A 2003 animated series on Fox and a 2012 digitally animated series on Nickelodeon both ran for multiple seasons and had their own enthusiastic fans. Further adaptations - including several efforts to entirely overhaul or reboot the franchise - kept the Turtles fresh through the 2000s, albeit to varying degrees of effectiveness. The Turtles’ versatility across a range of media properties helped amplify their popularity. It’s now back on Netflix with a new feature-length animated film, “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.” The continual rejuvenation of a franchise that could have easily become just a pop-cultural relic begs an important question. Since its inception, the franchise has repeatedly reinvented itself with new iterations: live-action features, after-school cartoons, video games, graphic novels. What’s remarkable is that the moment has yet to come to an end. Ninja Turtles felt extremely of the moment, capturing the zeitgeist in a way that felt irresistible to kids. With their punky, slang-heavy bite and flip, easygoing demeanor, they were the embodiment of a certain brand of savvy Gen X cool that peaked with the arrival of the ’90s: sarcastic and streetwise, borrowing elements from prevailing trends like surf culture and hip-hop. Originally created in 1983 by the comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were imagined as a kind of postmodern, semi-ironic sendup of the popular superhero comics of the era, particularly Marvel’s Daredevil and X-Men. But perhaps the prime examples of the archetype are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - anthropomorphic reptiles with superpowers who live in the sewers beneath New York City, where they practice martial arts, chow down on pizza and spout hip 1980s catchphrases like “bodacious” and “cowabunga.” Poochie is a parody of a lot of different cartoon animals that have a focus-group-friendly “attitude,” from Sonic the Hedgehog to Tony the Tiger. You’ve heard the expression ‘let’s get busy’? Well, this is a dog who gets biz-zay. Poochie, the sunglasses-wearing, surfboard-carrying dog the studio comes up with, is “a dog with attitude,” explains one of the network executives pushing the idea. There’s a great episode of “The Simpsons” in which Roger Myers Jr., a cartoon producer who runs the hit show “Itchy & Scratchy,” attempts to introduce a new character into the series to rejuvenate declining ratings.
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