- At that time, the four turtles all looked the same.
Follow the link to read All About Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Part One, because that’s where it all started. And this is number two.
Turtle Toys
By January 1987, the buildout of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action line had started.
There were already Pound Puppies, G.I. Joe, Barbie, Cabbage Patch Kids, WWF Wrestlers, Teddy Ruxpin, Transformers, and more throughout the toy industry.
Thomas Chan wanted to go after the biggies so he needed to figure out how to take these almost violent turtles from the comic and make them kid friendly, toy characters.
They pumped up the humor, pumped up the fun, potty humor, pizza, and bright colors. John Handy came in to breathe life into the toy line. He came up with Shredder, Rock Steady, and Bebop.
They went to animation studio to develop a cartoon specifically to sell toys. David Wise had written cartoons for the biggies and it was his job to develop a five-part mini series for television.
At that time, the four turtles all looked the same. They gave a color to each turtle had a belt with their initial on it. There was the leader, Leonardo, and the tech geek, Donatello. Rafael was the sarcastic smartass, and of course Michelangelo, the ultimate of everything teenager. They all had their own personalities, and all loved pizza, phrases and cowabunga.
To take an idea from 2D to 3D, there are changes that need to be made. In the original comic book cartoon, there were tails on the turtles, but when you made a 3D turtle toy with a “tail” it looked a little more phallic than that.
So with that, there was no more tails.
Toy Fair was in February in New York City. With just an early prototype and a
five minute sample of the cartoon they went to retailers like Kmart, Toys R Us, Sears, and Target. But they said no, they didn’t see it.
The humor wasn’t coming across. They didn’t like it and there was a serious lack of interest in the toy line.
They were at the stage where they didn’t know how to market the product. They had spent $1.5 million for the tv show and the design was already done. It seemed there was no going back but also no going forward at the same time.
So they hired toy designer, Mark Taylor. He was the guy who did Heman.
Taylor knew that the turtles van was basically a Volkswagen van, so he made it sexy. He took the Foot clan from the original comic and toyized it making them zombie-like. And the toy, Shredder, was made in an attack position.
Chuck Lorre was the songwriter who came up with the turtle song. He came in with the idea that no one knew who these turtles were so the song was an introduction and told us who they are.
If you don’t remember, the lyrics to the Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles is, “World’s most fearsome fighting team, they’re heroes in the half-shell and they’re green. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, heroes in a half shell. Turtle power.”
It was Dec 28th 1987 when the pilot and series began airing. Playmates was working double time to prove themselves, and at the time they only had five tv episodes and an incomplete toy line.
Toys “R” Us was known as the retailer that would support everything. They knew if they came on board that the company would be able to compete with the biggies.
Toys “R” Us order of 6000 turtle pieces, coming out with the four turtles, Splinter, Shredder and April O’neill
Bebop , Rocksteady and the Foot Clan were introduced in June 1988 and in total there were 10 figures and 5 vehicles were shipped to Toys “R” Us.
Toys “R” Us called back soon with a reorder. For 50,000 pieces.
There was a long time when you tried to go shopping and there were no turtles on the shelf in retail stores. You could visit two, three, and four stores, and none had turtles on the shelves. The turtles were selling out.
The first ten turtle toys released were so iconic. The turtles went from underground oddity to overnight sensation. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the top selling action figures in the toy business.
The cocreators made a lot of money and both got checks for over a million each. There’s one more article in the turtles series, so follow this link to read All About Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Part Three.
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