Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003280289
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At the Hecht's opening in Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake this month, a line of eager kids and their twitching parents stretched clear across the arcade for two hours to glimpse a turtle named Leonardo who wore a blue mask and a black belt.
He was awesome in emerald, dudes.
He was a lean green fighting machine.
He was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
"We've had the same response at every store," said Hecht's special events manager Lorraine LeBlond: "Regency Square and Chesterfield Towne Center in Richmond, Lynnhaven in Virginia Beach and now Greenbrier. It's overwhelming. This is the most security we've ever put on for any star."
Leonardo rated more guys in blue blazers standing around at parade rest than Susan Ruttan of "L.A. Law."
The New York actor in the foam rubber suit was instructed not to say anything to anybody because it would slow the line down.
Leonardo leads three more man-sized martial arts heroes on the half-shell who have appeared in comic books, graphic novels and television cartoons since they were created seven years ago.
Now "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is a PG-rated motion picture, opening Friday. That's the signal for a merchandising push involving 175 companies worldwide and a green hail of T-shirts, caps, buttons, digital watches, bumper stickers and Twirlem Pencil Toppers.
Turtlemania is in session.
The $12 million Golden Harvest film production bristles with promotional tie-ins, among them:
TMNT products available at K mart, featuring posters in 6,000 stores and a sweepstakes offer in 72 million newspaper inserts.
A Ralston Purina TV spot plugging the movie and a poster offer on boxes of TMNT breakfast cereal.
Random House's "TMNT Movie Story Book" and the Dell novelization at Waldenbooks.
Turtles novelties at Burger King.
A Turtles radio campaign for Light 'n Lively Yogurt, a Turtles poster offer for Delicious Cookies and a Turtles contest for Rolets pork rinds.
Golden Harvest is a jade bonanza.
Meanwhile the Turtles appear on MTV, Nickelodeon and a syndicated Group W cartoon show. Video Insider notes that three of its "Top 10 Kids' Videos" are TMNT ($15.95). Mirage reprints the graphic novels at $9.95, Palladium Books offers "Turtles Go Hollywood" at $7.95 and Random House provides the "deluxe" comic/cassette at $5.95.
"Turtles stuff has taken off," reports Wayne Ehrmann of Zeno's Books in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. "There are a lot of kids that like it and a lot of adults that like it. I think the movie will be a hit."
After all, "Batman" flew.
But "Howard the Duck" laid a $50 million egg. Turtle power
It all began as a gag.
Artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird have been asked so often, at comic book conventions and store signings, how they came up with TMNT, they have printed up a response:
"Back in December of 1983, we were living in Dover, N.H., having just formed Mirage Studios. Of course, at that time Mirage Studios was just us, sitting around our living room, watching TV and doodling. One night, in a particularly silly mood, Kevin doodled up a pencil drawing of a turtle wearing a cloak, with nunchakus [flails] strapped to its forearms.
"Upon seeing it, Peter was inspired to draw his own slightly different version of the terrapin. The goofiness continued with Kevin penciling a drawing of four turtles, each with a different martial arts-type weapon.
"After Peter inked this drawing, it was obvious that a name for these turtles was in order. . . . "
What wasn't obvious was that this satirical giggle would expand rapidly into a full-blown industry; Mirage Studios, headquartered now in Northampton, Mass., grossed a quarter of a billion bucks last year. Eastman, 27 (the one with the hair and mustache), and Laird, 36 (the one without either), no longer have to choose between art supplies and macaroni and cheese. The first issue of TMNT, self-published with a press run of 3,000, now brings up to $200 a copy.
Still pals and partners, Eastman and Laird are today both married, rich and busy.
Who are the TMNT?
Once upon an urban time a little boy dropped four turtle pets into a New York sewer. They landed in radioactive ooze that afforded them muscles, speech and opposable thumbs. "Over the years, hidden behind dark sunglasses, low fedoras and high-collared trench coats, while making regular forays into the city to see movies and go shopping, they picked up surfer jargon and other customs of their teenage human counterparts."
Trained by a former sensei-turned-sewer rat named Splinter, they took their names from his favorite Renaissance painters: Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo and Michaelangelo. (Never mind that he misspelled Michelangelo. If anybody ever noticed, nobody cared.)
They talk like this:
"Yahoo, dudes, let's rock!"
"We turtles," Leonardo will observe, "don't know the meaning of defeat."
"Yeah!" Michaelangelo will confirm. "We never bothered to look it up. Yuk!"
They are known to ingest mega-junk food like peanut butter and anchovy pizza.
As early as 1984, Eastman and Laird were approached with a low-budget movie offer to do the turtles with actors in stand-up Godzilla suits. They turned it down.
Golden Harvest, a company built on chopsocky films, got a commitment from Muppeteer Jim Henson to create radio-controlled, live-action latex TMNTs and an animatronic Splinter at his Creature Shop in London.
Dudes, it was show time.
The film was shot last summer at the North Carolina Film Studios in Wilmington, on the five-acre back-lot set created as Chinatown for "Year of the Dragon." "TMNT" is distributed by New Line Cinema, which provided five "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies and "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III."
Maintains director Steve ("Electric Dreams") Barron, "We made this movie for both kids and adults. Strange creatures in a contemporary setting. It touches the subconscious of most people."
The plot: The Turtles go up against a clandestine organization called the Foot, an army of ninja-trained, non-turtle teens led by the badly behaved Shredder. Good guys vs. bad guys down the Manhattan storm drains. Bruce Lee goes reptilian.
(A ninja, by the way, was a mercenary soldier in feudal Japan.)
Ungh! Grrr! Mumph!
Cowabunga.
What will they think of next?
Just be ready for the Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters.
by CNB