Everything TMNT

Ok, i think its time for everyone to come to the realization that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles basically ran our lives. Well, those of us born in the 80s and grew up thru the late 80s and early 90s with Leo, Mike, Raf and Don. Also, who didn't want to literally BE Casey Jones growing up? And please no one talk trash on Shredder...he is the man. Anyway, here's a day growing up with TMNT on the mind.

First you wake up to a little TMNT cereal. Actually, it was pretty good too, which was suprising for a cereal based on a cartoon. This cereal goes hand in hand with Mr. T cereal, tasted awesome and looked awesome. This was a perfect start to a perfect TMNT ruled day.

Next you had to get ready for school. Your mom packed your snack pack and peanut butter and jelly sandwhich in this bad boy. Now, i actually got free lunch at school...haha but the thermos was SO sweet. When looking for pictures online of TMNT lunchboxes i found some sweet WWF and Dino-Riders lunchboxes.

While at school, you and your friends broke out these bad boys and started trading or fighting over our TMNT trading cards. If you had rocksteady and krang and your boy had baxter stockman and bebop you guys could swap to compliment the various cards of your favorite characters.

Now its the reading hour at the end of the school day in homeroom. What do you read? How about Mutanimals a TMNT comic series that was pretty rad. The stingray guy, Mondo Gecko and a giant cowhead were mainstays. I'm not sure why the actual Turtles were involved in these comics, didn't really make much sense. I stil have quite a few of these actually and i definately would buy them when picking up my X-men and Ironman comics.

After school you would go to the local arcade and put quarters on the ledge and wait your turn for the TMNT arcade game! When you got tired of playing Street Fighter 2 you could put some time in with the heroes in a half shell. Notice a live action April in the upper-left corner, by the way. Even though Michaelangelo was my favorite, i would only use Leonardo, his swords were the best weapon to beast Foot Soldiers and Mousers. Remember how sweet it was getting to the bosses at the end of the levels? Seeing your favorite baddies in the arcade was so rewarding, i could have played this game forever, but had to go home at some point, so...

You're on your way home when you hear, "HELLO!" followed by that sweet, sweet song...it was the ice cream truck. You realize you have enough for one ice cream bar, so which do you get? Maybe the awesome WWF bars with great wrestlers on them, or do you get the best tasting one, the big red glove with the baseball gum in the middle? No, you get a Mikey TMNT ice cream pop! Gum balls for eyes? Yes, thank you. Now you head home for real.

THROW THAT SHIT ON! Time for some action, that theme song gets you going. The cartoon was the center of my TMNT obssession, and i imagine most of you. What a lot of cartoons now lack that shows like TMNT had was humor and action. Shredder was bad ass and at the same time he was funny. Most cartoons today lack this quality.

Now that the best cartoon ever got you worked up, you had to bust out the toys. I would spend so much time playing with my favorite characters and still have a few today. Why were all the Turtles different shades of green? Weird...yeah. Guys like Casey Jones, Rat King, Yusagi Yojimbo, and Slash were so cool looking, you would play with them more than you did with the core four.

If you had the figures, most likely you had the RetroMutagen Ooze. This was the coolest looking stuff in the world, i don't even know where to start. You could pour them on your figures or just play with it by itself...either way you probably got it all over the place and were going to get in trouble regardless. I really want to find some now...

After dinner, my mom would take me to the Hostess outlet in Neptune, NJ next to Belmar, NJ and they ALWAYS had the Turtles pies. I always got these, but NEVER could eat them haha. They tasted awful but looked so awesome. I would end up just eating the orange cupcakes and giving my TMNT pie to my sister. But this was one of the lasting images of TMNT in my mind's eye.

Lets go to the movies tonight! Only option for you, TMNT fan, is the TMNT live action movie. Corey Feldman as Donatello? Yes, please. The guy who played Casey Jones, i just noticed, was in Shutter Island...yeah he plays the dude that he thought burned down his apartment or house, whatever. Ok, so this was a nice end to your TMNT day, can't think of a better way to end it...except going home and throwing on a sweet TMNT costume...