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With all that pizza they eat, you’d have thought they’d be dead from heart attacks by now. But this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
It’s astonishing that what should have been a minor pop-culture curiosity has enjoyed such longevity and continues to be reinvented. The newest iteration is Friday’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” a live-action reboot produced by Michael Bay and starring Megan Fox as the crime fighters’ buddy, April O’Neil.
Here, we answer six burning questions behind the “Turtles” franchise.
Seriously, why are they teenage mutant turtles?
It’s a good question, and ultimately, a billion-dollar one. The secret origin of the Turtles dates back to the early 1980s in Northampton, Mass., as two artist friends, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, would often get together and draw comics.
One night, the two were hanging out and Laird was engrossed in one of his favorite TV shows. Eastman loved to distract his friend when he was glued to the boob tube, so he quickly sketched something to make Laird laugh: a turtle standing upright wearing a mask and carrying nunchaku. Above it, he drew a crude logo reading “Ninja Turtle.”
Laird laughed and drew another, slightly different turtle. Eastman responded by drawing an image of four turtles together, each holding different weapons. Laird took it and added the words “Teenage Mutant” to the “Ninja Turtle” logo.
The next day, they decided to write a story telling the origin of these characters. Using money from a tax refund and $1,000 from a relative, the duo printed 3,000 copies of the comic book “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” No. 1 in 1984. (A copy is now worth close to $20,000.)
Eastman and Laird called their studio Mirage as a joke, because they had no actual studio. They worked out of their living room.
The comic quickly took off and was soon selling tens of thousands of copies. Its success led to a boom of imitators. Eastman has said that during full Turtlemania in the late 1980s, he counted 21 adjective-
adjective-adjective-noun knock-offs, including “Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters” and “Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos.”
Why are they named after artists?
Of all the left-field aspects involving mutated teenage turtles, perhaps the most left field is their names: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael. Are these guys into painting Italian altarpieces?
When it came to naming their admittedly silly creations, Eastman and Laird first considered Asian names, because the Turtles are ninjas. But that didn’t seem silly enough.
Both creators were big art-history fans, and one of them tossed out the idea of naming their heroes after famous Renaissance artists. Donatello (after the Florentine sculptor) was nearly called Bernini, in honor of the great architect and artist. Laird, however, wanted another name that ended in “o,” so Donatello it was.
Did Billy Crystal almost played a turtle?
Possibly. In the 1980s, the first pitch Eastman and Laird got for a film treatment was from schlockmeister Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. The idea was to have the Turtles played by four comedians who were popular at the time — Gallagher, Sam Kinison, Bobcat Goldthwait and Billy Crystal. The actors would be dressed in turtle shells and have their arms and legs painted green.
Another treatment received at the time took the Turtles into R-rated territory and included a scene with partially nude nuns on roller skates fighting the heroes.
Did the creators really sign their first licensing deal on a napkin?
It’s true. After the comic became a hit, Eastman and Laird were approached by various agents looking to license their creation. In 1986, Surge Licensing president Mark Freedman asked the artists if he could meet with them. Freedman, wearing an expensive suit, arrived in Northampton to find Eastman and Laird wearing shorts and covered in paint, in the process of painting their apartment.
The agent promised to make them millions. A skeptical Eastman and Laird reached for a napkin and drew up a nonexclusive, 30-day contract. Within a month, Freedman had a commitment from Playmates Toys. Action figures, candy, tote bags, bedsheets and a popular cartoon series soon followed. By 1991, Eastman estimates he was grossing $50 million a year.
Is it true that the turtles attracted lawsuits?
Any property that makes so much money usually does. Buffalo Bob from “The Howdy Doody Show” filed a multimillion dollar suit against Eastman and Laird, claiming the Turtles copied his catchphrase “Cowabunga!” One man brought on a suit claiming God had told him about the Turtles. And the animation studio behind the 1980s TV series tried to claim half of the royalties, saying they’d created everything that made the characters popular.
Did the property have some out-there fans?
You bet your shell. One female groupie from France had sexual fantasies about the Turtles. She’d send Mirage explicit drawings and letters about what she’d like to do with the shelled foursome. Because … well, there’s no explaining that one.
TURTLE EVOLUTION
1985
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sprang into pop culture as a comic book in 1984 — this 1985 ad also promoted Mirage Studios, the “pro” name of creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
1987
The syndicated TV cartoon “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” aired from 1987 to 1996, featuring jokey, pizza-obsessed reptiles. A second series ran from 2003 to 2009; Nickelodeon has aired a third since 2012.
1990
A live-action film debuted in 1990 — with Raphael reading the New York Post — followed by sequels in ’91 and ’93. A reboot, “TMNT,” hit screens in 2007; now, Michael Bay has produced a 2014 movie.
1997
“Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation,” a live-action syndicated television series, aired in 1997 and ’98 — and introduced a trim female ninja turtle, Venus de Milo.
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