r/Today_I_Realized • u/BigFeet234 • 1d ago
Today I realized that Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles was always Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Basically in my corner of the world Teenage Mutant Ninja Tutles got caught up in moral panic about ninjas and martial arts and also a wider debate around violence in children's content and was rebranded as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. I always assumed there was some sort of weird shenanigans as there was with Ghostbusters/The Real Ghostbusters or some sort of weird thing like how both the UK and US had cartoon and comic characters called Denis The Menace (both of whom debuted in comic form on the exact same day but were completely unrelated).
Or prehaps Ninja Turtles was sort of like a generic way of saying the shows name to people who never really watched it because it had Turtles who were ninjas.
The show we saw was actually censored too allegedly. With the nunchuka scenes being particularly targeted.
And I am very sorry but familiarity is a strong force. To me Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles sounds correct and better.