Looking back on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: How $4.99 changed my life!

Can't remeber the exact date. It was a weekend. I know this because I was with my dad... child of divorced parents. It was 1989, but not sure if this was before or after Batman... All I remember is that we were at a mall that had a Kay Bee Toy and Hobby... The cartoon had aired in the US for a bit, but the Latin American dub hadn't been released. Fun fact: Latin American VA for Michelangelo in season 1 was also the voice of Mr. Miyagi and Hordak. The LatAm VA for Leonardo in Season 1 was the same for Daniel LaRusso, Teenage Gohan, AND Carlton Banks!
The VA for Donatello was Stan Lee in Spider-Man 3.
The VA for Raphael was Zordon and Apollo Creed.
Splinter's VA was Freddy Krueger, Mufasa, Trap Jaw, Chopper, and Man-at-Arms.
April's VA was Bulma, Sailor Mars, and my beloved Glimmer!
Shredder's VA was also Krang's... but he was also Wolverine and Austin Powers.
Rocksteady's VA is the voice of Johnny Cage in the good MK movie, Ken the Eagle (LatAm Dub for G-Force) and Louis Tully in the first dub of Ghostbusters.
Bebop's VA was King Kai, Android 19, and Him (PPG)

 I'm losing my point here but, we kinda still have a TMNT/Fresh Douche connection... but that doesn't matter where the story that's just a fun fact I wanted to throw out.
Wave 1 of the toys had come out, but I hadn't truly paid attention until I saw the Wacky Action toys.
Something drew me towards Rock n Roll Michelangelo. I can't tell if it was the vibrant colors, or the tongue sticking out. All I know is that I needed to have that figure. My dad bought it for me. Little did I know that those $5 spent woild change my life. That Rock n Roll Michelangelo fought the few remaining MOTU toys after a Grandmother donated most of my MOTU toys away.
The cartoon received the Latin American dub and I got hooked. The Gap that He-Man had left after he  went to outer space was finally filled. Pizza became cooler to eat and toywise, TMNT was the next step after He-Man. Even back then the lines had some similarities.
Weekends with my dad usually meant that I ended up with one or two new Turtles figures. Also, my dad coordinated with the parents of a neighbor when buying TMNT toys to ensure that pur collections complemented each other.

Technically speaking I kinda had two collections: One with my Mom and one with my Dad. Very rarely these two collections crossed over. That few instances they did there were times that I had duplicates of a figure or two. Keeping track of them was a bit of a pain in the ass, bought thanks to that collection crossover at my other grandparents' house SOME survived the "dark ages" when I had the horrible notion that toys were lame. Sadly I couldn't save most of my old toys at my grandparents' house after my grandfather died and my grandmother began suffering from Alzheimer's. I'm sure I had TMNT, Thindercats, Beetlejuice, super powers ET, and Defenders of the Earth that I recall seeing there AFTER the Dark Ages.

Summers at my grandparents house were great. I played a lot with my TMNT toys I also spent a lot of time playing that NES Port of the arcade game, not to mention when my grandma would have to run errands during the day we should have stopped by a pizzeria that had the arcade game. Eating pizza playing Street Fighter 2 Ninja Turtles the arcade game were great times. I could beat the arcade game with less than a dollar. Sadly in 97 the pizzeria removed Ninja Turtles and added MK3. Once again I'm going to be the off topic let me real bad into the topic Ninja Turtles toys.

I did ignore your final waves from the original toy line because they were rather lame. Next Mutation came and went and I ignored them.


Oh... we're at THAT point in time. College era me: dude had eyes for 2 things at that time:
Marvel Legends and 200X MOTU. I was aware of the 2003 Ninja Turtle toy line, but I wasn't drawn to the toys in comparison to the original line. I enjoyed the cartoons and the modern era video games but the toys I wasn't interested in. It wasn't until NECA released the Mirage inspired that I got Back In The Ninja Turtles game. We all know how that story ends,  because the ending was after I began writing the house of rants blog, which you're reading now. The fast forward and back to the spin-offs trying to me off from Ninja Turtles until the 2012 series. Rise of the TMNT well the less we talk about it the better.

It seems that I am forgetting one key element here the prime Turtles. I must admit that I didn't have too much of an interaction with the original Eastman and Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles due to the comic being an indie comic. I did manage to actually read the original issue with Casey Jones first appearance...  I did also get a chance to read some of the issues during the city at War Arc. Unfortunately most of my main knowledge or other Turtles came from the 1987 cartoon. And to be honest as a kid I wouldn't have liked the original Mirage Turtles. Teenage me on the other hand would have lost the heck out of it... especilly during the "dark ages". I know it sounds kind of bad but Ninja Turtles was kind of my rebound chick after He-Man left me... I'm kind of dreading the moment I have to do ThunderCats