How popular was the original 80s 90s TMNT cartoon and what killed it until it came back in 2003?

How popular was the original 80s 90s TMNT cartoon and what killed it until it came back in 2003?

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>How popular was the original 80s 90s TMNT cartoon

Insanely. Freaking Barbara Walters interviewed them. Which she openly regretted doing because she's a no fun bitch who can't realize that making kids happy had value.

>and what killed it until it came back in 2003?

The audience grew up. Which I realize is a hilariously ironic thing to say these days when 30 year olds are so desperate to reclaim their nostalgia that they wear TMNT costume pajamas in public complete with headband

about as big as pokemon in the late 90s early 2000s

i just realised there are people who can legally post here who don't remember that

Hugely popular.

Proliferation of imitators.
>Street Sharks
>Toxic Crusaders
>Biker Mice from Mars

They replaced Raphael's pair of Sai with a grappling hook for some reason. That never did sit right with me.

I think the original cartoon was limited by the censorship practices of the time.

how did TMNT fans feel about this back then and now?

X-Men is cool too so I was like "alright, but you're wrong"

Delete this

The '87 cartoon has a fucking juicy synth rock soundtrack and it's a legit crime the tracks are not available anywhere at all.

>They replaced Raphael's pair of Sai with a grappling hook for some reason.
Don't you mean Michelangelo's nunchucks?

JAWESOME!

>save the turtles for your soup.
Roasted and then put into the soup, SAVAGE.

>10 year old dressing like a douchebag prefers X-Men to TMNT
Okay, if you say so.

It was big, real big, think 10x the mania that was caused by the exiled horses, what killed it was CBS.

TMNT wasn't exclusive to any one station until mid season 4 when CBS took it for exclusivity, this is when the show took a nose dive because no kids knew where the show went.

Not only that but they completely reworked the show and cut the episode order from 47 in season 3 to 20 in season 4, about 15 were already done before they got the show and then from there they only made it worse eventually season 8 only had 8 episodes until season 10 when it was cancelled.


There was also this weird mini series about them going to europe that was really stupid, that was probably the final straw.

It was insanely popular but the reason it ran for about 8 years has less to do with that and was probably more like the Fant4stic scenario. It's well documented that the production company had problems creating other shows so they could not afford losing the license on TMNT.

>They replaced Raphael's pair of Sai with a grappling hook for some reason.

It's was Mikey's chucks because they where afraid retarded British kids would make them and hurt each other.

True fact: In the UK the show was redubbed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Because the UL is awful.

Why the fuck did so many cartoons do this? Huge numbers of episodes for opening season(s), and then a slow trickle?
It happened with Batman:TAS and the '90s X-Men cartoon as well. I know that eventually the audience grows up, but there were 2-3 years when kids were still clamoring for new content but it was like
>"Nope, the show is still on but we're just gonna show reruns... until like year six or seven of production, where we'll give you 5-8 new episodes and then end it."

TMNT, B:TAS, and X-Men were all unknown quantities, but they get orders for 30-50 episodes out the gate. Then after they're proven successes they throttle the production down to an average of 4 new episodes a year. WTF.

once you reach 100 they can sell the show for syndication and trickle out new episodes, also anything past season 3 everyone gets a big boost in salary, union rules.

although TMNT only had 5 episodes for the first season, they clearly had no faith in it, but Ducktales had something like 65 for season 1

As popular as anything you can possibly imagine. I can't think of a pop culture phenomenon more popular than TMNT was for about three years.

What killed it was a combination of the audience growing up and mismanagement in not having the turtles grow up a bit as well.

The original comics were darker and somewhat more mature. There's no reason they couldn't've imparted somewhat edgier material or aesthetics into the cartoons or movies.

But instead the TMNT offerings actually "grew down". This was in part due to CBS with the cartoon, but the movies got worse as well. The first movie was actually more based on the comics than the cartoon. But by the sequel you had sillier stuff, and the third film was a totally goofy joke of a movie.

The action figures got wackier as well. Imagine if they had pre-empted McFarlane Toys levels of detail and seriousness. Instead they looked more and more like baby toys.

The whole line across all media and product offerings were becoming a bunch of clownish gags. The core audience were about to become teenagers, but the Turtles products seemed to be marketed at a younger and younger demographic. TMNT didn't just stay the way it was, but it actively chased an even younger audience than the one that found it in the late '80s.

This was slightly after the peak of TMNT popularity, though. No one who had been a turtle fan really viewed it as an insult because they were in the process of "growing up" anyway.

you guys wanna see why it fucking died?

they changed the theme song and reworked the characters to, you guess it, match the movies, sound familiar?

youtube.com/watch?v=_oSGPIYqlPk

>Freaking Barbara Walters interviewed them. Which she openly regretted doing because she's a no fun bitch who can't realize that making kids happy had value.

what a bitch.