They’re back – Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo. April is back and so is Casey Jones. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (http://www.tmnt.com) are chopping and kicking and flipping on the big screen after a long vacation from public view – long enough for some people who were huge fans when they were children to have small children of their own. That’s called marketing.
The toys are already out there. I loved Superman as a kid. So what happens? About the time my kids are coming along, miraculously, Superman movies are huge again. And so are the expensive toys and action figures. Star Wars spanned two generations and Batman (cool in comics, goofy on TV, cool and goofy and cool again) came back just in time to do a revival tour through the nation’s cultural arenas. Spider-Man is doing his “Rocky 12″ impression as well.
Nostalgia is a powerful brand. Proven franchises, cross-generational connections … this stuff is not a coincidence. Smart branders are pulling the strings behind the curtain because these things are sticky. How big will the newest CGI’d Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be? “Nucular,” like Dubya says the word.
There was a time when my two sons were thoroughly convinced they were Michelangelo and Raphael. They owned all of the requisite paraphernalia. They had the videos, all of the various action figures, the blimp the swords – basically, they had more amphibian junk than any two little boys could possibly play with in a month if they never touched the same toy twice.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a big deal at our house and I have the receipts to prove it. My sons (in college now) knew every nuance, every phrase, every detail down to how each turtle would react in a given situation. They spent more time with the TMNT than they currently have spent in college. Sad, maybe, until you look back at your past and think about how much time you spent with your video games or music or movies or TV. Add it up; you’ll be surprised.
Once, at an auto show, our middle son (Raphael) saw a costumed character in a Raphael outfit and went into a serious Mutant Ninja Turtle vapor lock. He stood in such awe of this foamed turtilian replica of his imaginary hero that we thought he would not be brought back to the real world where turtles live in bowls and swamps and smell like salmonella.
Our oldest son wasn’t much better. He could mimic Leonardo to such a clever degree that we thought he might have a career in martial arts. I have been hit by a plastic ninja sword on more than a hundred occasions.
I am more familiar with the TMNT characters than I am with Steinbeck’s characters or Hemingway’s and I read all of that stuff, some more than once. In American culture, TMNT were and will be bigger than Faulkner and Melville and F. Scott Fitzgerald and likely all of them combined, with Poe and Hawthorne thrown in just to fill the pot.
We are a nation of pop cultural fixations whether it be the vagaries of a political party’s particular current bent aimed at sucking in our votes or an entertainment phenomenon (can you say “300″?). Like it or not, Shrek is bigger than Moby Dick. Clint Eastwood asleep has eclipsed Hitchcock on his best day. American Idol determines more about musical tastes than The Beatles in their heyday. Truth hurts.
You may not like it and you may say that those statements are wrong. You are certainly welcome to your opinion – right up until you buy those tickets to go see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles playing on 8 of the 24 screens at the Regal Cinema. Action figures sold separately.