⚠️ I'm publishing a couple scripts for videos that have copyright claims because YouTube won't add captions to those videos for some reason. So for our friends who aren't English speakers or those who are hearing impaired, I'll be putting the raw scripts on this forum. ⚠️
Nowadays, there seems to be one constant in life: no matter what happens, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be there. This was definitely the case from 1989 to 1991. The successful TMNT toys in addition to the 1987 cartoon and the surprising success of the 1990 indie film culminated in a brief period of hysteria where everyone was obsessed with the ninja turtles. This was called turtle mania. But all good things don’t last forever.
Interest in the TMNT began to wane and it was for a culmination of reasons. The cartoon series that everyone grew up with wasn't growing up alongside its fans. They just moved on to other things. And by the mid-90s, the new generation of kids had a lot more variety when it came to cartoons: Nickelodeon was absolutely smashing it with the Nicktoons and Cartoon Network hit cable television in 1992 with cartoons airing all day. As for the toys, well, variations of the turtles in different costumes only went so far.
The turtles were fizzled out by 1996. Most of the action figures coming out were just re-releases and the TV show had already been slowing production. In 1997, both the toy line and TV show ended.
If you were born in the early to mid 90s, chances are that turtlemania completely passed you by. By the time people in this age group were at their peak toy usage, the turtles were no longer relevant and there was no TV show (The Next Mutation doesn’t count).
If you were born in 1991, you’d be 12 years old by the time the 2003 show aired and 18 by the time it ended. I think the turtles are great for people of all ages, but let’s be honest, most people aren’t going to be spending their teenage years watching the ninja turtles.
So, if there was a turtlemania, there was also a TMNT dark age, which was the era between the end of turtlemania and the start of the 2003 show, or from 1991 to 2003.
There were no ninja turtles.There were no TMNT toys. There was no TMNT show. It was complete and utter despair.
But that’s only if you look at things from a glass half empty perspective. The toys and original TV show ran all the way to 97 and the turtles were still vaguely around during that time even if the hype was at an all time low.
In a way, this was probably one of the best times to be a TMNT fan, even compared to today. You see, because turtlemania had been dying down, people were starting to offload all of their TMNT merchandise.
And back then, toys were mostly for kids. Adult collectors were a thing, but they were kind of looked down upon.
However, because adult toy collectors or resellers weren’t that common, that meant you could find a treasure trove of toys at thrift stores like Goodwill.
I remember back in the day, a local Goodwill had a “free table.” It was a giant table with a bunch of toys and action figures on it, and they were all free. They were literally giving away classic TMNT toys, I’m not even joking.
Sometimes what they’d do was group all of them together and just tie them up in a clear plastic bag. So you could walk out of the store with just a bag full of classic TMNT figures for only a couple bucks.
You could also find old TMNT VHS tapes practically anywhere you go, and it was a similar story. People were pretty much just giving them away. So even if you didn’t catch turtlemania, you could still catch them on tape.
And of course, if you were lucky enough to have any older siblings or cousins, you can bet that you had a ton of TMNT hand-me-down toys. You could have been a TMNT fan without even watching a single episode of the show with all of the toys and merchandise that older siblings passed down.
I mentioned a bit earlier that resellers weren’t really a thing, but there were people who sold their things online — but it was more about offloading your old junk rather than flipping items for a profit. eBay launched in the 90s and I remember my dad being an early user.
My dad would be buying and selling whatever random crap he could find on eBay. It was like an addiction for him. But I remember one time he bought two giant boxes of comic books. I don’t know how he got someone to ship these two giant heavy boxes. But back then, a lot of those comics weren’t really as valuable. It had a bunch of 80s and early 90s comics, including some Mirage TMNT comics. In fact, I still have those TMNT comics to this day.
God, those were the days. Turtlemania might have come and gone, and there might have been a dark age, but that didn’t mean its legacy didn’t have a lasting impact. The initial wave of turtlemania sent reverberations through the universe that are still being felt to this day. People are still discovering and enjoying those original toys, the 1987 cartoon, and being sent through a rabbit hole that leads them to a wealth of great TMNT content and lore, including the original Mirage comics.
