When I was a kid, this was one of favourite cartoons ever, it was retitled "Hero Turtles" in the UK due to the violent connotations of the word "ninja", based on the comic books. Basically, in New York City, four turtles were mutated by a strange glowing ooze, along with their master and father figure Splinter the rat, growing into humanoid creatures and living in the sewers. As teenagers, the turtles, Donatello (in the purple mask), Leonardo (in the blue mask), Michelangelo (in the orange mask), and Raphael (in the red mask), all named after Italian renaissance artists, meet Channel 6 news reporter April O'Neil who helps them to come out of the shadows and keeps them informed of events in the city. Whenever there is trouble, they bring their assortment of weapons, including samurai swords, sticks and knives, to fight crime as semi-vigilantes. They often go against the forces of criminal underworlds, with their most frequent enemy being power-hungry supervillain The Shredder, wearing a suit covered with razor spikes, a long purple cape, a metal samurai helmet, and a metal mask over his mouth. They also go against the Shredder's two incompetent henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady, and the forces of Krang, a disembodied alien brain from Dimension X. I remember the theme tune well ("Heroes in a Half Shell, Turtle Power"), it was the turtles who introduced me to eating pizza, I bought many of the toys that were produced from the franchise, and it led to many film adaptations, a great fun animated superhero action-adventure series. It was number 27 on The 100 Greatest Cartoons. Very good!
Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
