Search icon

Movies & TV

18th Oct 2014

Here are 10 reasons why we love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Heroes in a Half Shell..Turtle Power!

Paul Moore

Heroes in a Half Shell..Turtle Power!

With the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film being released in Irish cinemas this weekend, JOE has started to feel all nostalgic for one of our favourite childhood TV shows.

We spent countless hours watching the adventures of those ass-kicking turtle lads named after famous Renaissance artists so we’ve decided to look at 10 reasons why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are awesome, radical and so forth.

This theme song

We have no shame in admitting this but we used to jump around our living room practising our best ninja moves whenever we heard this song being played.

We always had to pretend to be Donatello though, our parents seemed more comfortable giving us branches to play with rather than katana swords. Bit harsh.

Clip via – Khan33

The different personalities of all the turtles

One of the smartest things that the show’s creators did was give each of the characters their own unique personalities which meant that every lad was able to identify with one of them at least.

The more serious, calm and loyal of your childhood mates i.e. the ones who didn’t throw muck balls or put worms in jars , was usually the wiser and responsible Leonardo. In direct contrast to this was that friend you knew who always used to eat grass or get up to some crazy antics, there was only one turtle that this lad could play.

Michelangelo always had a hold over younger JOE because he was a party-loving joker that didn’t take things seriously at all. He also provided our first glimpse at the joys of surfing, skating and pizza…Cowabunga!

Donatello was definitely the more studious, technological and methodical of the fab-foursome and inevitably it was always the responsibility of whoever donned the purple mask to invent the mission or escape plan.

Last but certainly not least is our favourite of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Raphael is angry, bitter, sarcastic, moody and angry so naturally we love him.

turtles header

These amazing facts on their history

The origins of the comic books

Like all amazing movies, TV shows and books the concept for the show arose from two lads sitting around having some drinks and trying to amuse themselves.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were sitting around one night watching bad late-night TV and doodling sketches before being inspired to pluck up the courage and pursue one of their ideas. Using money from a tax refund, along with a loan from Eastman’s uncle, the artists self-published a single-issue comic intended to parody some of the most popular comics of the early 1980s.  Daredevil and Frank Miller’s Ronin were the main inspirations.

Thank jaysus the two lads didn’t get cold feet on their idea because the franchise has so far spawned countless cartoon series, films, video games, toys and lots of other merchandise.

Can you say cha-ching?

April O’Neil

There was a time when JOE used to think that all girls were yucky and had cooteys (whatever the bejesus they were) but not our favourite crime journalist.

Did anyone else not think it was weird that she spent all her time in the sewers with four talking turtles? Did she not have mates of her own?

With a surname like O’Neil there has to be some Irish heritage there, anyways we like both versions of Miss O’Neil just as much as the other.

April ONeil

 

Premiere Of Paramount Pictures' "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" - Arrivals

All their weapons

When we were pretending to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as kids our parents never lets us have the actual weaponry (boo!) so we had to improvise.

Donatello’s bo staff became the handle from the sweeping brush, our sisters skipping rope doubled up as Michelangelo’s nunchakus, Raphael’s twin sai’s were our dad’s blunt gardening trowels while Leonardo’s katana sword was a poor plastic imitation.

All of the above still allowed us to beat the living hell out of our mates though. You see, kids were tougher back then.

turtles

The Technodrome

Be honest, this is the toy that every kid wanted to get on Christmas Day.

20 years later and it’s still so unbelievably cool that it jumps to the top of our want list. That’s it! We’re asking Santa for it again this year.

Yes, Krang’s evil fortress is a rip-off of the Death Star but it also had transdimensional portals, missile launchers, laser cannons, titanium armour, robot-walker legs, gigantic saw blades, anti-gravitation generators and various tea making facilities…we presume.

Some of the coolest villains ever

“Ooohh, those blasted Turtles!” Thank god that our heroes in a half-shell were trained as ninjas because they encountered some of the best bad-guys that cartoons had to offer.

Who could forget Shredder, the diabolical martial arts knowing warlord and leader of the footclan who was actually voiced by the late James Avery, better known as Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Shredder was so evil that he used Mutagen to transform Bebop and Rocksteady into a pair of warthog and rhinoceros mutant henchmen.

If that wasn’t enough he also created Krang’s body and who can forget that evil brain who was so happy to remind us that he was “Indesputable ruler of Dimension X!”

We always loved the fact that he lived inside the body of Zangief from Street Fighter also.

Even in the Corey Feldman films Shredder was bad-ass.

The toys, so many toys

Every young kid had something that was related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at one point? We remember getting an action figure of Raphael that was of him in athletic attire ready for the Atlanta Olympics. You name the style, theme or occasion and there was probably an action figure to fit it.

Tuxedo turtles, space turtles, military turtles, Westmeath ceili turtles. They were all made.

Ninja-Turtles-Party-Wagon

Their evolution through the years

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Conor Sketches | Tiger Woods loves Ger Loughnane and cosplaying as Charles LeClerc