For whatever reason, Fox asked 4Kids Entertainment to shelve the completed fifth season of the show and take the show in a new direction. Fox’s hope might have been to renew interest in the show, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward is not as popular among fans of the 2003 4Kids run…so that backfired.
At some point 4Kids and Fox parted ways but 4Kids was already running Kids WB’s Saturday morning line-up, CW 4Kids. This is not surprising given 4Kids history with Kids WB, who had already taken Pokémon from syndication and started airing the Yu-Gi-Oh series. If anything I’m not sure why it was Fox that gave 4Kids control of their lineup. This would give us one more shot at the series, but according to the Ninja Turtles Fandom wiki, other ideas were thought up:
Several pitches were given to Mirage Studios and Playmates Toys before settling on Back to the Sewer. The first pitch, TMNT: Super World, involved a card game of some sort. TMNT: Overload was to have a glitch in the time travel process cause the Turtles to bring their younger selves with them to the present. The third idea, Ultimate TMNT attempted to combine the universe of the movies with the 2003 cartoon as well as introduce characters from the 1987 cartoon and TMNT Adventure comic book from Archie Comics. Ultimately, they decided to take the start with the more realistic and less humorous aspects of TMNT: Overload and use that as a starting point for Back to the Sewer.
I’m not sure altering the universe or teaming the Turtles with their younger selves would have been good ideas, either. I do like the idea of new versions of some of the Archie and classic toon characters, some of whom would show up in the first Nickelodeon series I hear. Instead we got Fast Forward, so of course a new art style and intro.
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