Extreme 90’s Flashback: Turtle Tunes
As a kid the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the coolest thing ever. The cartoon was super entertaining, the toys were exceptional, and the live action movies (except for the 3rd one) were pretty great. Especially the suits that the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created. Thanks to the countless artists that worked on the suits, audiences were able to believe that 4 tiny turtles were transformed into human sized ninjas. The animatronics that were built in to the faces are still amazing even today. Just watch this 5 minute video that goes behind the scenes in the Creature Shop to see the fantastic artistry on display.
Unfortunately there were spinoffs from the movies that used some different suits for the titular . They were bad. Oh so bad. The first major spinoff was the Coming Out of Their Shells tour that happened in 1990. Thanks to a joint venture with Pizza Hut™, the 4 turtles were transformed into “rock stars” and had a horrendous stage show that kids ate up. Kids are stupid. I can say that because I listened to this show on cassette tape until it broke. I was a stupid kid. Look at this crap.
Yeah, that’s pretty bad. Crappy songs, horrible lyrics, and piss poor choreography. The faces barely move and the whole thing just reeks of a cash grab. It gets worse. In 1994 a direct-to-dvd release came out called “Turtle Tunes“. This is the bottom of the barrel. April O’Neil decides to give the Turtles their own television show. The Turtles (with some help from some stupid kids) decide to re purpose songs from the public domain, but with ZANY LYRICS. And for some reason they all have ridiculous New York accents. You can see zippers, faces behind the masks, and more. We also learn in one of the songs that apparently Leonardo cannot swim. Let that sink in. A FUCKING TURTLE WHO CANNOT SWIM. Everyone involved in this should feel bad.
Also, Michelangelo is creepy as fuck in his part of the video.
