Catch Ninja Turtles on Satellite TV

One of the most popular, yet at the same time most bizarre television success stories of the 1980s and 1990s was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," well known to any child who grew up during this time period. This was a highly influential TV show, whose reruns you can still catch on satellite TV, and this program eventually spawned movies, video games, and mountains of merchandise.

It really is hard to explain the combination of random cultural elements that makes up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crew, other than to say that a twisted brain must truly have been at work. The show revolves around four "ninja turtles," all inexplicably named after Italian Renaissance painters (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello) who gained numerous human-like traits after being exposed to some sort of "mutagen." An elderly rat named Splinter, also exposed to this chemical, becomes their mentor and "sensei" in the way of the ninja. They do battle with an evil ninja named Shredder during episode after episode, as well as a space alien named Krang. Also, for no apparent reason, one of the "ninja turtles" talks with the male equivalent of a California "valley girl" accent.

While the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actually started as a comic book in the mid-1980s, they quickly became a full-blown cultural phenomenon of the time. At one point, people were actually licensed to dress up as the Ninja Turtles and go on a concert tour playing songs specially written for the occasion. Believe it or not, the tour actually started at Radio City Music Hall, demonstrating the hugeness of the Ninja Turtles phenomenon. This is a bit ironic considering that the creators of the Ninja Turtles had intended for them to be much more violent in the comic books and not necessarily a family-friendly production. Notwithstanding this, the market apparently saw something in the Ninja Turtles, and turned it into a true trend of this era. In retrospect, however, much of their output seems dated; for example, their tie-in with then-popular rapper "Vanilla Ice" in their second full-length movie.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was an important cartoon that presaged much of the children's entertainment of the 1990s and 2000s. Turning on any block of cartoon shows with your satellite TV service will probably present you with a variety of cartoon shows in which anthropomorphic animals use superpowers to fight crime, and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" may be seen as one of the reasons cartoon shows about superheroes became popular again during this era. It's possible that the show also represented a break between the somewhat stoic and wholesome cartoons of the 1980s and prior (think of the preachy anti-drug messages in shows like "GI Joe") and the edgier children's cartoons that came after, with even Spongebob Squarepants, for example, introducing obvious coded drug references in certain episodes you can catch on your satellite TV.

Try catching back episodes of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" with a reliable satellite TV service available through cableteleVISIOn.net/.