I bet most people think it is advertising for those candies
Hey those toys ain’t gonna sell themselves.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/33EzbxFZQnEAAAAd/yogurt-spaceballs.gif
And I fell for it too. I had the turtles sewer boat, but always actually wanted the zeppelin
What human would like to fly in a Zeppelin looking like a human body part?
Edit: Ok, makes sense:
That could be anybody.
Well, the Ninja Turtles were originally an unsubtle Daredevil parody…
(Is “parody” the right word? I think they were part parody and part homage.)
It was also super violent, so I will forever remain surprised that it became a kids thing.
But then Nickelodeon decided to give the guy who made the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac a show and we got Invader Zim, so weirder things have happened.
Patrick Stump (of Fallout Boy, the band that sang “the ribbon on her wrist says do not open before Christmas”) sings the theme song to “Spidey and his Amazing Friends” and “Hot Wheels: Let’s race”. And both those songs kick ass.
And I must say that the Panic! and Weezer covers on the Frozen 2 OST also kick ass.
“Homage” is the word the creators would have used.
That’s why it’s the “foot” clan. The ninjas in Daredevil were called The Hand.
They were also mutated by the same ooze as Daredevil, iirc he fell in it and it blinded him, then dripped from there into the sewer and on Splinter and the Turtles.
100% was to sell the toys
There is no ethical consumption
Did… Did I indirectly kill Jamal?
I think we all did. I had both Transformers and Ninja Turtles toys.
No I’m pretty sure it was mostly this guy
As the target demographic in the 90s, I was happy to beg my parents for them and watch the TV shows. I saw it as a win-win.
I didn’t have a ton of toys as a kid but I loved Ninja Turtles. When I got the sewer lair playset I was pumped. What I really wanted was the Technodrome though. I think that’s what it was called. Wonder where all my TMNT dolls ended up?
Like every Saturday morning cartoon in existence.
it never occurred to me just how brand-conscious super heroes are in general.
You obviously never saw Mystery Men.
Alfred is really Bruce’s PR guy.
so that’s who keeps sending the bloons in bloons td
Their disguise for going out in public so people won’t know they are mutant turtles is a trench coat and a hat. They even still wear their ninja masks.
Well, duh. How else is anyone supposed to tell them apart? /s
This would actually be a pretty dope halloween costume.
I tried that one year, and it just came off like a creeper.
You still have to wear the turtle shell underneath
His mistake was being totally nude under the trench coat.
So are the Turtles.
In fact, the trench coat is the most clothes they usually wear. Just running around with their cloaca flapping in the breeze.
Fun fact…did you know normal (as in, non-human sized mutant) turtle penises can be as large as 30cm? Could you imagine four nude, teenage, human-sized turtles running around Manhattan with a footlong dick flailing around?
Probably much larger since the rest of their bodies scale up, and, as teenagers, they are at the peak of their virility.
Mistake? He came, didn’t he?
If you saw what looked like a giant ninja mask wearing anthropomorphic turtle stuffed into a trench coat, are you going to say anything?
The disguise is just a courtesy to let the average human have plausible deniability.
Probably some sort of punker.
It’s New York, they could easily go pretty much anywhere without being clocked as anything weird.
Isnt there a dude in New York who just runs around wearing a rat mask? I feel like the turtles are slightly more normal, also Vermin Supreme is close enough that at any given time he could theoretically be in New York.
Vermin Supreme is close enough that at any given time he could theoretically be in New York.
I don’t know whether you’re trying to scare New Yorkers or pique the interest of Schrödinger groupies 🤔
Didn’t April also put them on the news all the time, calling them turtles? 🤔 I think the humans just didn’t care. Why would they? The turtles weren’t the ones robbing stores and beating up random people or throwing the city into Dimension X every week. That was, in fact, a human and a giant sentient brain.
sentient brain
That’s the usual state of brains, isn’t it?
Not in America
Er… Ok but do brains usually pilot a human shaped robo… Oh. Oh shit.
Presumably this means sapient, as in the thing humans have but other animals don’t (the term sentient is often misused to mean sapient). In which case, no. Most brains are not sapient. Only humans are as far as we’re aware currently, but definitely not ants and other insects that far outnumber us.
Counterpoint: gestures broadly
Not sure if that’s better, worse, or equally mediocre compared to Laszlo Cravensworth turning into Jackie Daytona with a simple toothpick.
Wait, Jackie Daytona was Laszlo!? I was wondering where he went during that episode. The character just dropped his plot line. It was weird.
Do you think they underestimate normal humans? It almost feels a little insulting.
If you watch the show the humans are monstrously stupid. So yeah don’t need to put much effort into their disguises.
I’ve been watching the show my whole life…
Can you blame them?
The art of subtlety meets the reality of capitalism?
Lemmy user try not to bring up capitalism in every thread challenge (LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE!!!)
So, you’re not wrong, but… these shows were literally designed to sell the toys. They were basically half-hour commercials.
G.I. Joe, TMNT, Transformers, X-Men, He-Man, Power Rangers, My Little Pony… they were all built on the same model (hey kids! whine at your parents until they buy our plastic
dollsaction figures!).Quit making capitalism sound cool.
There is an excellent documentary series on Netflix called The Toys That Made Us which covers a lot of these. The Star Wars episode was very interesting, it gives you a look at the wheeler-dealer moneymaking side of the franchise (and some of the early toys are hilariously bad).
Some of it is kind of cool, and produced some genuinely enjoyable cultural icons… but also a lot of it was very manipulative, and you end up realizing how much of this cultural period was manufactured, packaged and sold to us through TV.
Very good show!
The van shot pizzas, dude.
They made some cool toys so why not bring it up?
That marketing copy is just amazing.
First of all, acknowledging that the blimp is “incredibly wacky”
Then trying to sell the fact that it doesn’t float, mount or have any powered features as “Just you and good clean fun!”
I wanted the Technodrome so bad…
But this unlocked a memory of my very early 20s. We were having a party at my apartment and somebody got a big TMNT doll out. Like a foot long, don’t remember which turtle. We tied it to a hook in the ceiling of the 2nd floor porch and strapped a bunch of fireworks to it including several rockets duct taped to the back of his shell. My roommate set it off while there were at least 15 people on that porch. Fucking hilarious, it spun around crazy fast exploding shit everywhere.
Kids- we are lucky nobody got hurt blah blah blah
I like how they didn’t even bother to match the cartoon and toy versions like at all.
But they are right: You can’t sell cool toys with subtlety.