Saturday Night Showcase> The Original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cartoon

I’m still annoyed that Paramount decided to pull down INTROS to the original series (I should check after this to see if they’re still up) but when am I going to get a chance to highlight the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series?

Yeah, by now you know the characters’ origins but Playmates enters the scenes and sees toys for kids, since adult collecting of action figures really wasn’t a thing back in the 1980s. At least not at today’s level. The show, produced by Fred Wolf Productions, changed almost everything, so technically it’s a bad adaptation of the comics if not for the fact that the personalities, flattened a bit for the audience and format mind you, are still there. Leonardo’s in charge, Donatello makes gadgets, Michelangelo is the fun-loving one, though Raphael’s tempers was toned down to just the snarky one. They opted to make Splinter into Hamato Yoshi rather than his pet so they didn’t have to kill off the human, which is also why fighting over a woman was replaced with fighting for control of the Foot Clan. Interestingly the movie would restores all of those changes, except that Oroku Nagi and Oroku Saki were now the same character and Tang Shen just didn’t want Yoshi to risk fighting him.

Tonight, thanks to Nickelodeon’s official YouTube channel, we get to see the first five episode, originally released as a miniseries. There are some changes to note, and I will after the video embed, but it’s still the original miniseries after the later edits to match the series, like episode title cards. Also, they changed the intro. The miniseries used the same version as the original series, but I guess somebody couldn’t get access to that one so they simply re-recorded it. Enjoy.

As said earlier, this is a different cover of the theme song. You can see the original in part one of the Many, MANY Intros series on the Ninja Turtle shows…if I still have a copy available to me. As for other changes I’ve mentioned from what I remember the addition of the title cards, which happened when the show went into syndication, was not in the original airing or the Family Home Entertainment releases of the first five episodes in original show or edited movie versions. Then we have the ones unique to each episode, plus a few other observations.

• Episode one drops the part where after giving in April actually tries one of the Turtles’ crazy pizza topping combinations, showing that she’s part of the group.
• Not a change, but note that episode two begins with the Turtles practicing before breakfast, Leonardo specifically calling that part out. Both of their later show appearances act like the NINJA Turtles of the 1980s show didn’t actually have them being ninjas, the first Nickelodeon show even having their Turtles train the originals in ninja arts. This shows that was not the case. The Turtles had martial arts battles each week and didn’t wait for the more serious “red sky” years to be stealthy.
• I also noticed the title cards aren’t using the same sting that was used in every episode once they started using title cards with episode 6 (the first episode of the full series).
• Krang is loosely based on the Utrom from the comics, and the two ideas would be combined into the Krang aliens in Nickelodeon’s first Turtles cartoons, while Shredder would become an Utrom in the 2003 series.
• You can tell it’s a syndicated show because when Shredder and Krang are discussing mutating the thugs Shredder uses the word “killers”. You had more leeway in syndication than you did in the easier to harass networks but I’m still willing to bet that was snuck past somebody. I know it’s the first time I caught it and I’ve seen this episode numerous times. They’re still using lasers instead of real guns (even when they sound like normal guns) and using swords on robots.
• Interesting that the show makes Baxter Stockman a decent guy just trying to live his dream rather than someone creating death robots to commit robberies and hold the city hostage. Also he’s white in this version for some reason…until he become the fly mutant we all know from the classic show. Basically, toon Baxter is to be pitied while the original, which the 2003 series used as their model, is a scumbag who got what he deserved.
• This version doesn’t go for the teenage stereotypes but does the “new to the outside world” part well.
• Even with the budget of the first miniseries versus the regular series, the animation errors continue. I guess April wasn’t the only one having trouble telling the group apart despite the different mask colors versus the all red of the comic.
• The bat mutant Shredder demutates for showing off his retromutation gun actually has a name, but Scrag was only named in a coloring book. Dinosaur Dracula did a breakdown of this character’s short history.
• Now I know it’s another Utrom reference but back then I couldn’t tell you Krang was put into the robot’s stomach instead of his head module.
• I like Verne better here that the whiny, posh, opportunistic putz he became in the show.
• They even changed the closing credits theme. Also, it’s the same credits for all five episodes, unless they redid them for the FHE movie edit. Trying to shove all five in speed run style wasn’t necessary.

Had the show not changed so much from this miniseries to the regular series I might be as nostalgic for it as others, even though I was in high school when it started. You’d be surprised how popular it was even with my age group. The show would finally take a style change that’s closer to this in the first CBS season, before the “red sky” years went too serious. Still, it’s interesting to see where it all came from and compare the comic to the cartoon. It may not have been the closest adaptation but it got just barely enough right to make up for it and no cartoon has been 100% accurate, the 2003 4Kids series probably being the closest. It’s easy to see why this version became a favorite for many, just not my favorite. Nickelodeon is supposed to be airing the full first version. I’ve seen it in the Nicktoons schedule and I’m guessing Pluto TV’s official Turtles channel will be airing it as well. Maybe with four Ninja Turtles shows (they had their own and for a while at least the 2003 series before oddly showing Avatar: The Last Airbender at times) someone will find their favorite version.