The Many, MANY Intros Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Original

By now you should be completely aware of the backstory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or at least enough that I shouldn’t have to go into it here. If not here’s a great video about it I posted just before starting the comic reviews. It turned out to be good timing in my collection because we have a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out…and one that makes me sad with every new clip released. I’d go into it further but just by doing a Ninja Turtle themed article I know I’m already giving it more promotion than it deserves. Still, it’s a good time to remember the good times, when Playmates saw an indie comic about mutated turtles killing bad guys and aliens with their stabby things and skull breaking weapons and said “kids would love this!”.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first aired in syndication. Like many shows of the 1980s, the show coming out in 1987, it started with a five episode miniseries as a test run. It was successful enough that a full series was launched, and thus one comic series for college aged adults became a kids franchise. Life is funny that way. For the next few weeks I’m going to go over the various intros for the various incarnations of the Turtles on television. We’ll talk a bit about the shows themselves but my focus here is on the show opens, and we have four to look at in this first installment. So let’s do that.

EDIT: With Nickelodeon going on a rampage against Ninja Turtle intros from the original series after announcing they’re going to air the old shows on Nickelodeon don’t be surprised if any of these disappear. I had to use an upscaled version as my first replacement for the original intro and even that was eventually pulled down. Let’s see how long these last.

The song has become iconic, not just nostalgic. Few cartoon intros get to say that. Off the top of my head the original Spider-Man (there’s a future Many, MANY Intros series), Transformers (already did that one–I’d update with EarthSpark if it had one), and that’s really it outside of geek and nostalgia circles. It is a great intro, too. You get a good sense of the tone of the show…originally. There’s action, there’s fun, and they blend well enough.

Also you get a proper yet quick introduction to Splinter and his disciples. Splinter’s the trainer, Leo’s the leader, Don plays with machines (and they don’t always work), Mike likes to party…okay, all we get from Raph is “cool but rude”, which I don’t think properly matches the more sarcastic wit he was given in the show. The enemy is Shredder, our heroes can fight and then relax with a pizza (the obsession with pizza was from the show, not the comic, but still pops up now and then as their favorite food)…it all matches up. However, the UK had issues with the word “ninja”, or Michelangelo using nunchucks for some reason. The long wooden staff and the various bladed weapons were fine, but the sticks on a rope was where they drew the line? So the “Ninja Turtles” became known there as…

WHICH I CAN NOW ONLY BRING YOU THE AUDIO FOR BECAUSE PARAMOUNT IS EVEN BLOCKING THAT VERSION ON YOUTUBE AND I COULDN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE ELSE. EVEN AFTER I USED IT JUST FINE WHEN THE ARTICLE FIRST POSTED LIKE EVERY OTHER ONE! WHAT THE SHELL, PARAMOUNT!

Wow, they worked hard to not show Mikey using his ‘chucks for anything other than ziplining. You can tell the line changes aren’t given the same love as the original. I don’t think their hearts were in it or maybe they weren’t the same people doing those parts. I’m also guessing the UK didn’t get the miniseries until the full series came out since the clips they used to cut out Mikey using the things were footage from later episodes, that didn’t have nearly as good a budget and frankly started getting sillier. The original miniseries had a nice balance of sillier things and dramatic action, but the full series leaned HEAVY on the silly. There were some good stories, but then you had the Turtles breaking the fourth wall, schemes that made no sense, and it just wasn’t as good. I know there are people who really liked it but it wasn’t just the downgraded animation that was turning me off. So complain all you want about CBS, they got me into the show again.

This was the incarnation that got me back into the show. The balance from the miniseries was back, though the occasional fourth wall break was still there. The show was also an hour, featuring one story with all four Turtles plus a back-up story where one of the Turtles got a moment to shine away from the others, or to give us enemies other than Shredder and Krang. It was great.

The intro also gets an upgrade. There’s more action, but still more silly moments. Now we see the Turtles doing those spoken bits. The animation was also upgraded. Still not on the miniseries level but Fred Wolf really took advantage of the extra SatAM dollars versus what they could get with toy sales and a syndicated budget, though it would get more more syndicated season alongside the CBS show. The theme song isn’t changed but the visuals look more impressive and it drags you in. They improved on what was there but didn’t change the parts that kid fans were already into. At least until the final change as part of CBS’s “Action Zone” sub block.

The infamous “red sky” years, and if you’re wondering where that name came from just rewatch the clip. I didn’t hate this version but this was not a good tone shift. CBS seemed to be trying to connect the show to the live-action movie, but still setting it in the original cartoon continuity. The comedy was almost entirely drained out and it didn’t really do the show any favors so they tried to bring it back…overcorrecting because fourth wall jokes totally didn’t work in this darker setting they weren’t even acknowledging was a darker setting. The theme song was changed and it just doesn’t have the same heart that the original did. It does reflect the new show but this version would not have been as iconic as the one we got. They already had it perfect. They shouldn’t have messed with a working formula.

EDIT: Also they replaced Shredder, Krang, and the Foot with a new villain, Trogg, an alien invader. And yet the intro still mentions Shredder after he disappears during this period. There was also a kid who got hit with mutagen and turned into a metal armed sumo wrestler when he got angry but we can ignore that.

We aren’t quite done yet with this incarnation, but the next intro…is going to need explanation. It’s our first trip to Japan in this article series and it’s kind of a lot.