[YouTube] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Toys (1988) & Other Products

https://youtu.be/5bnRGZNHZjA

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) were created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird as a black and white comic book. They named the turtles after Renaissance painters: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Drawing inspiration from Marvel's Daredevil, the original comic books were on the violent side but it was turned into a kid's property and went mainstream in 1988 as a cartoon (launched at the very end of 1987), comic book (Archie Comics), and toy line, plus a live action movie in 1990. Of course, 30 years later TMNT are still going strong with more live action movies, video games, toys and a Nickelodeon cartoon.

Playmates, which I wrote about when I posted video game ads here, made the action figures and accessories which have nice detail but many of the early figures are tough to balance with a lack of knee joints. I only own a handful of the figures and two small accessories so there aren't too many shown in the video or this post. Aside from the toys, I also show the fan club items, some food tie-ins, sticker albums, and VHS tapes with a clip from the concert tour video. Below are photos and scans for everything seen in the video as well as a few other items from the late '80s/early '90s. Michelangelo's nunchuks are broken but I used Photoshop to make them look complete.

Action Figures

Action Figure Packaging

Cheapskate Toy

Turtle Trooper Toy

Turtle Force Fan Club

Chaos Chronicles Vol. 1, April 1989

Chaos Chronicles Vol. 2, Fall/Winter 1989

Chaos Chronicles Vol. 3, September 1990

Cereal

Cookies

Pudding Pie, Ellio's Pizza, and Mask

1990 Christmas Catalog

Everything Else

Gaming Ads: STD Entertainment/Interact Accessories

STD Entertainment was based in Hunt Valley, Maryland and, possibly due to its unfortunate acronym, eventually changed its name to InterAct. I'm not sure what STD was short for but it appears to have been founded in 1991, made the name change in 1994, merged with Recoton in 1995, and went out of business in 2001. One ad also features the Performance name which must have been a brand of InterAct or its parent company Recoton. Quality Joysticks and Joyplus are other STD brands too. The company made a variety of controllers though it might be best known for its products that manipulated games or save files.

As STD the company released the Game Action Replay and as InterAct it made the GameShark. It refers to the products as video game enhancers which basically means you can us them to manipulate a game. Depending on the game and the device, users can make a character invincible, give them unlimited ammunition, jump to a specific level, or something else along those lines. Another one of its accessories is the DexDrive that can transfer N64 and PlayStation game saves to a computer to back them up or send them to a friend.

STD Entertainment/Interact Accessories albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Gaming Ads: Square Soft

Masafumi Miyamoto began developing games in 1983 with his company acting as a software division of his father's construction company before officially founding Square in 1986. It's first computer game was The Death Trap, a text-based adventure with graphics from Hironobu Sakaguchi. The company took off in 1987 with the release of Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy, the role-playing game that would spawn numerous sequels and spin-offs, and is still hugely popular today. All of Square's games were available on either home computers or Nintendo platforms only until the PlayStation released; Square never published games on Sega consoles.

In 1989 a North American office was opened that was called Square Soft (sometimes spelled as one word). The naming here is a bit confusing because Square also branded some game boxes with Squaresoft in Japan. Another publishing division opened in 1998 called Square Electronic Arts that, as the name suggests, was a collaboration between Square and Electronic Arts. As I previously posted for Enix America, Square and Dragon Quest developer Enix merged in 2003 to form Square Enix. Along with both Enix and Square's catalog of games, Square Enix also holds a number of former Eidos and Taito properties, such as Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Space Invaders.

Square Soft albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Gaming Ads: Spinnaker Software and Sports Sciences

Spinnaker Software was founded in 1982 and based in Cambridge, MA. Initially it focused on educational software for computers, then adventure games in the mid '80s, and other games in the late '80s. Through a merger in 1994 it helped form SoftKey International which would go on to acquire The Learning Company and take its name. Of the five ads I've got for Spinnaker, it looks like one game was never released and The Lord of the Rings game appears to have been published by Konami instead.

Sports Sciences was based in Ohio and made one video game product as far as I can tell. That product was BatterUp, a baseball bat-shaped motion controller that released in 1994 for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and computers. While an interesting idea, the controller was, of course, only compatible with baseball games so it was a bit limited despite there being quite a few baseball games available in the '90s. The $69.99 price was rather high too.

Spinnaker Software albums: Facebook - Google Photos

Sports Sciences albums: Facebook - Google Photos