has frequently explained that the song is about the hardships of growing older and has no relationship to drug-taking.[13][14] He has also said that the song has "never had any meaning other than the obvious one" and is about the "loss of innocence in children."[15] He has dismissed the suggestion of it being associated with drugs as "sloppy research".[16]"

nina matsumoto

Ninja Turtles was a pop culture fixation that completely eclipsed me. 9 year old me had a Lucille Bluth "I love ALL cartoons/ I don't care for the Ninja Turtles" view. But it is fun for me to listen to all of this as an outsider to that world. I also have fond memories of my great aunt who only owned two VHS tapes for us kids to watch. One was a compilation of public domain cartoons and the other was Ninja Turtles III where they go back in time.

Blake R.

I'm a sucker for any episode featuring the Technodrome, which was always stuck in the mud or something despite being a Death Star on treads. I also think both the first two movies are great despite being very different in tone. Both managed to make the Shredder a terrifying villain, in contrast to his bumbling portrayal on the show. I'll never forget seeing Super Shredder for the first time; only years later did I bother to ask how the ooze could mutate his armor along with his body, but who cares because he's so cool!

Jason

Newcondo forever 🙅

burro

Born in '86 and loved the Turtles as a kid. Had a number of tapes (including this episode), toys, all 3 movies, and Fall of the Foot Clan on Game Boy. Michelangelo was always my favorite turtle. I love comic relief that can still kick shell if they need to.

Rhomega

*presses glasses up* actually April was introduced in issue number 2 and was Baxter Stockman’s assistant and was being chased by mousers (all of which had no formal relationship to the foot clan at that time)

Nick Grayson

I hope we get the etymology of cowabunga 🤔