Why were the Foot Soldiers turned into robots?

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Why were the Foot Clan Soldiers robots in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series? While in ever other version they are actual human ninjas.

Was it because they didn't want the audiance to see them nothing but bad guys and not see them as people, with familes and stuff like that.

I understand I watched a lot of war themed cartoons and animes like Avatar: The Last Airbender for example, and I feel some empathy for the common enemy souldier. They are people like everybody else, they have familes, are their lives less valueable because their country is the antagonist country?

Or maybe it is simply at the time with Transformers being so popular, robots were popular so let's use it.

Personally I think ninja robots defeat the whole purpose of being a ninja. You can't program honor, you can't program determenation, you can program knowledge I give you that, but you get the point. Anyway anyone know why they changed them to robots?
 
I always assumed it was because the censors required them to. Parents were already complaining about how violent the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was, as ridiculous as that sounds. Lowering the number of living creatures being beaten up on a weekly basis helped keep the complaints to a more manageable level.
 
The basic idea was so Leonardo and Raphael could slash up the Foot Soldiers with their blades, and if they were humans they couldn't do that.

It was a censor thing, people killing robots = no problems with censors apparently.

Same reason Splinter WAS Hamato Yoshi in the original cartoon rather than his pet rat, they didn't want to show Shredder kill Hamato Yoshi in the cartoon so they made them one and the same.
 
To be honest, I wish all action cartoons could just have robots as the bad guys, since censorship will never allow the heroes to go all out against humans. Just look at what Samurai Jack and The Clone Wars are capable of.

Also, zoombie, you're thinking of Samurai. Ninja are pretty much the exact opposite of "honorable". Samurai had honor and fought on the battlefield. Ninja just kill people while hiding in the shadows.
 
By the time the 2003 series, I guess the censors lightened up, or at least the ones that worked at 4Kids, so they were allowed to get away with a lot more than the original crew who made the 1980's series.
 
As was just stated, human foot solders can't be attacked with sharp weapons. Thus Leonardo and Raphael had to resort to kicking their opponents all the time.


Not saying I prefer robots. Personally, I don't understand why parents are so opposed to letting kids see people get stabbed or cut. But that's another topic.
 
Even though the Foot Soldiers were robots in the 80's series, you don't really see the turtles use their weapons in combat that often, after season 1. Luckily, they start to use their weapons in fights more often, in seasons 7-10.

Also, I think that the best action scenes of the 80's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series were in the first two episodes, where the turtles first face the Foot Soldiers on top of a building, and a bunch of robots inside the Technodrome, when they go rescue Splinter.
 
Stragicly for Shredder, one advangtage about using robots, the good guys can't knock out a couple of Foot Soldiers and disguise themselves as Foot Soldeirs to sneak into their hideout. Though how the turtles would pull that off with their shells I have no idea. I guess their allies like Casey, April, or even Splinder could pull that off.

Though I think that would be hillarous to see our heros disguise themselves as Foot Soldiers grunts. I swear that has happened before either the live action movies and / or 2003 cartoon series, I recall some of the good guys particularly Ralpehel disguice themselves as Foot Soldiers. Did that ever happen?
 
Blunt force trauma is less visibly injurious (though often in reality equally or more damaging) than cutting or impaling, as rarely is blood shed. The sight of blood is one of the big taboos in children's programming. Stabbing can also be seen as a subliminal metaphor for sexual penetration, and bleeding for menstruation, which is an even bigger taboo.

So yes, you can bash up, slice, and dice machines any way you want, even human-shaped robots. But if representations of living things shed even a drop of red blood, that is forbidden in kids TV.

Not saying it's right or even sensical, but that's what BS&Ps often actually believe.
 
Censorship and the fact that Shredder had access to advanced technology, thanks to Krang, why wouldn't he prefer subordinate super robot soldiers instead of humans?
 
It was the censorship that provoked that rewrite. The Shredder having an army of robots wouldn't have made any sense without access to advanced alien technology.
 
Like many had mention before, making them robots was alot easier for the censors think of Samurai Jack where they got away with it aside of cutting the robots and we see Jack covered in oil make it look like it he's covered in blood but since its oil the censors couldn't do much about it.
 
Makes me wonder why nobody's tried doing an ultra-violent Transformers cartoon, with Megatron gouging out Cliffjumper's optics and Optimus beating the crud out of Soundwave with his own severed arm.
 
After "GI Joe: Resolute", I'm sure a PG-13 version of Transformers is on the way at some point. Not sure if I want to see that or not. :sad:

As for the robots, that was just a standard thing back then. As much as I love the blueshirt Cobra guards, it was awesome in season 2 to see the Joes use their guns and grenades to full potential against the Battle Android Troopers.

Voltron edited the human troopers (on both sides) from men and demons to "robots" so they didn't have to butcher the battle scenes as much. Sure, I'd rather they had been true to Golion and shown human/demon death, but robot death was better than having it all cut.

However in the comic book series, where death could be shown, I didn't like B.A.T.s and I'm glad they didn't use them very often.
 
The closest I know of is in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, when Ralphael has Keno try out to join the Foot Clan so the turtles can know where the hideout is.
 
Beast Wars was pretty close. The battle damage got pretty nasty at times.


Still...I do wonder why there isn't more robot violence in other TF shows. They obviously can get away with it (Smokescreen gets a hole blown in his gut in Armada, Blurr gets crushed to death in Animated), yet those instances are pretty rare.
 
Because they're characters and not just drones?

Beside we got Bay doing that for us. Remember Jazz?

Though if that's the sort of thing you want you should check out the Wreckers in the comic books. It got a heavy body count.

A PG-13 Wreckers miniseries... that could be sweet... I need to find the Last Stand of the Wreckers paperback around here --
 
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