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1:51

Roman Mars. 1984

1:57

was a banner year for sci-fi and fantasy.

2:00

Iconic villains like Freddy Krueger and the Terminator

2:02

hit the big screen for the first time.

2:05

William Gibson's neuromancer turbocharged the

2:07

cyberpunk genre. Plus franchises

2:09

like the Transformers and Teenage Mutant

2:12

Ninja Turtles burst onto the scene

2:14

and quickly took up residence on

2:16

TV, in comic books, and on

2:18

toy store shelves. Our

2:21

friend Eric Malinsky noticed this Cambrian explosion

2:23

of creativity that happened 40 years ago

2:25

and produced a fantastic series of episodes

2:28

about it for his podcast, Imaginary World.

2:31

This episode is about the aforementioned

2:33

Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

2:35

two cultural forces that came about

2:37

just at the time in 1984

2:39

when business people fully recognized that

2:41

the toys and the media that

2:44

accompanied them were influencing each other

2:46

in a constant back and forth

2:48

conversation. Whether the creative people working

2:50

on them liked it or

2:52

not. You're

2:58

listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how

3:00

we create them and why we suspend our

3:02

disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I

3:06

have often talked about how much I love action figures.

3:09

When I was a kid, they were my gateway

3:11

to another world. After a

3:13

while, I didn't even have to play with

3:15

them. I just hold my Luke Skywalker action

3:17

figure and go into a catatonic state. My

3:20

parents used to say I was looking out. As

3:23

far as I knew, movies and TV shows

3:26

aimed at kids always came

3:28

with action figures. That's the way

3:30

things were. But

3:32

when George Lucas pitched the idea of

3:34

Star Wars action figures to toy companies

3:36

in 1976, a

3:39

lot of companies turned him down. Except

3:41

for one company in Cincinnati, Kenner.

3:45

Kenner ended up minting money with

3:47

those Star Wars toys. The

3:50

other companies must have been jealous. But

3:53

Star Wars was a phenomenon. I

3:55

mean, how do you reverse engineer that? They

3:58

could wait until the next Star Wars fell into the air. to their

4:00

laps, but there was only one George

4:02

Lucas. And the toy companies

4:04

were getting burned by filmmakers claiming to have

4:06

the next Star Wars, but

4:09

the movies were flops and the toys

4:11

sat on shelves. If

4:13

only the toy companies could make their own

4:15

media. You know, TV shows

4:17

that star the toys that they want to

4:19

sell. Well, they're

4:21

about to get a helping hand from

4:24

Ronald Reagan. One of

4:26

Reagan's main goals was deregulation. In

4:29

1983 and 84, government

4:31

agencies that monitor advertising and

4:33

content in children's television declared

4:36

that the marketplace should decide what gets

4:38

put on the air, not the government.

4:41

But even though Reagan was creating this

4:44

very corporate friendly environment, the

4:46

toy companies didn't know how to take

4:48

advantage of it at first. They didn't

4:51

have a master plan on how to

4:53

conquer the minds of kids to get

4:55

us to convince our parents that our

4:57

entire happiness depended on getting that new

4:59

toy. And I can say

5:01

this from personal experience, it was dangerous to bring

5:03

me to Toys R Us because I would beg

5:05

my mom that I really, really, really needed that

5:08

new action figure. And she'd say, but don't

5:10

you have a lot of those toys? No, well, okay, fine.

5:12

I have that guy and that guy and that guy, but I

5:14

don't have this guy. From

5:17

an adult perspective, it's easy to get very cynical about

5:19

this. But Isaac

5:21

Elliott Fisher is a documentary filmmaker who's

5:23

made films about toys. He's also a

5:25

toy designer and he runs a toy

5:27

store in Ontario. He

5:29

says there's a misconception that kids would

5:31

want anything you put on TV. You

5:35

had to be really good to rise to the

5:37

top. You had to be good designers. You had

5:39

to be good writers. There had to be a

5:41

certain level of disassociation between the

5:43

writer and the cartoon company and the toys, not

5:46

based on regulation, but based on if you wanted

5:48

this to be good, it had to be written

5:50

well. After

5:53

turning down Star Wars, a lot of toy

5:55

companies were now in the position of trying

5:57

to compete with Star Wars. Mattel

6:00

was one of the first companies to figure it out, and

6:03

they kind of fell into it. In

6:05

the early 80s, people at Mattel were

6:07

brainstorming ideas, and one

6:09

of their concept guys, named Roger Sweet,

6:12

pitched a bunch of characters which got

6:14

rejected. And then he

6:16

made like a furry barbarian, and he called it He-Man.

6:19

And apparently Roger Sweet coins it in that moment

6:21

as He-Man. So he brings us a product demo

6:23

and everybody's like, whoa, yeah, okay. We've

6:26

tested all these different things with voice. One

6:29

theme seems to be the thing. So if we

6:31

take a barbarian cone in and mix it with

6:33

Star Wars, that'll be the thing. But

6:36

Star Wars had a story. He-Man

6:39

did not. They

6:41

don't know how to tell the story, so the

6:43

guys, the marketing guys, just come up with stupid

6:45

names like, we're going to have like, He-Man, and

6:48

then The-Man instead of Skeletor wasn't that. And he's

6:50

like, and C-Man, and then somebody

6:52

else in the office is like, no, you should try it, Merman.

6:55

Yeah, Merman, that's better than C-Man, that's good. Oh,

6:57

Man was one of them. Nope, no, Ken Ed Wollman, we'll

6:59

call her Tealiff. There's actually

7:01

a very complicated backstory as to which

7:03

people deserve credit for coming up with

7:06

He-Man and the other aspects of the

7:08

Masters of the Universe line. But

7:11

that's the nature with these corporate products. Everybody

7:13

has a hand in it, but ultimately everything

7:16

they do is for Mattel. Mattel

7:19

also commissioned mini comic books that came

7:21

with the toys to explain who the

7:24

characters were, and they

7:26

made commercials with a company

7:28

called Filmatian. He-Man, He-Man. Who's

7:31

the big guy with the muscles?

7:33

He's He-Man, the most powerful man

7:35

in the universe. And you

7:37

were allowed to have X amount of animated

7:40

fantasy content within a toy commercial, so you

7:42

had to have a certain percentage of it

7:44

be real world. So it's like

7:46

a dad and his kids going, I let my

7:48

kids play with Castle Greyskull from Mattel. And then

7:50

it's like, they have this little animated bit in

7:52

the middle. And it's somewhere in there, Lou Scheimer

7:55

at Filmatian said, well, hey, this could be a show. It's

8:04

amazing to me how little coordination there

8:06

was. The people who designed the

8:08

toys had no idea what was in

8:10

the cartoon until it was done. So

8:13

these guys were like all over the map,

8:15

whether it was a cartoon or a media

8:17

product or anything, just things were happening so

8:20

quickly. Even though Mattel

8:22

owned the block of time that was

8:24

then syndicated for that cartoon so they

8:26

could sell the commercial spots even to

8:28

themselves and make more money off those

8:30

commercial spots than the show. Even

8:33

though they were paying essentially for that

8:36

cartoon to happen, the

8:38

writers worked for Filmation. So

8:40

you had these layers of separation.

8:43

The comics that Mattel commissioned were

8:46

more serious and action-packed. The

8:48

cartoon had goofy humor and life lessons

8:50

at the end of each episode. When

8:53

we go to the beach, there are lifeguards there

8:55

to watch out for our safety. A sword or

8:57

any other symbol doesn't make a person a good

8:59

leader. What does is intelligence.

9:02

Drugs don't make your problems go away. They

9:05

just create more. The

9:08

He-Man cartoon launched in the fall of 1983. It

9:12

was a huge hit. The

9:14

toys had been around for a year, but

9:17

suddenly their sails skyrocketed.

9:22

There's actually a word for this phenomenon. Toyetic.

9:26

Toyetic refers to a media property where

9:28

there's so much overlap between the toys,

9:31

the content, and the advertising that you

9:33

don't know where one begins and the

9:35

other ends. In

9:37

1984, I was aging out of

9:39

the demographic of children that these companies were

9:42

trying to reach. But

9:44

I was very aware of what the new toys

9:46

and cartoons were. And I

9:48

remember reading opinion pieces from concerned parents

9:50

who were saying, this is awful for

9:52

opening the floodgates of visual junk food

9:55

for kids. And

9:57

I remember thinking, what's wrong

9:59

with that? In

10:01

part 3 of our mini-series on iconic works that

10:04

came out in 1984, we're going to look at

10:07

two toyetic franchises that launched

10:09

40 years ago. Transformers

10:13

and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They

10:16

dominated TV and toy stores for years.

10:19

But each property struggled with the same question.

10:22

What happens when the merchandise you sell to

10:24

promote a story starts driving

10:27

the story? Or to put

10:29

it another way, when the cart comes

10:31

before the horse, are you

10:33

still going anywhere? Let's

10:39

stay in 1983 for a little bit longer. The

10:43

industry now had a clear business plan, and Mattel

10:45

was not the only company to figure it out.

10:48

Hasbro took a similar approach with G.I.

10:50

Joe. They combined a new toy

10:52

line with comics and a cartoon show, and they

10:54

gave Star Wars a run for its money. But

10:58

Hasbro wasn't satisfied. They

11:00

wanted to find another franchise that they could launch in 1984.

11:04

And there's one way to do it very quickly. Looked

11:07

at Japan, which had its own booming toy

11:09

market. So Hasbro made

11:12

a deal with a Japanese company called

11:14

Takara Tomy. They made these

11:16

robots that could turn into vehicles and other

11:18

objects. The execs at

11:20

Hasbro thought, we could rebrand those

11:22

and sell them in the U.S. They

11:25

hired an ad agency to come up with a new

11:27

name for the toys, Transformers.

11:30

The agency also came up with the names of the good

11:32

guys and the bad guys, Autobots

11:34

and Decepticons. And

11:37

of course, Hasbro wanted to have a comic book

11:39

and a TV show to go with their new

11:41

property. So they hired

11:43

Marvel to create a series of comics

11:46

which would explain who the characters were.

11:49

Hasbro didn't even know who the characters were. So

11:52

what was going on at Marvel at the time? Now

11:55

remember, this is way before the MCU. Their

11:58

focus, comic books. And

12:00

they were going to launch a huge crossover event in

12:02

1984 called Secret Wars. The

12:06

character Venom was first introduced in those

12:09

comics. Who would rather

12:11

write comics for a toy company instead? There

12:14

were not many takers at Marvel. But

12:17

Bob Budiansky was interested. You

12:19

know, any opportunity at Marvel, to

12:22

my mind, was a good opportunity. One

12:24

thing would always lead to the next thing. So getting a

12:27

gig writing a toy book was the same to

12:29

me as anything else. It was just stepping stone

12:31

to the next place. The

12:33

treatment had already gone through another writer. Everything

12:36

that writer came up with had been rejected. Except

12:39

for one thing. Bob's editor liked

12:41

one of the names the other writer had come up

12:43

with. Optimus Prime. So

12:46

in November of 1983, Bob

12:48

was sitting in his office. His

12:50

editor came in and dumped a box of

12:52

toys on his desk. He

12:55

had a book called The Good

12:58

Guys. And he said, these are the bad guys, these

13:00

are the good guys, can you develop 26 characters over

13:02

this weekend? Meaning coming up with

13:05

their names and their character

13:07

profiles. So I said, yeah, sure, I can do that.

13:10

Alright, so let's go through the names. How did you come, tell

13:13

me about the names. Megatron, of course, going to start with

13:15

him. Okay, well Megatron, actually Megatron is a

13:17

good name to start with. Because probably of all the names

13:19

they came up with, and they came up with about 250

13:21

names over the years. That's

13:23

probably my favorite. And I came up with that

13:25

right from the get go. At the

13:27

time, back in the mid

13:30

1980s, the term mega, the connotation

13:32

for that was kind of negative

13:34

because it was associated with megatons.

13:37

And megatons was the word to

13:39

describe the destructive power of nuclear bombs.

13:42

And Tron was just your

13:44

standard suffix having to do

13:46

with electronics or technology. So I just put

13:49

the two words together, megatron. And

13:52

I thought, that sounds really good. That's a

13:54

nice melodic sound to it. And

13:57

it has this feeling of danger and some kind

13:59

of... kind of threatening character. And so that was

14:01

a name where, like all

14:03

the names had to run it by Hasbro, they had

14:05

to make the final decision, they had to make sure

14:07

the legal department approved it, so and so on. And

14:10

that was a name that to my surprise, Hasbro

14:13

rejected, but not for any legal reasons. So

14:15

I actually spoke to my liaison over

14:18

at Hasbro and I said, so Negatron,

14:20

why did you guys decide to reject

14:22

it? And the answer was, well,

14:24

we thought about it, we

14:27

thought it sounded too scary. And

14:29

I was kind of surprised at that, because

14:31

as I kind of gently pointed out to them,

14:34

he's the leader of the bad guys, he should sound like

14:36

a very scary character. They thought

14:38

about it and he said, yeah, you're right, we'll go with

14:40

Negatron. So I saved Negatron. Now

14:43

we can accomplish the purpose of

14:45

our little visit, the

14:47

total destruction of our helpless

14:50

souls. Another

14:54

breakout character that Bob came up with

14:56

was Bumblebee. So

14:58

Bumblebee started out as a

15:01

VW bug, the toy was painted yellow

15:03

and black and he was small.

15:05

So I was looking for a name that

15:08

had the connection to yellow and black, small,

15:11

a bug, but

15:14

I didn't want him to look, to sound like

15:16

a complete weakling, because even though he was small,

15:18

he needed to, he was part of the

15:20

auto box, he was a fighter. I thought, well, Bumblebee is

15:22

a good name to associate all

15:24

those different qualities. You

15:27

sure we did the right thing in

15:29

coming here, Bumblebee? No, but we

15:31

can hardly stay behind either. Come

15:34

on. They

15:37

launched the franchise in 1984. Would

15:40

they get their He-Man moment? Do they

15:42

put all the pieces in place? Of

15:45

course they did. Now, everything

15:47

that Bob established in the comics was

15:49

canon and then those comics were

15:51

sent to the animation company, so they knew who

15:54

the characters were, but they

15:56

could come up with their own storylines for the

15:58

cartoon show. After that,

16:00

I had no connection to the animated

16:02

series. In my entire life, I've never

16:04

sat down and watched one single episode of what was

16:06

going on. Which is amazing

16:08

to me because I remember the show being all

16:11

over TV. Although

16:14

I actually haven't listened to the song in almost

16:16

40 years, and I cannot believe

16:18

how good it is. I

16:23

love the minor chords and the harmonizing. It

16:26

actually makes me feel like the stakes are high

16:28

in this battle of good versus evil. And

16:32

of course, they use the song in the commercials, along

16:35

with the animation from the show, until

16:37

the live action kids suddenly appeared, playing

16:39

with the toys. I

16:44

remember talking to a Hasbro executive at the time

16:47

I was working in Transformers, and

16:49

she said that if a toy comes

16:52

out and lasts two holiday

16:54

seasons, in other words, it's

16:56

introduced in the fall of the year, right before

16:58

Christmas holidays and so on. But

17:00

the last two holiday seasons, that's considered

17:02

a success in the toy industry. Two

17:06

holiday seasons later, Transformers was

17:08

not slowing down. But

17:11

Hasbro was not going to feel content. They

17:14

say if your business isn't growing, it's dying.

17:16

And they felt an imperative to keep adding

17:19

new characters and new toys. And

17:21

all of these new characters had to be introduced in

17:23

the comics. I had

17:26

to come up with all different ways of

17:28

finding access into the

17:30

story life, all these new characters. Like they're

17:32

on Earth, but they're on Cybertron. How do

17:34

these guys on Cybertron, this distant planet, all

17:37

of a sudden show up in my storyline on Earth? I

17:40

came up with something called the creation matrix. Like

17:42

how do these mechanical life forms come

17:44

up with new mechanical life forms? They're asexual.

17:46

They don't reproduce like we do.

17:49

So the creation matrix was basically a

17:52

very sophisticated program that the leader of

17:54

the auto box had access to. And

17:57

through that creation matrix, he can create new

17:59

mechanical life. Another way was

18:01

I created a space bridge. So this was

18:03

a bridge that went from

18:06

Cybertron through some kind of

18:08

a wormhole or something and landed

18:10

on Earth. Was that a

18:12

challenge in terms of you know you're writing your

18:14

stories you're planning things out and they're like here's

18:16

a bunch of new characters we're selling these toys

18:19

you need to incorporate this into your scripts? Well

18:21

that first of all that describes almost to a

18:23

T exactly what you know where Hasbro was coming

18:25

from yes. They looked

18:27

at the comic book as a vehicle to more market

18:30

their toys to sell more toys. It became more and

18:32

more of a burden to come up with new ways

18:34

to introduce all these new toys. Also

18:37

simultaneously I was writing stories

18:39

that featured certain characters and

18:41

then I'd have to kind of gently push them

18:43

aside because I needed to make space for all these

18:45

other characters that I wanted to introduce in the story.

18:49

When it came to the animation Hasbro

18:51

did not gently push the

18:53

characters aside. They made

18:55

the decision to kill off

18:58

many of the characters introduced in

19:00

the 1984 toy line so

19:02

they could clear the shelves for the next line of

19:04

toys and they killed

19:07

them off in the first half

19:09

hour of the animated Transformers movie.

19:13

Prime you can't die. Do

19:15

not grieve. Soon

19:20

I shall be warned

19:22

of the Matrix. Right?

19:27

But kids didn't think of these characters as

19:29

just toys. They were sobbing

19:31

in the theaters. And

19:34

all of this product churn took a

19:36

toll on Bob as well. I was

19:39

burnt out. I was trying to get off the books

19:41

for probably up to a year before that. My

19:43

editor kept begging me please stay on the books because I

19:45

don't know who else I can get to write this thing.

19:48

He finally found a replacement in 1989 but at that

19:50

point the franchise

19:53

was losing steam. He

19:56

thought he put Transformers behind him. And

19:59

then in 2004 for. The

20:01

first Transformers convention I went to, I like

20:04

to describe it as my eldest moment, a

20:06

young man was walking by and he

20:08

says, if you, you're

20:11

him, you're him. And

20:14

I realized then like, yeah,

20:16

I did something really special. I take

20:18

a sense of pride in the fact that these

20:21

stories and these characters that I wrote now

20:24

almost 40 years ago are still

20:26

around and the people still really care about it.

20:29

Although he doesn't feel a sense of ownership

20:31

over it. I mean he literally

20:33

doesn't own it. I

20:36

was a cog in the machine. I was,

20:38

if they, if they didn't choose me to

20:40

develop those characters and ultimately write the comic

20:42

book, Marvel would have found somebody else.

20:45

It just happened to be me. And in fact I wasn't even the

20:47

first choice or the second choice. I was like

20:50

about fourth or fifth choice. But

20:53

that's the way it goes with toyetic franchises.

20:56

How could it have gone any differently? Coming

20:59

up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

21:01

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your first purchase of a website or domain. We're

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24:49

me tell you another story. The story that ends

24:51

up in the same place, but it begins with

24:53

a very humble origins. And

24:55

this story does not start with a top

24:58

down corporate strategy and everybody working in their

25:00

separate silos. It doesn't

25:02

start with ideas being focus grouped and market

25:04

tested. And it doesn't

25:06

involve company employees who share a tiny bit

25:08

of the credit and even less of

25:10

the profits. Let's

25:13

rewind our VHS cassette of time back

25:16

to 1983. We're

25:18

no longer in a corporate headquarters in a

25:20

major city. We're now in a

25:22

small town in New Hampshire. At

25:24

the headquarters of Mirage Studios,

25:27

which is actually in somebody's house. The

25:30

name Mirage was itself kind of a,

25:32

you know, joke and a commentary in

25:34

the studio, because they didn't actually have

25:37

a professional studio space. They didn't have

25:39

anybody working for them other than those

25:41

two guys, Kevin and Peter. That

25:44

is Andrew Ferrago. He is the

25:46

curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in

25:48

San Francisco, and he's written several books

25:50

about cartoons and comics. The

25:53

Kevin and Peter that he's referring to are Kevin

25:55

Eastman and Peter Laird. Andrew

25:58

says one night in 1984, Kevin

26:01

and Peter were working at their desks. It

26:03

was late. They were getting antsy. They

26:06

needed a break. So

26:08

they decided, let's do one of our usual things

26:10

and just try to crack each other up. So

26:12

one of them hit upon the idea of, you

26:15

know, I'm going to draw a goofy turtle character. Let's

26:17

take a turtle, outfit him as a ninja,

26:19

give him some weapons. They kept adding

26:22

to it, so they drew extra turtles. And

26:24

by the end of the night, they had actually hit upon the name,

26:28

teenage mutant ninja turtles. Then

26:31

they realized, this is actually kind of

26:33

cool. We can make a comic book

26:35

about this. In

26:38

1984, they were ready to bring their

26:40

comic to a local comic convention in

26:42

Portsmouth, New Hampshire. To get

26:44

some attention, they put out a press

26:46

release. Touting the fact

26:49

that this was, as far as they knew, the

26:51

first professional comic book created and printed

26:53

in New Hampshire. The

26:55

combination of that really unforgettable title,

26:57

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And

27:00

fortunately for them, a slow news day. The

27:02

Associated Press picked up on it. And

27:05

just like that, coast to

27:07

coast, their pictures were in the

27:09

newspaper. Before the convention even

27:12

happened, they'd heard from comic bookstores

27:14

nationwide who wanted to order copies of this for

27:16

their shops. Earlier,

27:19

we heard from Isaac Elliott Fisher. He's

27:21

currently working on his second documentary

27:23

about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They

27:26

only printed 3,000 copies of the first issue.

27:29

And they sell out very, very quickly. And they thought they were

27:31

like, they always said they thought they were going to be burning

27:33

them to keep warm that winter. I mean,

27:35

they killed their main bad guy in the first book.

27:37

I mean, Shredder is killed in the first issue. They

27:40

never intended on doing another one. But

27:42

at some point, when they had sold out very quickly

27:44

and they were doing other printing, they went, wait a

27:46

minute. They did the math. They wrote it

27:48

down. They said, if we did a book

27:51

every two months or whatever, we

27:53

could make like $2,000 each per book. And

27:57

that was huge. You know, for them, they were making

27:59

like 4,000 copies. $1,000 a year if they were lucky.

28:02

They hired a few more artists and

28:04

Mirage Studios was no longer a Mirage.

28:07

It was a fully fledged studio. A

28:11

few years later, a business entrepreneur named

28:13

Mark Friedman arranged a meeting with Kevin

28:15

and Peter. Andrew says Mark was

28:18

a lot like them. He was an up

28:20

and comer who punched above his weight. And

28:22

he thought the turtles could be

28:24

the next Transformers. Mark

28:27

approached them and said, you know, I

28:29

think we've got something here. Let

28:31

me have turtles for a month. Let me take it out

28:34

to the West Coast, shop it around, see what I can

28:36

do. You know, if you're happy with

28:38

what I'm doing, we'll keep it going. If not, you

28:40

know, we'll part ways, no hard feelings. They

28:42

said, sure, you've got the enthusiasm.

28:45

You're excited about us. We're

28:48

not really thinking about anything beyond the comic book

28:50

at this point anyway. So go for it. Oh,

28:53

they said one more thing. If you

28:55

sell this to toy companies or whatever, we

28:58

still retain full ownership. And

29:00

he said, OK, that'll be part

29:02

of the deal. Mark

29:05

Friedman went out to pitch what was

29:07

going to become the next toyetic phenomenon.

29:11

And it didn't go well. Although

29:13

I can imagine the perspective of the toy companies.

29:16

The comic book was gritty. It

29:18

was not aimed at young kids. The word

29:20

teenage was right in the title. Speaking

29:23

of the title, mutants come from nuclear

29:25

waste. Ninjas are violent. Turtles

29:28

are slow and boring. Whoever

29:30

thought you could actually sell this to kids? He

29:33

finally found a company that was interested. Playmates

29:36

had success making dolls and

29:39

they wanted to break into the action figure market. He

29:42

had a convincing pitch. He explained this is

29:44

the potential I see in turtles. It could

29:46

be the next he-man, could be the next

29:48

Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers. Playmates

29:51

bought the pitch. Now

29:54

they needed a cartoon show because that's

29:56

how you launch a toyetic franchise. Remember

29:59

how While the designers at Mattel had no connection

30:01

with the He-Man cartoon show, Bob

30:04

Budiansky never saw the

30:06

Transformers cartoon show. When

30:09

playmates developed a cartoon show for Turtles,

30:12

Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman were in all

30:14

of those meetings. They

30:16

still owned the whole thing. And

30:19

when Isaac was working on his first documentary about the

30:21

Turtles, Peter Laird gave him access

30:23

to footage from that time. Kevin

30:26

and Peter get brought into these boardroom

30:28

meetings and Peter records the whole darn

30:30

thing on camera every time. And they

30:32

let him? Yeah. And it's

30:34

so fascinating because all of this is creative process. So

30:36

it's iterative. What if we did this? What if we

30:38

did that? What if, because the Turtles and the comic

30:41

books were black and white, they all looked exactly the

30:43

same. And if they were in color, they all had

30:45

red bandanas. So how are kids

30:47

going to tell them apart? Well, let's

30:49

make them all different colors. Great idea. Let's

30:51

put different, you know, initials on

30:53

the belt buckles. And at the time

30:55

they were like convinced that the playmates was designing

30:58

ideas of like all the bad guys should be these

31:00

like human-esque bad guys. And Shredder is a good bad

31:02

guy. So we'll bring back Shredder. But

31:04

all of his henchmen should be like angry

31:06

mutated dudes from New York, like a taxi driver

31:09

or a mechanic with a wrench for an arm.

31:11

And Peter kept saying on camera in these meetings,

31:14

he kept saying, what if they were like mutants

31:16

in human clothing? Like what if they were wearing

31:18

like khaki pants or camo or

31:20

something? And he was drawing

31:22

mutant rhino and a mutant warthog.

31:25

He was drawing bebop and rocksteady in those meetings.

31:28

Hop and Rocksteady are henchmen of the main

31:30

villain, Shredder. Well,

31:32

well, well, looky what we

31:35

found. We

31:37

got a score to settle with you

31:39

little twipes. The

31:41

amazing thing to me is that Peter and Kevin

31:43

were not precious about this world they created. You

31:46

need us to age it down for younger kids? No

31:49

problem. Just let us in the meetings. But

31:53

Andrew says they didn't foresee how huge this was

31:55

going to be. They thought it

31:57

would bring in some extra work, some extra cash. This

32:00

was great because they could make comic

32:02

books, they could draw all day, they

32:04

could employ even more artists, even more

32:07

friends of theirs. Come

32:09

on, Thunder! When

32:12

that cartoon and that toy line launched,

32:15

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went

32:17

from niche to ubiquitous almost

32:20

overnight. Turtles fight with

32:22

honor! Move

32:24

over He-Man, move over Transformers, those

32:27

shells are going to be dominated by

32:29

turtles for years to come.

32:32

Take cover! The footer attacking with

32:34

their sewer balls! Watch out turtles

32:36

or you'll wind up in the

32:38

recovery room! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

32:41

from Playmate! Peter

32:44

and Kevin wanted to make money, creating

32:46

something that they love. Be

32:49

careful what you wish for. The

32:52

Turtles product line launched in the late 1980s. Isaac

32:56

says everything changed for Kevin

32:58

Eastman and Peter Laird. Multi-million

33:00

dollar checks are rolling in every single day. Kevin

33:03

would often say people would think that they must

33:05

be cashing checks and sitting on a beach somewhere

33:08

and not doing anything. It's like, no, they were working

33:10

90 hour weeks every week. Isaac

33:12

says before that, they spent most

33:14

of their time drawing comics. They

33:17

handled the business maybe 10% of the time. Now.

33:21

They're doing business 99% of the time and

33:23

don't have any time to draw anymore because

33:26

all of a sudden you're handling massive, massive amounts

33:28

of business because it's like you're a cereal company

33:30

and you want to put turtles in cereal and

33:32

sell more cereal. Well, you got to do all

33:34

these contracts for that and you have to approve

33:36

all the art and now you've got to take

33:39

your internal art guys and make them into marketing

33:41

art creators because if the cereal company, which

33:43

would often happen, they would kind of do

33:45

their art. They would send it to them

33:47

and go, whoa, whoa, no, the turtles aren't

33:49

purple. What is this? When

33:52

we were kids consuming every turtle

33:54

thing, which there were ungodly amount

33:56

of, every single one of those things had

33:59

to go through Kevin and Pete. Peter's hands. And

34:01

nobody, none of us knew that. None of us thought,

34:03

oh, there's these two independent comic book guys. We're just

34:05

like, oh, it's a corporate machine. They

34:07

were handling the kind of toyetic empire

34:09

that Hasbro and Mattel had handled, but

34:12

without the benefit of a corporate structure. And

34:15

Turtles was arguably bigger at the time

34:17

because they had a live action film

34:19

franchise running alongside the cartoon. The

34:22

first live action Turtles movie broke

34:24

the record for the highest grossing

34:26

independent film. According

34:28

to Isaac, Peter was the more

34:30

cautious one. He was a little

34:32

older. He was already settled down. Kevin

34:35

was more adventurous. He tried

34:37

out different business ventures that sometimes flopped.

34:40

He also bought a tank and

34:43

a batmobile. And they approached the

34:45

Turtles differently when people came to them with

34:47

new ideas. Peter

34:49

would be notorious for the rest of the

34:51

ownership of the Turtles for being very specific,

34:53

very much hands on. This needs to be

34:55

like this. And Kevin was much more

34:57

open. All of

34:59

that came to a head in the mid

35:01

1990s. The Turtles craze

35:04

was starting to wind down. The

35:07

hot new thing were Power Rangers. The

35:10

company Saban, which made the Power Rangers

35:12

show, approached Kevin and Peter

35:14

about doing a live action Turtles TV

35:16

show. But Saban wanted

35:19

to add a fifth Turtle character,

35:21

a girl Turtle. This

35:24

was not a total surprise. Andrew

35:26

says the toy company and the

35:28

animation studio had been asking for

35:30

more Turtle characters, especially

35:32

a girl Turtle. But Peter

35:34

and Kevin didn't really want to deviate from

35:36

the formula, which had worked so well. So

35:40

this this time around the studio came to

35:42

them and they said we want a girl

35:44

Turtle on the show. And if we don't

35:47

get it, we're going to walk away. We're not going to do the show.

35:50

We didn't take them at their word and said

35:52

we can keep everybody at Mirage Studios employed. We

35:54

can keep this going for a while. Maybe this

35:56

is the little jolt that we need to get

35:58

the Turtles through the show. this kind of

36:00

market correction or whatever you want to call

36:03

that. Peter felt that, you know,

36:05

they were still at that point, both the owners

36:07

of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he thought the

36:09

brand was valuable enough that they didn't have to

36:12

do that. You know, we can, we can walk

36:14

away. We can wait for the right opportunity. I

36:16

don't think this is it. Kevin

36:19

convinced Peter to change his mind. Saban

36:22

went ahead with the show featuring

36:24

a girl turtle. You

36:27

ain't a ninja. No, I am

36:29

Shinobi. You're a full fledged mutant,

36:31

Hottie. Do not. I mean, you're

36:33

a mutant. Oh, Hottie. No, you mean you're

36:35

like us. A mutant. The

36:39

show failed at every level.

36:42

There was backlash. Kids didn't go for it. The

36:44

fact that the toy sales, the comic books

36:46

were kind of at a low point. Everybody

36:49

was kind of collectively burnt out. Peter

36:52

Laird, I'm sure, was looking at this situation thinking, like,

36:54

you know, we sold out for no reason at all.

36:57

Eventually, Kevin decided to sell

36:59

his half of the shares to Peter so he

37:02

could get out of the business entirely. Peter

37:04

sold the franchise to Viacom. Peter

37:08

and Kevin drifted apart and

37:10

they didn't reconcile for years. Meanwhile,

37:13

the industry was changing. The

37:15

parents groups who fought against toy edicts found

37:18

a sympathetic ear with the Clinton

37:20

administration. Limits were

37:22

set on how much advertising was

37:24

allowed on children's programming and

37:27

they added educational mandates. But

37:30

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did not become

37:32

a nostalgia brand for adults, at

37:35

least not entirely. Nickelodeon

37:37

revived the franchise with a series of

37:39

new shows and movies. The

37:41

last animated film was produced by Seth Brogan.

37:45

Hey, guys, if we weren't monsters that were

37:48

shunned by society and we could do what

37:50

we wanted. What would you guys do? Go

37:52

to high school, maybe get a girlfriend. See

37:54

you. Imagine that. No, likely.

37:59

You know, the fact that. they have mutant right in

38:01

their name, I think, tells you about their

38:03

ability to adapt and change.

38:05

And I think, no pun

38:08

intended, it's such an evergreen property that

38:10

you're able to take these characters and

38:13

they never age past their teenage years. So

38:15

you've got, you always got a new crop

38:17

of teenagers coming up. You've always got kids

38:19

who admire and aspire

38:22

to be teenagers. You know, they'll reboot

38:24

and they'll kind of take a new

38:26

fresh approach roughly every five

38:28

years, whether they need it or not. Even

38:31

if they've got a series that's going well, they will

38:33

put that aside, say, let's bring

38:36

in some new creators. Let's bring in some new

38:38

perspectives on this. What can we do that's going

38:40

to be fun and interesting? In

38:43

2023, the franchise made

38:45

a billion dollars in retail

38:47

sales. But all of

38:49

that energy wasn't directed towards toys. There

38:52

were ad campaigns with fast food

38:54

chains, snack foods, video games and

38:56

clothing lines. Andrew loved

38:58

having toys as a kid, but

39:01

he has a different perspective now. As

39:04

a person with the wallet, I'm really happy that

39:07

my kid and his friends can just enjoy

39:10

entertainment and not feel this obligation

39:12

to buy things. Because

39:15

I know kids who felt left

39:18

out in the 80s because their parents

39:20

weren't buying them every single

39:22

toy that they saw on TV. They didn't

39:24

have 100 Transformers

39:27

or GoBots or He-Man characters

39:29

cluttering up their living rooms.

39:33

Isaac feels a little differently. I mean,

39:35

his kids are not begging him for action figures either,

39:38

but he actually wants to buy them action

39:40

figures. And Isaac runs a

39:42

toy store. Children

39:45

these days have no access to commercials

39:48

that give them permission or suggestion

39:50

to buy. And if nothing

39:52

is on there saying, here's what

39:54

everybody's into and here's a commercial

39:56

showing another kid my age playing

39:58

with this product. Now I'm looking

40:00

at it going, oh, I can do that. So so often in

40:02

my store, I'll have adults come in and say, man, I buy

40:05

action figures from a kid, but they don't know how to play

40:07

with them. They actually have lost

40:09

the language of how to

40:11

do it collectively. Now

40:13

they are still making action figures

40:15

of He-Man, Transformers, and teenage mutant

40:18

Ninja Turtles, and there are

40:20

action figures of just about every character in Star

40:22

Wars, DC, and Marvel. But the

40:24

biggest driver of toy sales today

40:26

are adults. It's actually

40:28

called the kid-alt market. And

40:31

some of these high end collectible action figures

40:33

go for hundreds of dollars. Isaac

40:36

thinks the culture lost something

40:38

when that controversial relationship between

40:40

toy companies, commercial production studios,

40:43

and animation studios was broken

40:45

apart. And

40:47

he has a bone to pick with the

40:49

parents groups who fought to put those regulations

40:51

in place. Cause

40:53

I mean, we can talk about content, sure. And

40:55

we want to protect kids from stuff that is,

40:58

you know, actually violent or actually too, too intense

41:00

for them, too mature. That's fine. We can all

41:02

say that. But at the end of the day,

41:04

if they were really just against them buying things,

41:06

because they're always their argument was free play, free

41:09

associative play, which is of course, is incredibly

41:11

important to do, was more like, I'm

41:14

going to make up my whole world. I'm going to

41:16

make up, doesn't matter if it's a stick or a

41:18

rock or this or a bug. I'm not going to

41:20

have anything dictated to me. So a lot of critics

41:23

would say, yeah, well, now you're saying that He-Man's good

41:25

and the Skeletor is bad. It's binary. And somebody told

41:27

me that. And now I'm just playing the scripted show.

41:30

My argument was like, no, I don't know how many

41:32

kids really went in there and went, here's the exact

41:34

script from the episode and I'm going to repeat it.

41:36

Sure. There might've been tie-ins, but at the end of

41:39

the day, it was this doorway for an

41:41

avatar play, an allegorical play where they

41:43

could conquer their own monsters. They

41:45

could be the hero. They could deal

41:47

with their anxieties. They could generate story.

41:50

Then you take that all away. And

41:52

then what is the kid going to pick up? They're going to pick up a

41:55

cell phone because that's, that's the vacuum. My

41:57

own little anecdotal moment is that my kids. stumbled

42:00

upon Godzilla as an IP. So

42:03

I have to hunt high and low to

42:05

find them the kidified pop vinyl toys that

42:07

they can play with because most of the

42:09

access is like, oh, I can buy $200

42:11

Godzilla sculptures all day long, but I can't

42:13

find a damn $30 toy

42:15

for them because of the access isn't there

42:17

at that level. So we live in

42:19

a world where it's scary and it has big things and

42:21

it has big things that kids are scared about. And

42:24

my kid had a lot of anxiety. And when

42:26

he discovered Godzilla, all of a sudden his anxiety went

42:29

out the window because you know what? He

42:31

could conquer this monster. He could take

42:33

a monster and put all of his focus,

42:35

energy and fear into something that he could

42:37

control. And that's the,

42:39

that's the beautiful thing that toys gave

42:41

us. We

42:46

began this mini series by talking about things

42:48

that scared us in 1984. I

42:51

was a kid with a lot of anxiety. Maybe

42:54

that's why I loved action figures so much.

42:58

The toyetic craze of the 1980s

43:00

was like a social experiment on a

43:03

generation of kids. No

43:05

wonder some of us grew up to become kidults. I

43:09

think our imaginations are richer because of it,

43:12

but I also can't imagine it having

43:14

been any other way. That

43:18

is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Still

43:21

thanks to Isaac Elliott Fisher, Andrew

43:23

Ferrago and Bob Budiansky. If

43:26

you want to hear more about the

43:28

creation of high-end collectible action figures, check

43:31

out my 2014 episode, one

43:33

of my first episodes. It's called

43:36

Action Figure Land. My

43:38

assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If

43:40

you like the show, please give us a shout

43:42

out on social media or leave a nice review

43:44

where you get your podcasts. I

43:51

highly recommend you subscribe to Imaginary World. We'll have a

43:53

new episode from 9 am to be visible next week.

43:57

We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM

43:59

podcast. family now headquartered six blocks

44:01

north in the Pandora building in

44:04

beautiful uptown Oakland California. You

44:06

can find us on all the usual social

44:08

media sites as well as our own discord

44:10

server which is about 2500 people

44:12

strong talking nice about architecture and power broker and

44:14

all kinds of cool things. There's a link to

44:16

that as well as every past episode of 99

44:19

PI at 99 PI. Have

44:34

you ever told a friend? Oh, I'm

44:36

fine. When you really felt...

44:38

Just so overwhelmed. Or

44:41

sent a text. Can't sleep.

44:44

Are you awake? When you couldn't find

44:46

the words to say. I'm scared

44:48

to be alone with my thoughts right now. Then

44:51

this is your sign to reach out to the

44:53

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