#171: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Cowabunga, Dude

The Empire Builders Podcast

A one point more TMNT action figures where sold than Snickers chocolate bars. Instantly qualifies as an Empire.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those.

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Stephen Semple:

Dave, if I say to you the names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, what do you think of?

Dave Young:

I’m guessing that we’re not talking about Renaissance artists.

Stephen Semple:

Not really.

Dave Young:

We’re heading off into Turtleland.

Stephen Semple:

We’re heading off into Turtleland, exactly. But isn’t it interesting? That speaks to how big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are. Where you can say to pretty much anybody those names and yeah, you don’t go to Renaissance artists. You go, oh, we’re talking about the turtles, right?

Dave Young:

Yeah, for sure. Especially people a little bit younger than us, but absolutely.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Well, and they went through a revival just recently. There was another one of the movies out, and it’s really interesting. That movie was an illustrated movie, and I went and saw that with my oldest daughter, Crystal, who’s an illustrator. Man, the illustration style in it was amazing. When you talk about emotions, they really captured that teenage boy chaotic energy. You could really feel it, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. It was actually really, really well done. Really well done.

Dave Young:

Well, cool. Now, I have to confess, I don’t know, other than I recognize the names and there’s the cowabunga thing, the big catchphrase, but honestly, I raised four daughters that weren’t into it, and it’s after my childhood, so I didn’t get into it either so I’m excited to hear the story. I’ve watched these turtles from afar.

Stephen Semple:

That’s even interesting. When you think about that, and yet you still instantaneously knew what I was referring to, which tells you how strong a presence it had in culture given the fact that you’ve never seen the comics, you’ve never seen the movie. It didn’t hit you at the right time, didn’t hit your kids, and yet you were like zero hesitation.

Dave Young:

You couldn’t hide from it.

Stephen Semple:

Correct, yes.

Dave Young:

It was so big. You couldn’t hide from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Stephen Semple:

But that just in itself captures how big it was.

Dave Young:

I’m trying to think of what else. Oh, they ate pizza. They eat a lot of pizza.

Stephen Semple:

That’s it. The first comic was published by Mirage Studios, and Mirage Studios was started by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The first comic was published in 1984. Today, Mirage Studios is like a $17 billion multimedia franchise. In 1990, just give you an idea, at the peak, Target sold more Turtle action figures than Snickers bars. Yeah, isn’t that crazy?

Dave Young:

More than Snickers bars.

Stephen Semple:

More than Snickers bars.

Dave Young:

These weren’t even chocolate turtles.

Stephen Semple:

No, these were the action figures. No, not the chocolate turtles. Very good.

Dave Young:

See what I did there?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, yeah, I did. In 2009, it was sold to Viacom for $60 million bucks.

Dave Young:

Man. All right.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, so Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, they did well. They were artists, and they wanted to create this comic and it sort of started as a joke. In the eighties, if you think in the eighties, there was these tacky martial arts movies that ran overnight. They’re sitting watching these things, but martial arts toys did not do well, and they were not thinking about making toys. They just loved drawing comics, and that’s what they were doing.

They started passing this one comic back and forth. It started off with Eastman drawing a turtle, standing upright with a pair of nunchucks. Then Peter does something slightly different and writes on the top Ninja Turtles, and then Eastman adds Teenage Mutant. They both thought it was kind of funny. One of the slowest animals on earth are martial arts experts. It speaks to this whole thing of putting unusual things together and trying to make it fit that makes it actually stick. The idea of a turtle being a ninja expert is kind of ridiculous.

Dave Young:

It’s actually one of my favorite creativity tools is to take something to some weird extreme and lean so far into it that you find the boundary of absurdity. Then all you have to do is bring it back one knot, and you’ve got something that’s completely unique. That’s kind of the process that you’re describing, right? It’s like, oh, martial arts action figures. What’s the dumbest martial art? How dumb could we make this? What if a turtle was a ninja? Like, oh God, you’re killing me. Stop it. Wouldn’t it have been great to just be in the room when they’re doing this?

Stephen Semple:

Oh, yeah, I’m sure they were laughing their heads off. Then what they decided is they thought, well, we got to make it a team, so let’s make four of them. They had an art book with Renaissance painters, and they actually randomly picked four. It was just like, okay, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one. Then decide to build a world around them. Build the whole back story and they had to create a supporting cast so there was Splinter the rat and all of this stuff that happened.

It’s May 1984, and they decide to self-publish this comic, and they max out their credit cards. They get a loan from Peter’s uncle, and they make 3,000 copies. It’s a very, the first ones were very violent. It was a very violent cartoon. But you know what? Sometimes you get lucky. And guess what else came out in 1984? The Karate Kid.

Dave Young:

Right. Well, when you said late night kung fu movies, I was thinking Karate Kid, but we’re talking about the predecessors to Karate Kid, which was a response to some of those same types of trends.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, so right at the time, they come up, Karate Kid comes out which makes martial arts popular. It’s also a relatable underdog story, especially for teenage boys. They sell out all the copies. Just goes crazy. Distributors start to carry it, and they want more issues. In two years, they do seven issues selling hundreds of thousands of copies, all self-published.

A licensing agency, a guy by the name of Mark Friedman, and he’s doing work for Hannah Barbera licensing their stuff, but he’s tired of making money for Hanna-Barbera so Mark decides to create his own company. He approaches Peter and Kevin to license Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But they’re really hesitant because this guy’s brand new company. He’s seen others that have gotten burned on these things. Mark asked for one condition to eliminate any friction. He says, look, give me 30 days. I’ll find a manufacturer.

Dave Young:

30 days.

Stephen Semple:

Just give me 30 days.

Dave Young:

That’s bold.

Stephen Semple:

Really bold, right?

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Mark takes it to all the big players. Here’s the problem. We’re talking here at a time where action figures were at a low point. GI Joe was struggling. That part was real low point, and it was weird, and it was violent. All the big toy manufacturers were like, forget this. No, we’re not touching this.

Literally, there’s three days to go and Mark is down to his last option. He’s got a buddy of his who started at Playmate. Now, Playmate, at the time, they were not in the boys action world. Really what they primarily did at the time was dolls for girls. They had never made an action figure. Basically Mark did a Hail Mary pass and said, hey, Playmate, would you be interested in doing these weird, violet, action turtle toys?

Dave Young:

Bloody pizza eating turtles.

Stephen Semple:

Right. But you know what? They were looking for a new opportunity. They wanted to get into the boys toy market, so they took a flyer. They said, okay, here’s $150K for the rights plus licensing. They basically said, let’s do this.

The first thing they had to do is figure out how to make it kid friendly. The challenge was how kids were going to play with it. They looked at it and they said, here’s the big problem. There was only two bad guys. They needed more villains. The first thing is they went back and they created more villains, and they wanted a product for the toy fair in February of 1988. They suddenly realized they weren’t going to get this off the ground. Even though there was the comic book, what they really needed was a cartoon.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

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Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

They needed a cartoon on television to really launch this thing. Playmate basically came up with a million and a half bucks to create an animated series, to get this out to kids. What they noticed was the secret sauce on all of this was the humor. When they created the cartoon, they wanted to lean more into the teenage aspect. The pizza, the skateboarding, the chaotic energy of teenage boys.

The original comic was black and white. Now what they could do is they could color code the characters. That’s how you could distinguish the characters was the color of the bandana. The first five episodes came out in the Christmas of 1987.

Dave Young:

Oh, that’s great. I think what’s interesting too is it is a little bit reversed, right? Usually it’s the TV show or the cartoon that leads to the action figures. In this case, the action figures already existed, and so they’re on the shelves when the cartoon hits and people are like, oh, I can go get action figures of this.

Stephen Semple:

It started off as comic to we’re making this action figure. They hadn’t released the action figure yet, but they realized they needed a cartoon to push the action figure. That was kind of the order of things.

Dave Young:

That feels a little different to me. Does it to you? With Star Wars, it was the movies before the action figures.

Stephen Semple:

Correct.

Dave Young:

Then that classic story, you had to wait for the action figures to be made.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Now, there’s few other toy store toys that have done that, but will be interesting for me to check when we cover some of them in future. I think they came after this. Probably what people started to go, hey, this is a good order to do things.

Basically, they released the first five episodes come out at Christmas 1987, and it’s released on syndication. It’s not a blockbuster, but it’s good enough for reruns to happen. The toy launches in February of 1988 at the Toy Fair and response is lukewarm. They’re like, holy crap. Toys “R” Us only takes 6,000 units.

Playmates is looking at this going, we’ve invested $2 million bucks in this thing and wow, you’re only taking 6,000 units. But guess what happens? Units show up in July of 1988, and there’s a frenzy. Can’t fill the orders. By the end of 1988, they’ve sold $30 million in units. ’89, they do $140 million. 1990, $570 million just in the United States. Look at that curve. 6,000 units, to $30 million, to $140 million, to $570 million.

Dave Young:

Honestly, the six episodes had probably been seen multiple, multiple times by most of the kids that wanted the action figures by then. This is the eighties that you couldn’t watch it online. You could probably barely get it on VHS. Yeah, re-runs on Saturday morning TV would be the place. If there’s only six episodes, you’re going to see them all the time.

Stephen Semple:

Then you think about they go to $570 million in sales in 1990, and then the movie comes out, the first movie. Now, Playmates had nothing to do with the movie. They were only interested in toys. Jim Henson did the puppets for the movie, and Playmates was actually worried. They thought the movie was too goofy. They were actually concerned. The movie comes out in 1990.

Dave Young:

Too goofy for teenage boys?

Stephen Semple:

The fortunate thing is they had nothing to do with the movie. They probably would’ve screwed up. The movie was the fourth highest grossing movie that year. Boom, you’re now everywhere.

Dave Young:

Fantastic.

Stephen Semple:

The part that I found that was really fun in this whole thing goes back to exactly what you were saying earlier. The things that are really creative, real creativity happens when you combine weird things. What’s the most ridiculous creature? That would be a ninja, a turtle.

Dave Young:

A turtle with nunchucks.

Stephen Semple:

Turtle with nunchucks. But as you said, it’s actually a creative technique that you can harness.

Dave Young:

We’ve been having this ongoing fundraiser. We had to build a new septic field. By the time it’s all said and done, the thing’s going to cost us well over $80,000, which just seems insane. One of the things that we’re doing as a fundraiser is selling what we call poop coins. They’re this sort of a challenge coin type thing. For a hundred bucks, you can get this really cool metal coin that’s individually numbered and a thank you card that says, hey, thank you for helping us. It’s a weird idea. We’ve raised enough to pay for, we’re probably closing in on half of it. We probably couldn’t even talk about some of the other wacky ideas that we had surrounding this that we decided not to do because they took the poop joke a little too far.

Stephen Semple:

Right, but you’re leaving at the best part. What’s on the coin?

Dave Young:

Well, it’s got the Wizard Academy logo, and on the back it says, I’m number two. It’s the I’m number two. Honestly, if you want one of these coins, go to wizardacademy.org and look for donations and campus sponsorships.

Stephen Semple:

There you go.

Dave Young:

If you’re one of those whiskey drinking folks, these coins are also made, because we operate the whiskey marketing school, these coins are also built to be the perfect size to cover a whiskey Glencairn or whiskey drinking glass.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, I didn’t even know that. That’s cool.

Dave Young:

Now you want more, don’t you?

Stephen Semple:

It’s true.

Dave Young:

As we brainstormed this idea, I mean, you can imagine how much fun you can have brainstorming ways to pay for a septic field that you don’t really even want to buy. Then you have to dial it back to something that’s sort of palatable to the public.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, I can imagine. What I loved about the origin of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was that whole idea of putting some ridiculous things together. Got to admit, they also had a little bit of luck with the Karate Kid coming out around that time.

Dave Young:

Again, they were acting on just the weird trend in overnight kung fu kind of movies.

Stephen Semple:

That was probably an inevitability as well.

Dave Young:

To add the elements of they’re teenagers, they’re mutants, they’re turtles.

Stephen Semple:

I mean, there is so much craziness.

Dave Young:

They’re turtles that eat pizza and live in a sewer. It’s like, okay, teenage boys are doing a whip snap head turn going, what? I’m in. I would’ve been all in on this, it is just that it happened at the time that I was just finishing college and just getting my drinking legs under me. Had already left the teenage phase of my, well, some would say I never did.

Stephen Semple:

If you get a chance to watch the most recent one, you really should. The energy’s crazy. It’s a great story.

Dave Young:

Yeah, I will, I will watch it. Thanks for bringing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back into our consciousness, Steven.

Stephen Semple:

All right, thanks David.

Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to schedule your own ninety-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at EmpireBuildingProgram.com.