Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Can I kick it? Yes you can!"

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a quartet of, as the name suggests, mutated crime-fighting turtles. These heroes in a half-shell consist of the four brothers:

• Leonardo
• Donatello
• Raphael
• Michelangelo

Fiction

Infestation 2

The world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of many universes invaded by the Elder Gods. Infestation 2 #1

Toys

Collaborative

Likely the closest we can get to a Transformers answer to the Mario and Sonic at the Olympics series.

• Party Wallop (2024)

• Accessories: 5 skullcaps (Party Wallop, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo), 2 katana, bo staff, 2 sai, 2 nunchaku, mini-pizza
• Known designers: Amy Bence (packaging artist), Matthew Cohen (photography)

Collaborative Party Wallop is a roughly-Voyager-sized toy, transforming from a humanoid-turtle-like robot into the Turtles' "Party Wagon" vehicle, based on its design in the original 1987 cartoon series. In van mode, the roof-mounted (non-firing) guns and side-mounted red "lights" can rotate/elevate, plus the ends of the cannons are Fire Blast effect-compatible. The logo/shield in the van's front center can pop off, revealing a tiny personal pan pizza.

In robot mode, Party Wallop has a lot of display options available. Party Wallop's head pops apart above the "muzzle", to be replaced with one of five different skullcaps: a baseline green for default Party Wallop, then four others with "bandanas", one each in one of the Turtles' colors (Leo in blue, Donnie in purple, Raph in red, Mikey in orange). The currently unused skullcaps can be stored in Party Wallop's back assembly/shell. The Wagon's entire front end can stay attached to the robot's torso, or be removed and placed on his back, revealing a more turtle-plastron-like torso design. This sub-torso features a rotating belt buckle, each side displaying one of the four Turtle's initials (L, D, R, M) in their trademark colors to match the chosen bandana (or not, go nuts).

On top of that, he comes with Cybertronian versions of each of the boys' signature weapons: Leo's katanas, Donnie's bo staff, Raph's sais, and Mikey's nunchaku. All seven of these weapons can be stored in both robot and vehicle mode, with a series of tabs and 5 mm posts/holes allowing all of them to be readily accessible for battle in robot mode, not merely stuffed into his back-shell.

Notes

• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have seen a handful of Transformers characters inspired by their likenesses, including some Unicron cultists featured in the Marvel Comic, and a few Nightbirds in Transformers: The Wreckers #1 wearing their bandanna colors. Furthermore, Halfshell owes his name to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.
• Though a true crossover event with both TMNT and Transformers has yet to happen properly, both franchises have had a surprising amount of production overlap. Some of the more notable instances of this include:
  • David Wise, one of The Transformers cartoon's most prolific writers, later went on to act as the 1987 TMNT animated series' head writer, writing and/or script-editing nearly all of the series' 193 episodes. As he tended to do, some of his TMNT scripts recycled elements (and even an entire episode plot in one instance) from his Transformers scripts.
  • Dreamwave Productions, riding high from the success of their various Transformers comics, acquired the comic license for TMNT in 2003 and put out a Peter David-written ongoing based on the concurrently-running animated series in June; however, it was suddenly canceled (three guesses as to why) and ended in December with its seventh issue. IDW Publishing has held the license since 2011, and they came very close to having both franchises meet: Infestation 2 saw the Elder Gods invade the worlds of both Hearts of Steel and their own TMNT continuity, while the events of The X-Files: Conspiracy take place in a universe where the Ninja Turtles and the Hearts of Steel Transformers co-exist, though neither event saw one franchise interact with the other.
  • Michael Bay served as producer for the short-lived live-action duology released by Paramount Pictures (whose parent company, Paramount Skydance Corporation, has owned the TMNT franchise as a whole since 2009) under their Nickelodeon Movies banner from 2014 to 2016 in a two-year span. Actress Megan Fox was prominently featured in these movies as Turtles mainstay, reporter April O'Neil, and the second film features a brief scene in which Michelangelo interacts with a Bumblebee cosplayer.
  • TakaraTomy also imported and localized the TMNT shows and toys and both regular Transformers sound directors Yoshikazu Iwanami and Keiichirō Miyoshi have directed the dubs for different TMNT shows.
• Other franchises TMNT has crossed over with include Power Rangers, Batman, Magic: The Gathering, Naruto, Stranger Things, Masters of the Universe, Ghostbusters, Street Fighter, Godzilla, Archie, The X-Files, and countless other Nickelodeon properties.
• In the letters page of Marvel UK issue #318, Blaster replied to a reader that the Ark received TV broadcasts—both human and alien—and his favourite was "Pupal-stage not-quite-normal hand-to-hand combat pelagic reptiloids", though this was a rough translation.

External links

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Wikipedia