Today is the 30th anniversary of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie. To celebrate, we’re looking back at the time-traveling sequel that brought the original series to a disappointing end. Grab your pizza and nun-chucks. We’re going back in time in more ways than one with the Heroes in a Half Shell.

Movies based on toy lines have a spotty track record. For every Transformers, there are several Masters of the Universes or Battleships. Technically, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series wasn’t based on plastic action figures. But who are we kidding here? The kids who played with those toys were the target audience for these movies.

The characters were the creation of comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. In 1984, Eastman and Laird pulled together money from a tax refund as well as a loan from a relative to self-publish their own comic book. Their original concept was a send-up of comics that were popular in the early 1980’s. That meant a lot of ninjas and mutants.

Most people who read the original comic book wouldn’t have imagined it as a mainstream kiddie franchise. But most people aren’t Mark Freedman. Freedman was a licensing agent who saw the potential in marketing masked turtles to kids. He approached Eastman and Laird and connected them with the toy company, Playmates.

Playmates followed the standard playbook for selling toys in the 1980’s. Thanks to deregulation, toy companies in the eighties could create cartoons that were essentially half-hour long commercials for their products. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles followed in the footsteps of He-Man, the Transformers and G.I. Joe.

The cartoon was a hit and it helped sell a lot of toys. But Mark Freedman thought they could do more with the property. So he shopped around the idea for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. No one liked the idea. Eastman and Laird were worried their creation would turn into the next Howard the Duck. Playmates worried the movie would ruin the good thing they had going with the cartoon.

Freedman eventually hooked up with an independent studio based out of Hong Kong. Golden Harvest was known primarily for making martial arts movies. They had a team of expert stunt performers. They also had a relationship with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Henson’s workshop produced the sophisticated turtle costumes that would bring the characters to life.

Initially, there were concerns that the movie was too dark for fans of the cartoon. After a screening, the executives at Playmates let Mark Freedman know they were not happy with the movie. Freedman began doubting himself. Fortunately for him, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was a smash hit in 1990. It became the highest-grossing independent movie at the time.

The first movie brought in over $100 million dollars on a budget of just over $10 million dollars. So naturally, a sequel was churned out as quickly as possible. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze was released one year later. It cost roughly twice as much to make as the first movie and earned significantly less.

The Secret of the Ooze moved closer to the tone of the cartoon than the comic books. The plan was to introduce the characters of Rocksteady and Bebop, bad guys who had been created for the animated series. But Eastman and Laird objected to using the characters in live action movies partially due to the difficulty in sorting out the legal rights. So thinly veiled stand-ins were used instead.

The sequel is best-known as the movie debut of Rob Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice.

Meanwhile, toy sales were slowing down. The cartoon series would continue until 1996, but there were signs Ninja Turtle mania was on the decline. The Secret of the Ooze sold enough tickets to justify a follow-up, but the third movie was no longer a foregone conclusion.

Tone was always an issue with the Ninja Turtles. The comic books and the first movie were relatively dark and violent. The second movie course corrected by attempting to match the kiddie friendly cartoon and toy line. The third movie set out to split the difference.

In this one, the Turtles travel back in time to feudal Japan. Why? Presumably to bring down costs although the budget was still higher than it was for the first movie. TMNT III is less dark and violent than the original movie but less silly than the sequel. The end result is that it’s pretty boring.

On the upside, Elias Koteas returned as the popular character Casey Jones. And Corey Feldman reprised his role as the voice actor for Donatello. Both sat out Secret of the Ooze. Unfortunately, that’s not much of an upside compared to the movie’s many flaws. Chief among them were inferior turtle costumes. For the first time, the Henson Workshop was no longer involved.

The third movie actually opened in the top spot at the box office. Its stiffest competition came from the box office disappointment, Point of No Return. Ninja Turtles III didn’t bomb, but it was clear that the franchise had run its course. Eventually the cartoon would end and the intellectual property would undergo a series of reinventions including a Power Rangers-inspired live action TV show and a return to the big screen overseen by Transformers director Michael Bay. But we’ll save that subject for another day.

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