[narrator Donald Black] The story of my young friends and I
is really the story of a man named...
- Kevin Eastman. - And Peter Laird and I am the...
- ...co-creator... - ...of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
[laughs]
♪ Teenage... ♪
[DB] Eastman and Laird,
two names synonymous with...
Turtle power. Hey!
That's the dumbest idea I've ever seen.
[DB] The unbelievable rise of Turtlemania
flipped the toy industry on its back.
[Karl Aaronian] We sold 100 million units
just in 1990. [cash register rings]
The summer of Turtlemania.
[applause]
Go Ninja, go Ninja, go!
[DB] But this billion dollar industry mutated
from a Hong Kong dollmaker who put it all on the line.
I got down on my hands and knees and begged them to do this license.
[DB] And this self-published comic
went from the dark and dingy shadows of the sewer...
It's too goofy, too stupid.
- It's dopey. - Oops!
[DB] ...to the spotlight of popular culture.
The biggest indie film of all time.
[DB] But this mega-hit toy line...
The deal was 60 million dollars.
[DB] ...is really a love story of two creators...
It was love at first sight.
[DB] ...that splintered into an enduring feud.
The betrayal of an idea that we had both shared.
[DB] This is the tale...
- Is that their penis? - [snips]
[DB] ...of the slow and steady rise
of the most unique and surprising toy line ever made.
- "Teenage Mutant Ninja" what? - [laughs]
These, right here, are the toys that made us.
♪ The continuing series about the toys that we all know ♪
♪ Plastic creations that last for generations ♪
♪ And we still cannot let go ♪
♪ Little molded figures that gave us big dreams ♪
♪ We'll go back in time and behind the scenes ♪
♪ It's The Toys That Made Us ♪
♪ Toys That Made Us The Toys That Made Us is here ♪
[DB] They're mutants.
They're ninjas.
They're teenagers.
And they're turtles.
But this story starts with a different kind of shelled mutant.
Lobsters.
And now, here is that story.
[Kevin] I grew up in a very small town in Maine.
I used to work cooking lobsters.
[DB] But Kevin Eastman had no appetite for shellfish.
Bottom feeders. Anything that goes to the bottom, they eat it.
[DB] He consumed something else.
[Kevin] I ate, slept, breathed comic books.
Daredevil, Captain America, Batman.
But my favorite was Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth,
drawn by my hero, a guy named Jack Kirby.
He did Iron Man, and Hulk, and The Fantastic Four.
Jack Kirby is the artist's artist.
He created what we know as comic book art today.
He broke the mold and changed things.
[DB] Including the career path of a young Kevin Eastman.
[KE] I told my parents, "I wanna be Jack Kirby when I grow up,
I wanna be a comic book storyteller."
And they just had this absolute mortified look.
My dad said, "I'll help you with money for college,
for any school except art school." [laughs]
[DB] Dejected, Kevin hit the road, chasing his dreams.
Well, actually...
It was a girl, yeah. You know?
[laughs] Women!
[DB] Ending up in Dover, New Hampshire,
where Kevin would start a new relationship
with this guy, which is good news for us.
My name is Peter Laird.
I had a gig with the local newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
It didn't pay that great and I had to draw all these things
that I had no interest in drawing,
like tomato plants and vegetables.
[DB] As Peter was drawing them, Kevin was packing them.
I was working, bagging groceries.
[DB] But the fruit and vegetable aisle of destiny
had plans for these struggling artists, who decided to hang out.
And I invited him over to my house.
The first thing I saw when I went through the door
was a Jack Kirby original.
And I almost passed out.
I had never seen a Jack Kirby original in my life.
It just blew my mind, the power of his drawing
in Fantastic Four and Thor, and The New Gods, Mister Miracle.
It was like talking to someone with a completely like mind.
[Peter] That spark was wonderful. I'd never had that with anybody,
before or since.
It was love at first sight.
[DB] Like a comic-book cupid, Jack Kirby had forged a bond...
I'll ink his pencils and he'll ink mine.
[DB] ...between a young Eastman and Laird,
who moved in together
and fulfilled their dream of owning a comic book studio.
Mirage Studios.
[KE] That was our joke, Mirage was formed
not in a studio, but our living room.
"Studio."
[DB] With a fake-it-till-you-make-it business model,
these maestros of mirage began polishing their portfolios.
We came up with this idea for this robot called the "Fugitoid."
I think we sent to like four or five different comic-book companies.
Spent a lot of money on postage.
And those companies spent a lot on postage, too,
sending us rejection letters.
That was fun.
[DB] It was starting to look like
Eastman and Laird's dream of comic-book greatness
would vanish like a mirage.
But then, late one night...
We were in our living room that we pretended was a studio.
We were being silly and he had the idea
that he was gonna draw something to make me laugh...
- and he drew this turtle. - [KE] He had a mask on. He had nun-chucks.
I loved it and I drew my own version.
Then it made me laugh, ha ha.
Then I said, "Well, if one, why not a group?"
- I inked it using a magic marker. - I penciled in this "ninja turtle" logo.
[Peter] I added the "teenage mutant" to it.
[DB] And with that, Eastman and Laird stumbled upon an idea
that would send the world into shell shock.
Well, eventually.
After further developing the characters and story,
with limited resources,
Eastman and Laird self-published their very first issue.
[Peter] 3,275 copies.
[DB] Oh, and how did it go?
I remember Pete calling up really excited, he said:
That first printing sold out within days.
We got pre-orders for 15,000 copies of the second issue.
You know, double take.
[cash register rings]
[KE] I quit any other job I had.
We started working full-time drawing comic books.
I had become Jack Kirby, in my mind.
And to me, that's when the dream came true. Period.
[DB] Word was spreading about this gritty independent comic.
When I first saw Turtles, it really struck me,
because it was just really bold.
You know, they lived in the sewers,
and they just had that dark and gritty feel to it.
Those four words, "teenage," "mutant," "ninja," "turtles,"
you're like, "I've never heard of all that together.
That's clever, I think." It catches your attention.
[Peter] Issue eight sold a 135,000 copies.
When it suddenly dawned on me,
I was making more than my wife was, teaching,
doing my stupid comic book with my friend Kevin.
[DB] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a bona fide hit,
at least in comic circles. But all that was about to change.
But we were then getting nibbles here and there for licensing.
One of those nibblers was Mark Freedman.
I think I'm the man behind the Turtles. I might even be the fifth Turtle.
[DB] A renaissance man of sorts,
Mark-elangelo was on the lookout for a masterpiece.
Mark Freedman was merely a freelance agent,
representing intellectual properties for different deals.
[Mark] I was looking for an emerging IP
that I could take and potentially license to a toy industry.
[DB] Approaching the hottest duo in underground comics,
to Eastman and Laird, Freedman was the real deal.
I didn't have a company.
All I had was a business card, and I worked out of an apartment,
and I said, "I've got to make a good impression."
Rent a suit and a shirt with a power tie.
Kevin and I were in T-shirts and shorts,
and Mark shows up and he's in his three-piece power suit.
If this is what an agent is supposed to look like,
I'll play the part.
[DB] A skeptical Eastman and Laird listened
as the polyester pitchman laid out his plan.
I said, "Listen, I wanna be your global licensing agent,
and this is about building a franchise
that could live in toys and live in entertainment,"
and my mind was just wild with ideas.
Well...
[DB] But for Eastman and Laird there was one important deal-breaker.
We said, "If you are going out there to talk to people about our characters,
we want them to understand
that we will have final say. We will have full control.
- Okay. - [KE] It was three guys
that had a handshake deal. We had a clear understanding.
You know, it seemed like, why not?
[Mark] Now I have to go into the marketplace
and convince some company to take the chance.
I needed assets for presentation purposes and they had a foam rubber turtle.
I need it. So the turtle sat in the passenger seat of the car,
and as I'm driving to New York, people were honking...
[man's voice] Hey, turtle guy!
[Mark] ...and looking and cracking up.
And I knew this was gonna be good.
I think his initial responses were kind of disappointing.
[tsks]
People would say to me, "Turtles aren't heroic. Forget about it.
And by the way, green will not sell."
You know, what do you say to that?
Even the word "ninja"... The definition was "hired assassin."
How am I building a kid's toy line based on hired assassins?
I went to a company called LJN.
Jack Friedman, who ran the company, said, "Thanks, but no thanks."
I was turned down by Jill Barad, the CEO of Mattel,
saying they'd never work.
So, lots of naysayers.
[DB] But Hasbro's Kirk Bozigian had a different response.
I think it's kind of cool.
[DB] So he took it upstairs.
My boss looks at me and says,
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever seen."
So that was my involvement with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
[DB] But Freedman and his rented suit wouldn't be deterred.
I've got to convince the world that this is a great idea.
So I called up a friend of mine,
Richard Sallis, who just took a job with a company
called Playmates Toys.
They were my last resort.
Probably the only resort.
When I said, "I'm going to send you
a giant replica," he said, "Okay."
So the next day I said, "Richard, did you get the box?"
He says, "Yeah, it's sitting in my office."
I said, "Why didn't you open it?"
"Oh, I've been busy with this and that." I said,
"Richard, open the [bleep] box!"
He opens it up.
He gets very quiet.
And he says,
"This is great."
I called up Peter and Kevin, and I said...
"Now I got this Playmates toy company interested."
- I'd never heard of them before. - [DB] You might not have heard of them,
but if you owned a doll in the early '80s,
there's a good chance you've played with a Playmate's toy.
[male voiceover] Based and started in Hong Kong,
Playmates has been the largest doll manufacturer in Hong Kong
for many years.
[DB] And the man responsible for this baby boom is here.
My name is Thomas Chan.
I worked for the company for 50 years.
[DB] Turning his father's manufacturing factory toy-wards in 1966...
Business started to grow tremendously.
[DB] ...Thomas grew Playmates into a major Hong Kong player.
I decided to diversify into preschool toys.
[DB] But this toy king of the East had his sights set westward.
The biggies.
Mattel, Hasbro, Ideal Toys...
into their business, into the United States.
[DB] So to help him take his first steps in the US market,
in waddled this American.
Thomas Chan said, "Help us build this US operation."
- [DB] So he did, with... - Cricket.
[commentator] Bowling.
- No. - Cricket.
No, a Cricket doll.
Hi, Cricket!
This super-intelligent interactive doll.
All kinds of mechanisms inside.
[DB] Working out of Playmates' new California office,
Bill and Thomas had created a doll
everyone was talking about.
I'll be talking to ya!
In the US, we sold a million pieces, and the retail was over 100 dollars.
[DB] They knocked Cricket out of the park!
Playmates thought, "This is golden"...
[imitates counting money]
...and decided to follow it up with "Jill."
[Bill Carson] Much larger, more expensive
and very complicated.
I think it's a failure.
[DB] But, not ready to hoist the white flag just yet...
It's a failure.
[DB] ...Playmates persisted.
We got to come up with something that's easier to produce
than sophisticated dolls.
We were ready to try something different,
and that's when Mark Freedman approached my boss,
Richard Sallis, and said,
"Richard, open the [bleep] box!"
And he went to the president of Playmates at the time,
Bill Carlson.
And Richard came and said,
"I think we ought to look at this, boss."
And I said, "Let's look."
[DB] And once the cardboard turtle-filled Pandora's box was open...
Oh, this is interesting.
So I said, "I think we can do some good business with this."
[DB] ...Mark Freedman soon closed the deal.
I ended it up negotiating a deal for $150,000.
[DB] Not only that...
We had full approval rights over all of the creative decisions
and product development decisions.
That was the thing that was most important to us.
We will have final say. We will have full control.
So we went into the holidays with a deal,
and January 1987,
we would start the build-out
of the Ninja Turtle action figure line.
[DB] With the deal done, it was now up to Playmates
to stop playing with dolls,
and produce an action figure line out of this comic.
The bottom line was, you had a group of people
who knew nothing about this genre.
[DB] A genre that was already saturated
with plenty of very successful action figures, from...
The biggies.
Mattel, Hasbro, Ideal Toys.
You know, all those guys.
[DB] And for Playmates to play with these big boys,
their first task was to work out...
How do we take these somewhat violent characters
from a little black and white comic?
[ninja fighting sounds]
It's dark, gritty.
It's not, "Cowabunga, dude!"
and very colorful and pizza and stuff like that.
How do we turn them into kid-friendly toy characters?
[DB] To clean up Eastman and Laird's gore-fest,
Playmates brought in a handyman.
My name is John Handy,
H-A-N-D-Y.
[DB] And the future of Turtle toys were in his.
We knew what we had to do, and to flesh the line out,
we had to pump up the humor, pump up the fun.
[tires squeal]
I was responsible for coming up with a more irreverent tone.
What's the funniest, toilet-est humor
that kids would really enjoy?
Potty humor is big and...
- Definitely excited him. - Right. It's my forte.
We had to modify the story, simplify the story,
get rid of the revenge ideas,
get a few more bad guys worked out.
[DB] As John Handy was breathing life into the toy line,
he was also breathing life into the Turtles' arch enemy.
[Michaelangelo] Whoa, who's the dude with the metal face?
[DB] Well, he needed the help.
We killed the bad guy in the first issue.
- [thud] - [groans]
We never thought there'd be another one.
[DB] But Shredder wouldn't be working alone.
This is Rocksteady, in the original form.
And this was Bebop.
Very detailed, very scary.
[squeals]
[DB] Other enemies, however...
Upchucky. You'd put food into his mouth,
and when you squeezed his bulbous body, it would blow out and become a projectile.
This one uses nostril power
to launch projectiles out of a gun that looks like a nose.
[DB] But Playmates didn't wanna blow their entire budget
on a toy line they couldn't sell.
- No. - [DB] And that was this guy's problem.
It's very hard to launch an action figure line
without some content as the basis.
[DB] What about the comic book?
A comic book isn't enough,
especially a comic book that is targeted to an older audience.
So Playmates started off by saying,
"You know, we have to create a kid-friendly show."
[DB] So, like all the biggies, Playmates found an animation studio...
...to make them a cartoon designed specifically to sell toys.
Here's how that happens.
[DB] This wise guy...
My name is David Wise.
[DB] ...had written cartoons for the biggies.
And it became his job
to develop a five-part mini-series for television.
We're gonna have to do it for eight-year-olds.
I got to work.
[DB] But as he got to work, he noticed a problem.
First of all, you have four turtles that you can't tell them apart.
They all looked basically the same. They had red bandanas.
So each turtle was assigned a color.
They settled on the red, blue, purple, orange.
Also, each turtle had a belt that had their initial on it.
[DB] But it wasn't as simple as a colored bandana and a belt buckle.
We've gotta make them four very distinct personalities,
because otherwise one, two, three of them are redundant.
So we needed a leader.
- [DB] Leonardo. - [DW] The straight arrow,
the guy is deeply into the martial arts.
We need our tech geek.
[DB] Donatello!
If you're the angst-filled kid, you're gonna gravitate towards...
[DB] Raphael!
The sarcastic smartass.
Which is not too dissimilar to me.
"Shredder?"
You're named after...
...a kitchen utensil?
And so that kind of 'tude was what, you know, Raph was about.
[DB] And Michelangelo.
[DW] We need Michelangelo,
who just embodies the teenager-ness of these guys.
Cowabunga, dude!
Pizza time!
Let's have the Turtles love pizza.
[DB] And with that, the cartoon had their four heroes.
Really, there's a turtle for every kid.
It's kind of like The Breakfast Club of action figures.
- Who wants cornflakes? - I'm having raisin bran.
[DB] Personalities, colors and belts.
The Turtles' mutation into action figures was almost complete.
Oh, except for one final issue,
which was actually below the belt.
When you translate something that's 2D to something that's 3D,
certain changes sometimes have to be made.
The very first clay sketch of the turtle
had a tail.
Because in the original comic book, they had tails,
but when they stood up and the tail's hung down, it was...
um...
Too phallic-looking.
I wasn't thinking that way when I was sculpting it.
[Mark] And so...
we decided to give him a... [snips]
A real pain in the tail.
No Turtles had tails after that.
[gulps]
[DB] Having made a substantial saving on plastic reduction,
Thomas and Playmates HQ back in Hong Kong
were feeling good about their first foray into action figures.
Toy Fair happens in February in New York City,
but all the buyers start making their commitments ahead of time.
So whatever we were working on was packed up
and taken all around the United States and shown to different buyers.
[DB] With a five-minute sample of the cartoon
and these early prototypes,
Playmates pitched to the retail biggies.
- K-Mart. - Toys "R" Us.
- Sears. - Target.
- You name it. - [Karl] We had meeting after meeting.
We'd say,
"You guys are gonna see something that's gonna be
the greatest action figure line ever."
Retailers would say, "I don't see it."
No.
And in one case, a major retailer kicked us out of the room.
He said, "Good luck, I have other business."
We had missed the mark. The humor was not coming across.
- Where does the Turtles' cat sleep? - In the mew-tent.
[yawns]
Ba-dum-pum.
[DB] But what was coming across
was a very serious lack of interest in the toy line.
The company, at some point, has to start committing to tooling.
That didn't happen.
No.
We need vehicles for these guys, but our Chinese parent said...
- No. - "Not until we know
you're gonna really sell some."
They weren't sure...
...how to market this product.
At that stage, all the money already spent.
TV show, 1.5 million.
The design already done,
so if we cut the loss,
that means it's totally lost.
So there was no going back at that point.
[DB] And with so much uncertainty around the line,
there wasn't much going forward either.
Meanwhile, about that same time,
we hired another toy designer.
I'm a toy designer.
[DB] But not just any toy designer.
In fact, if you ask him, he'll tell you.
My name is Mark Taylor, and I created He-Man.
- [DB] Along with this guy. - Bong.
- It was Bill Carlson's request... - Yes.
...that I be brought in to work on the Turtle line,
'cause it wasn't going anywhere, with all respect for John.
Okay.
And so...
So I left, went back to Mattel.
[DB] And Mark got to work.
[MT] They had sketches stacked up three feet high,
but it wasn't going anywhere.
It wouldn't get that last little kick in the butt to make it go.
[DB] And Mark knew something about kicking butt.
I have the power!
[DB] So now that he had the power at Playmates,
he started making changes...
He-Man style.
I'm the drawer guy.
[DB] So he took existing designs and redrew them.
You know, the party van, it's basically a Volkswagen van, so...
I made it sexy.
The Foot Clan, it was in the comic book,
so I took it and toy-ized it.
I made it kind of zombie-like.
I dropped the head down. Big, gangly legs.
Scott Hensey was sculpting Shredder.
In the comic book he was a real tall guy,
and that's the way we wanted him.
But marketing said he wouldn't fit in the blister pack.
So we made him standing that tall and then crouched him over.
I brought his hands up,
so they're kind of making a mystical move.
Like he's getting ready to attack.
[DB] He also asked bold questions.
Why does April O'Neil have to be so stupid-looking?
[hysterical laughter]
You know, when I did Teela for He-Man, she was built.
[DB] Well, at this point, nothing was built...
in any sense of the word.
So while this toy master sunk his claws into Turtles,
over at the cartoon studio, they needed help finishing things up.
So they brought in...
The famous Chuck Lorre.
[DB] Mega-producer Chuck Lorre
is the mastermind behind Dharma & Greg,
Two and a Half Men,
and all sorts of award-winning hit TV shows.
Chuck Lorre, the Big Bang Theory guy!
[DB] But back then he was a different kind of guy.
I was a traveling journeyman-musician,
trying to build a career for myself as a songwriter.
[DB] With a low budget and a simple idea, Chuck got to work.
[Chuck] I was coming from the idea that no one knew these characters.
So the song was going to be an introduction.
The first verse is "Here's who they are."
♪ They're the world's most fearsome fighting team ♪
"We're really hip."
Whenever there's something spoken, that's actually Chuck.
♪ They're heroes in a half shell and they're green ♪
"Hey, get a grip!"
♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ♪
- "Heroes in a half shell." - "Turtle power." Hey!
Literature.
[DB] Chuck Lorre's infectious jingle...
Thank you, Chuck.
[DB] ...and the rest of the five-part pilot mini-series,
quietly began airing on December 28th, 1987.
And back at Playmates,
the team was working double time to catch up.
I'll be cranking out the work.
[DB] Good, because...
The show had already debuted,
so there was some interest in Turtles,
but we still had to prove ourselves.
[DB] With only five TV episodes and an incomplete toy line,
it's hard to imagine who would stick their neck out
for these strange misshapen animals.
- Me, of course. - [DB] Geoffrey the Giraffe?
[Karl] Toys "R" Us was known as the retailer
that would support everything.
- [DB] Everything? - Everything.
[DB] If Toys "R" Us came on board,
Playmates would finally be able to compete with the biggies!
[thinking] The biggies...
Wow.
So I said, "Go ahead and produce...
the 6,000 pieces."
[DB] Despite the small order,
Playmates got to work.
We've got the four Turtles and we got Splinter.
Of course, Shredder.
And April O'Neil.
April O'Neil still stinks.
There's Bebop and Rocksteady and the Foot Clan:
Throwaway, bad-guy soldiers.
[DB] So, in June 1988,
ten figures and five vehicles were shipped...
to Toys "R" Us.
See what happens.
[DB] But they didn't have long to wait,
because very soon Toys "R" Us called with a re-order.
Re-order is 50,000.
We were selling like crazy.
[Karl] This was the one case in my career
where I literally walked into a retail store
and saw the shelves bare.
No Turtle on the shelf.
And so I went to a second store.
No Turtle on the shelf.
- And I went to a third store. - [DB] Well, you get the idea.
Yeah, we knew we had a phenomenon on our hands.
♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ♪
[voiceover] From Playmates!
I'm 11 years old at the time
and I see this strange toy.
It had a shell,
and it had this belt
with different weapons shoved in each loop and I said, "Whoa,
what in the world is that?"
Those ten action figures,
released in the first wave, are so iconic.
There's a certain whimsy to them
that isn't obvious in any other major action figure line of that time.
There's something fun about these figures.
Cowabunga, dudes!
[DB] The Turtles had gone from underground oddity
to overnight sensation.
[commentator] The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
are the top-selling action figures in the toy business.
[DB] Taking Playmates along for the ride,
straight to the top.
Those cost us about one million dollars. [laughs]
[DB] But the newest biggie on the block
wasn't the only one
seeing green.
They were big checks. [laughs]
That first big check, which I think was a little over a million dollars...
To have a check in your hand that you're gonna put in your account
that's for that much money is...
[KE] Kudos to Mark Freedman, who coached us very well in that.
"When you get money, save it and invest it, or put it away."
Did Kevin tell you one of the first things he bought was a tank?
[KE] An M15A Stuart light tank.
[laughs]
We used to have big paintball wars. I'd just hide in my tank and...
[DB] While Eastman took cover in his half shell,
Mark Freedman was launching an offensive
on an entirely different front.
I wanted to offer the fans something bigger and better.
I wanted to do a live action feature film.
- [DB] Great idea! - [cheering]
[worried exhale] Ooh.
- [DB] Or not. - [boos]
We've seen a lot of movies
where comic book characters are taken into live action,
and it's just so terrible.
[DB] The idea ruffled Playmates' feathers too.
They felt I was rocking the boat. We already have a successful TV series.
Everything is humming along, it's perfect, making money.
But I know from business, if you sit still, you die.
You have to go forward.
[DB] Mark Freedman moved his idea forward, to Golden Harvest Pictures.
We have the best stunt guys in the world.
All we have to do is put four guys in our stunt suits.
Awesome!
And also, I have Jim Henson.
- [DB] The maestro of Muppets himself? - Yeah.
- Cowabunga! - [bell rings]
[DB] It was starting to look like Mark's idea would work out after all.
Yeah, well so far, my track record's been batting a thousand.
[crash]
[DB] And sure enough, he'd get his chance
to make the naysayers at Playmates eat crow-topped pizza.
The movie gets completed
and we have a screening for the folks of Playmates Toys
and Richard Sallis came up to me
and politely looked at me in the face, said to me,
"Well, you [bleep] that up, Freedman."
We thought we were in trouble.
The TV show was very light-hearted and bright. This was...
[thud]
...the polar opposite.
[MF] Of course, when I walked out, I said, "Holy [bleep], what did I just do?"
[angry groan]
[thuds]
There goes the property.
[DB] Things were looking dark
when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit theaters in March of 1990.
[MF] Needless to say, the film opened up and...
it broke all records.
Cowabunga!
We ended up at $134 million.
The biggest indie film of all time at that point.
I now call up Playmates.
I said, "How're the toy sales this weekend, guys?"
No Turtle on the shelf.
Sold out. Everywhere.
Oops!
[DB] With Ninja Turtles: The Movie breaking box office records,
Playmates' profits continued to mutate.
- We sold 100 million units just in 1990. - [cash register rings]
We owned 80% of the boys' space.
Everyday is Christmas sales.
[DB] Kids were Casey Jones-ing for more.
[TV] Casey Jones, the sports warrior!
[DB] And if Playmates wanted to meet the demand,
they'd have to use their brains.
We have to have a new character every month.
[TV] Introducing Leatherhead!
There was a guy who we decided to call Pizza Face.
New.
[Scott] And also Ray Fillet.
[Scott] General Traag.
New.
[Scott] Mutagen Man.
And we did a giant mosquito.
[buzzing sound]
Yeah, they were going by pretty fast.
[DB] But if you're one of those thinking...
I've always been a play set guy.
[DB] ...Playmates didn't leave you hanging. In fact...
There were two major play sets.
The sewer play set was the headquarters for the Turtles and Splinter.
It was dual tiered so you could have a street-level play set
and an underground play set. Unbelievable.
And then the Technodrome was the villain's play set.
It was this big, huge ball with an eye mounted on top on tank treads.
And it would unfold and open up with a jail in the middle.
When I saw it the first time, I thought...
"I'm gonna buy that [bleep] thing."
[crazy laughter]
[DB] But that didn't mean the Turtles themselves got crowded out of the party.
As we started expanding the Turtle line, instead of just four naked turtles,
we started integrating different themes.
Sports, samurai,
- space. - [TV voiceover] T minus ten.
It's one of the biggest toy lines ever,
mainly because they just kept releasing the same four figures
with different outfits.
So we'll have Hip-hop Turtle, and monster Turtles.
Backflip Turtles.
They even had Turtle Trolls.
I loved those. I mean, they were so ugly, they were cute.
I hated them.
Star Trek Turtles... I think Donatello had Vulcan ears.
Caveman Turtles, Western Turtles.
The transforming Turtle,
that goes from pet turtle to Ninja Turtle.
Caveman Turtle. What about, you know, Western Turtle?
Wait, I just said... I said...
- Whatever. - The whole point is, yeah.
I can't keep track of this.
[DB] Well then, we'd better move on to movie Turtles.
Wait, Playmates didn't make any?
Not for the first movie.
- [DB] Why not? - Um...
- [splash] - [groaning]
[thud]
Because they weren't interested in supporting such a violent film.
[DB] Oh yeah. Well maybe they should come up with a new movie.
We came up with a story, "The Secret of the Ooze."
We quickly put a product line together for the second movie,
and that did gangbusters.
- Hold up! - Where is the Vanilla Ice action figure?
- That's what I wanna know. - [DB] Don't worry. Here he is!
♪ Go ninja, go ninja, go ♪
Go ninja, go ninja, go!
That song never gets old.
♪ Go, go, go, go ♪
[DB] But things were starting to get old, by the third Turtle film, two years later.
Oh, boy. What's the name of that one?
[groans] [thud]
[sighs]
We said, "Maybe we should stop now, and let it dry out."
[DB] But it wasn't just the movies drying out.
The show ratings eventually declined.
Toy sales eventually declined.
One third of business by '96.
[DB] With Turtles on a downward slide, it was time for reflection.
It was time for hard decisions.
It was time for a reboot.
There had been discussions about,
"Wouldn't it be great to do a live action TV series?"
[DB] And why not?
The Fox Network had some pretty good luck with Haim Saban's Power Rangers.
You want me to send you the ratings?
Saban's company, because he was doing the Power Rangers, had the ability
to do the live action Turtle show.
[DB] So Haim got to work,
enlisting the aid of Fox Kids exec, Margareth Loesh.
She wanted to do something different
and she wanted to introduce a "female turtle."
I have no recollection of that.
My bet is, it was a toy company request.
Remember, Power Rangers had been very successful,
and had two girl characters who were very popular
and did bring girl appeal into the show.
Let us help you.
I think that's what they probably wanted.
[DB] But, like with everything else,
Eastman and Laird would have to sign off on the lady turtle idea.
I said, "Yeah, well, it's not...
what we originally envisioned,
but I can see that and I think it'd be great.
[DB] That's one down. As for Peter...
No way! There's four Turtles.
There's Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. That's it.
- I might even be the fifth Turtle. - [DB] Not this time, Mark.
Without Laird's blessing, the new show would be dead in the water.
You know, we're either going to continue to extend the Turtle license
or we don't have income coming in.
It was the biggest disagreement we'd ever had
on the management of the Turtles and what to do with the Turtles,
Eventually Laird would cave in, but only under one condition.
He said, "I don't want anything to do with it, but you oversee it,"
and then he kind of like... stepped away.
It was something I really couldn't deal with.
[DB] And as it turned out, kids couldn't deal with it either.
The Saban show did not work.
The fans hated it.
A girl turtle?
It was nothing about gender, I just don't think it was...
It was hard to... It was too forced.
You and I are just mutant boy and mutant girl.
No relation.
[Margaret] I don't want to blame anybody.
It was certainly my decision to greenlight it.
You know, you win some and you lose some.
[DB] But some lost more than others.
[Peter] Almost from day one,
when the Turtles started to become popular,
there had been this suggestion from fans,
"Why don't you add a fifth Turtle?"
But we both always expressed the opinion that we thought it was a stupid idea.
So when the time came that Kevin was for it,
it seemed like in some ways a betrayal of an idea that we had both shared.
I think it was indicative of exactly how far he and I had diverged.
It was an evolution.
No quality time, brotherhood time, bonding time, only business time.
We just didn't hang out and I think that bond was lost.
[DB] As the Mirage Comics bond dissolved,
so too did Kevin Eastman's enthusiasm for Ninja Turtles.
I think the Turtles were something that had been great
and wonderful for him for a while,
but he wanted to move on to other things.
So I was happy to let it go, to...
another corporation or whatever.
And Pete was adamant, "I'll never sell my rights to the Turtles."
And so we worked out a deal where he bought out my remaining share.
[DB] After almost 20 years,
the once inseparable roommates, partners, and friends
parted ways for good.
I wish things had been different.
I wish we had remained as tight as we had been in the early days.
[DB] With Kevin and Peter's girl troubles over,
Peter took the Turtles back to the sewer, so to speak.
A little darker, a little edgier.
[DB] And a little more profitable.
Show me the money, baby! Woo-hoo!
We did a lot of toys.
[TV] New extreme Turtles, with extreme weapons...
Turtles always has this huge drive up
and then it will eventually come down.
[squeak] [crash]
[DB] But by 2009 it was feeling like the Turtles were skating by on their name,
or at least their initials.
The Turtles at that time had kind of crested a wave of popularity.
[DB] The Turtles were once again ripe for a fresh facelift.
Luckily, an all-new character was about to arrive in the nick of time.
"A female turtle."
No way!
- [DB] Just kidding! - Okay.
[DB] It was a multinational media conglomerate, of course.
I was approached by Viacom,
and they said, "Hey, we'd like to think about purchasing the Turtles."
[DB] Which made sense,
because while Viacom subsidiary Nickelodeon was saturated
with sponges and Doras,
they were doing a bit of exploring of their own.
We really didn't have that iconic action figure show.
[DB] Which is exactly what Peter Laird was sitting on.
- Yeah. - There was just one problem.
He said he will never sell it.
[DB] Well, that settles that.
I don't remember saying that ever.
- [DB] Hold the phone. - Well...
Maybe someday, if the offer was right and reasonable,
but probably not for a long time.
The deal was 60 million dollars.
Yeah, it just seemed like the right time to do it.
[DB] But Peter Laird and Nickelodeon
weren't the only ones that would profit from the deal.
Along with the deal came our friends at Playmates Toys.
To Playmates, it is good news.
- [DB] Still, it didn't end there. - I made a bit of money, too.
[DB] And though he had no involvement whatsoever,
even Vanilla Ice was happy about it.
Hold up. Okay.
[DB] And as for Kevin Eastman?
He got nothing.
60 million dollars.
That's too bad.
[DB] But just as Viacom began putting their mutant master plan into motion,
something unexpected happened.
And I almost immediately got calls from everybody
to start working on the Turtles again.
"Would you like to come in and consult on the movies, on the cartoon show,
and on the IDW comic series?"
And so I was like, "Yeah."
[DB] With Kevin Eastman in tow,
Nickelodeon's 2012 relaunch of the Turtles was a massive success.
We're just that good.
[ninja howl]
[DB] And this time, it wasn't just kids watching.
We had a tremendous amount of adults
watching Turtles with their kids.
You have first-generation kids that grew up on Turtles,
and now they wanna share this with their family.
[DB] And luckily for Playmates, twice the viewers meant twice the buyers.
And the toys instantly sold through the roof,
before the TV show even aired.
[DB] And after the TV show aired.
One of the things that we did do was a co-brand with WWE.
[DB] And after the movie premiered.
I love the new movie releases.
Yeah!
That was epic.
[DB] And speaking of epic, after only one year,
Nickelodeon's Turtle relaunch raked in 475 million dollars in retail sales.
Not a bad return on that investment of...
60 million dollars.
[DB] So, when Nickelodeon canceled the show in 2017...
- Ah! - [bang]
[DB] ...it only made sense to make a whole new one.
So, it's not over?
It's just beginning.
It's show time!
[KE] The Rise of the Teenage Ninja Turtles is a great opportunity
to really go back and do
pre-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So it's their growing up.
You fight like untrained buffoons!
[DB] It's also a great opportunity to make more toys, of course.
This is a property that has reinvention in its DNA.
So you should differentiate the characters from series to series.
And when you see the 2018 version of Turtles,
it's an even more radical reinvention.
This is from
2012 to 2017.
And this is for 2018 forward.
We believe this will be the biggest Turtles yet.
Ah! I hope.
[DB] As the Turtles now embark on the next stage of a journey,
that's already lasted more than 30 years,
it's the fifth Turtle himself, Mark Freedman,
who read a self-published comic
and saw the makings of, well, insane global pandemonium
that sold millions of toys.
I have never once...
taken it for granted.
I was given an opportunity to build a brand my way,
go against all the naysayers and all that.
They said, "It was absurd. It was crazy."
Two comic book artists that couldn't get jobs
working for Marvel and DC,
decided to spoof traditional superheroes.
Why would it work? But it worked.
[DB] And it's kept working.
So, what is it about these subterranean superheroes
that keeps them mutating through the decades?
You can point to elements after the fact and say,
it's that humor and action combination.
It is the fact they live in the sewers.
It is the personalities of the Turtles.
Everybody has tried to knock it off.
And it doesn't work.
Know what? I think the key to this always has been, Pete and Kevin...
created something that they loved and it all happened organically.
It's real.
[DB] Forged in a long-lost friendship,
the Turtles' legacy will continue.
Cool!
But as for Kevin and Peter, well,
what they had back in Northampton all those years ago,
that was no mirage.
[Peter] That spark was wonderful.
I'd never had that with anybody, before or since.
[Kevin] It was like talking to someone with a completely like mind.
[DB] Because here,
among the Turtles' sleepy New England origins,
a friendship was made,
and maybe today, renewed.
- [Kevin] Ah! - [both laugh]
[Peter] I think Kevin's a really cool guy.
And one of the regrets I have about what happened
is that I no longer have that guy in my life, really.
I miss Pete terribly, but it's a tough bridge to rebuild.
Oh, it's so nice to see you, really...
I can look back, it was the height of the Turtles,
Peter is eight years older than I am.
He's very settled in his life. I'm 23 years old.
I have a little bit of cash, and I'm single.
Wasn't this done for the first toy fair?
Oh, yeah. That's right. Beginning of '88.
I pushed him away because I was younger
and I wanted to do other things and I had a whole...
A whole world I wanted to see.
- We had that window installed. - Yeah.
Because our big idea was,
we'd each have a drawing table next to the window.
- I'd be in the other room, you'd be here. - Yep.
And we'd literally pass pages through the window.
It never happened.
No.
Everywhere we are in our relationship now is because of what I did to it.
Hindsight being 20/20,
I'd have done a lot more things differently, back in those days.
Those days, I look back on them very fondly.
Cowabunga. Wow, what is that from?
Really, at that point, we were interested in having fun drawing.
We were Turtle dads.
We enjoyed our kids, we took great care of our kids.
And they've been adopted by someone else.
I inked a certain character. You inked certain characters.
[Peter] But I made it a point in the negotiations with Viacom,
to retain the rights to self-publish the Turtle comic
if I so desired.
I just couldn't live without that possibility in my life.
And you know, maybe someday we'll do it again.
[DB] Time will tell,
if we'll see Eastman and Laird return to where it all started.
Just two guys making each other laugh.
And inking each other's pencils.
[Peter] It would be a nice,
circling around way back to the beginning,
where Kevin and I did those original Turtle comics together.
And I miss that.
Are you gonna pencil your favorite Turtle or ink it?
Pencil it. No wait, I'm drawing Raphatello or Donanardo?
[Peter laughs]
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