Moms, dads, get this straight, because you`ll be tested on it later: On the side of evil is the Shredder, leader of the dreaded Foot clan, the most feared warriors and assassins in all Japan. And the good guys? Well, they`re turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be exact.
Never heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Relax, you will. If you haven`t seen them on ”Evening Magazine,” Toys-R-Us commercials or in People magazine, you will see them in their own half-hour syndicated cartoon show
(10:30 a.m., Sunday, WPWR-Ch. 50), in toy stores, on T-shirts and cereal boxes and on the Nintendo game the kids have been asking for. And what do you know about that? Just in time for Christmas.
Thrust by fate into a pool of goo in the sewers of New York, they mutated quickly into teenhood and became smarter and larger than any other turtles in the land. Raised by Splinter, the mutant pet rat of a Ninja master, they learned a few things and became the cult heroes in the half-shell they are today.
The turtles have since gone Hollywood, but their creators, laid-back comic-book artists Peter Laird, 34, and Kevin Eastman, 26, keep shop in an old industrial building in the western Massachusetts college town of Northampton. In a series of events that Laird attributes largely to ”serendipity,” the turtles have made their creators very happy and financially independent.
But it was not so long ago that the turtles, Donatello, Michaelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael, were struggling, along with their creators, to get through a long winter in a New Hampshire farmhouse. You know, kind of like
”The Shining.”
”It was probably a result of watching too much `T.J. Hooker,` `A-Team`
and `Love Connection,` ” said Laird, recalling the evening the turtles were born. ”One night we were sitting in the living room, and Kevin drew a turtle with a mask standing upright with weapons. Then I drew one, and it was like dueling sketches. We finally came up with four, each with different martial-arts skills.”
As the evening wore on, the turtles became not only Ninja but teenaged and mutant as well. Laird and Eastman thumbed through a copy of H.W. Janson`s ”History of Art” and decided to name them after their favorite Renaissance painters. Their creator gave the turtles a past, as victims of a toxic-waste accident, and a future, as goofy but earnest martial-arts crime fighters, doing battle with the Shredder and other urban villains, while keeping house in New York City with their human friend, April.
The two scraped together $1,200 and printed 3,000 copies of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book in May, 1984. The black-and-white issue, which tells of the turtles` beginnings, sold out in comics shops around the country in just three weeks and now has a collector`s value of $200.
”It was complete surprise,” Laird said. ”And we put all the money we made into a second printing.”
Six months later, when they quickly sold out all 15,000 copies of the second issue, it became clear to the two artists that they had created a niche. Eastman quit his job in a sandwich shop, Laird put his meager-paying local drawing jobs on a back burner, and they went to work full time on the turtles. Circulation nearly doubled with each issue, and to date the two have published 16 issues of the comic and 6 issues of ”Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” a spinoff publication. This year the two published a limited- edition hardcover collection of the comics.
For Laird and Eastman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the right quirky heroes at the right time. The number of specialty comic-book stores has grown dramatically in the last five years, to nearly 3,000 in towns and malls across the country. These distributors have created a market for the offbeat, often black-and-white material generally overlooked by the giant comic-book companies.
A game publisher in Detroit licensed the turtles to use in a game, and it was through the publisher that they met Mark Freedman, a Long-Island-based licensing agent. Freedman put together a licensing deal with Playmates, a California toy company that was looking for a way to get into the lucrative boys-toy market.
”They were looking for something weird, and as it turned out, turtles seemed to be it,” Laird said.
The company invested $2.5 million in an animated television show featuring the turtles and launched a line of 10 ”action figures,” complete with ”slice-and-dice arm action,” a Turtle Blimp with a detachable glider and the Cheapskate, a motorized skateboard.
Other toys and characters are due out next year.
Laird never dreamed the whole thing would go this far.
”We realized that we were real lucky and we got a break,” he said.
”Most toy lines are created in-house, so it`s really, really rare that something weird and homegrown makes it. Cabbage Patch dolls are the example that comes to mind.”
What`s the turtles` appeal?
”I don`t honestly know,” Laird said. ”One thing is that they`re cute, they`re goofy, they`re nutty and they`re inoffensive. They never want to hurt anyone, they just want to be left alone. But a friend says part of the appeal is the sense of family. They all live like brothers, with Splinter as the father figure. They squabble, but they always get back together.
”I think,” he mused, ”that there are all kinds of levels that I`m not even aware of.”
As artists/entrepreneurs, Laird and Eastman have accomplished what others dream about: Together they have earned a six-figure income from the various licensing fees, which has allowed them to hire five other artists to work under their company, Mirage Studios.
They refuse to put a sign on the studio door, to protect themselves from overzealous fans; and the income from the turtles has allowed them to finance other comic-book endeavors.
”Before the turtles took off, I used to work like a slave for the local paper and get paid $10 for a picture that they would use over and over again,” Laird said. ”I did that for six or seven years, so having gone through that and now having the freedom to do what I like to do is quite something.”
And, remarkably enough, they haven`t even had to ”sell out.” Laird and Eastman have been able to maintain some control over how the characters are represented on the cartoons and in the toys` marketing. The company often consults them about the cartoon show and new product development.
But it doesn`t always quite work out the way they`d like. The two artists recently completed a licensing agreement with a major cereal company in which the company will develop a cereal around the turtles.
Yes, you will soon be seeing turtles at your breakfast table.
Laird would like it to be something without too much sugar, maybe in whole wheat, but he doubts that his creative control will extend that far.
”It would be great,” he said, ”but the kids probably wouldn`t eat it.”
