"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" Classic Series Talkback (Spoilers)

^ Oh NOW it's coming back to me. I remember that scene sticking out to me, though I actually wanted to see more of that style and not the usual limited, stiff style seen in many episodes.

While we're talking about animation, at one point I seem to remember liking the first five by Toei, but watching them a few months back, I can't for the life of me see why. They were full of choppy movement and I didn't like the way the characters were drawn. Probably not, but Vernon's thick, snobby accent is so over the top that it cracks me up. I would've loved to see a live action rendition of him.
 
Ninja Turtles was the FIRST cartoon I ever got into religiously. For that it will always be close to my heart. As for when the show began to suck...I'd say around the time it went from syndication to CBS. Oh, and the 2003 episodes were great.
 
"The world has really gone bizarro when food bites you back" - Mikey

Yet another episode that told the viewers Mikey ate too much pizza for his own good. But I loved it.

I managed to get all 4 BK VHS while they were still at BK and I played them often as other than those the only TMNT videos I had for the longest time were "Hot Rodding Teenagers" - still one of my favorite episodes and the VHS for movies 1 and 2 (eventually 3). But later in life I managed to find "Shredder Get's Splintered", "Cowbunga Shred Head", "Heroes on a Half Shell" (can you believe I got that one brand new at a Walgreen for about 3 bucks? Score!) and few others. But the BK videos and Hotrodding Teenagers boxes are quite worn out... they're going on 20+ years at this point.

Interesting thing though the VHS of "Heroes on a Half Shell" which includes the first two episodes of the series had better image quality than the DVD for season one. Wait... that's not funny. That's just sad. Ah well...
 
The only other video tape I have/had besides Sky Turtles was "The Shredder is Splintered", which I seem to recall I threw a tantrum until my parents would buy me the tape. :sweat:

Also, I recently looked at the tapes a few weeks ago, and, surprisingly, The Shredder is Splintered is actually still in fantastic quality, considering the fact that I played this tape at least twice a week when I was little (along with my tapes for the three movies*, though I had to settle for a television recording of movie 2 for years until I one day found a copy at a tag sale).

Sky Turtles, on the other hand, has become worn out to where, it's still watchable, but the sound quality is screwed up and the video keeps having lines up and down the screen. :sweat:

* - Random Fact: The third word I ever said, after saying "Star Trek", was Pizza, because I watched the first movie over and over. :lol:
 
IIRC, Karai didn't even exist in the comics until 92-93ish.

However, there WAS a character in the 80's series named Lotus that was coincidentally almost exactly like Karai.

And yeah, Cowabunga Shredhead was an odd episode both story-wise and animation-wise, but I personally think it was one of the best episodes of season 3.
 
Yup.

The Turtles, particularly Raphael, were sick of the media constantly downing them. Shredder then recruits a bunch of baddies to help defeat the turtles- The Rat King, Slash, Chrome Dome, Scumbug,Anthrax and some scorceress.
Course Shred doublecrosses them in the end. :D

One of my favorite episodes.
 
On the topic the FHE videos, I used to have "Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X", "Case Of The Killer Pizzas", and "Cowabunga Shredhead"(First episode I remembered watching) but they were all lost when my family moved in 1999. I still have "Super Rocksteady & Mighty Bebop"(with the afformentioned "Mutagen Monster" episode), "Attack Of The Big MAC", "The Shredder Is Splintered", that Easter one forgot it was called, and "Sky Turtles" which I bought a couple years back at a pawn shop in Arkanas.

Though any tape with the first five episodes I've stopped watching since I got the DVD. The commercial break edits on "The Shredder Is Splintered" is something that will stick out. For those don't know, "The Shredder Is Splintered" portion of the tape edited out the fade-outs and the fade-ins, while the first act (when the Foot Soldiers show up) was okay, but the second one (when Krang giant) was laughably bad.

Original:
Raph: I can't believe I'm seeing this!
***FADE OUT/FADE IN***
Mike: Holy guacamole!

FHE:
Raph: I can't believe I'm seeing this!
Mike: -guacamole!
 
I read that Paulsen left cause he wanted to move on to other things. Which he obviously did with Animaniacs, The Mask, The Tick, etc.
 
I just read the interview that was posted above. He left because of a pay dispute when he was told 'Raphael is replaceable'. Apparently after close to 200 episodes, the producers still had zero respect for any of the voice actors.
 
For having a major license such as TMNT, FHE really- REALLY- screwed up a lot of the early releases:

- Leaving the title cards off the original mini series (Although I think that's how it originally aired), although they also did it with 'Return of the Shredder'. Although, honestly, spreading out the first mini across 3 VHS tapes when Jem, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, who FHE also had the license to at the time, were getting 3 - 5 episodes per tape.

- They swapped 'A Thing About Rats' and 'Hot Rodding Teenagers', pretty much making things very confusing for new viewers.

- They (poorly) edited out the commercial breaks, sometime's even cutting out chunks of dialogue doing so.

- The very poor excuse of a trimmed down 'movie' where they crammed the mini series into an hour running time, cutting out several plot points and characters.
 
Hmmm...that's interesting. I remember one of the SNES games had Karai in it. Though, I can't remember what year it came out. Were they still making Ninja Turtles video games after the cartoon was cancelled?
 
The guy they got for Raph wasn't awful but he was no Rob Paulsen. Those producers sure didn't have a clue. Rob Paulsen went on to be one of the most successful voice actors of this century.
 
How was he a different character? He looked similar to the toy, or at least, as similar as the other characters look to his toys. As a kid I always thought he was the same character as the toy.



Wow, that's weird. I wonder what happened with that. Did they write an origin episode that was too violent and it got banned? Did they simply forget to write an origin episode? Or did they just not give a damn?



Shredder didn't doublecross them. They just quit because the loot got blown up. Except for Chrome Dome, he was destroyed. It's so unfair that robots can be killed but flesh and blood creatures can't.
 
I'd say the 'not give a damn' option. After 100 + episodes, the writers probably just thought that the audience would accept that 'mutants are everywhere' plot device. Look at the episode with Tokka and Rahzar as a prime example of that.
 
No one to me matches Rob. He's my fave voice actor ever. Followed by Jim Cummings and Mel Blanc respectively. Rob's amazingly talented and seems like a genunie guy.
 
Ray Fillet was a mantaray. Ray in "Rebel Without a Finn" was a combonation of fishes. I seem to recall he had the ink of an octopus and the electricity of an eel among other abilities. I don't think they mentioned if Ray was a human before but Ray Fillet was depicted as a marine biologist who got oozed in one of the many Ninja Turtles picture books for children and probably in the Archie comics too.
 
The guy who performed Raph in some of the season 3 episodes was, though. Beyond horrible.



You gotta realise that the first episodes of anything will be animated like they're learning about the characters. It seemed that by they got to Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X, they knew what they were doing. But the episodes before that, they just didn't find a style they were comfortable with. that's why the turtles looked so off in those episodes. If you look at the first season of Muppet babies, they seemed to have that problem as well.
 
You know I always thought that the first five episodes were animated by TMS and not Toei.

I remember since I had most of the old action figures, I would keep track of how many of them appeared on the show (particularly the villians :D ). Though I found it odd that guys like Muckman and Mutagen Man who were bad guys in the toyline were portrayed as good guys on the show.
 
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