TMNT History by TMNT25
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the crazy creation of comic artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. With a few thousand dollars of borrowed money, the duo, doing business as Mirage Studios, created, wrote, drew and self-published 3,000 copies of a black and white Turtle comic in 1984. The comic was an immediate success and the first issue was reprinted three times to satisfy initial demand.
Over the next two years, sales of the self-published black and white comic grew to a record-setting 130,000 copies per issue and a small amount of licensing activity took place in the role-playing game, trading card and collectible figures areas. In late 1986 and early 1987, Mirage entered into agreements with Surge Licensing, Playmates Toys and Murakami, Wolf, Swenson Films. These agreements put into place the marketing, merchandising and entertainment engine that would introduce the Ninja Turtles to the world at large and fuel the Property’s tremendous success.
The success of the TMNT has now spanned almost 25 years and has included: four of the most successful independent theatrical motion pictures of all time, over 350 half-hours of TV programming, top-10 all time sales status for worldwide sales of toy action figures, over600 worldwide merchandise licensees, record seeing sales of video games, sold out live-tour stage shows around the world and levels of success for fast-food promotions never before seen. Just some of the records established by the Turtles are as follows:
#1 rated Saturday morning TV show and highest rated in its time slot ever for CBS
#1 top grossing independent film when introduced in 1990; Four of the most successful independent theatrical motion pictures of all time
#1 best selling toy line in 1991, above GI Joe and Barbie
#1 male action figure toys in 1990 and 1991, with over a 70% market share
#1 live touring arena show in the US
#1 Nintendo 8-bit and Gameboy video game in the world in 1991
#1 kids breakfast cereal in the world from Ralston Purina in 1991
Best selling video game on Xbox Live in 2007 Along the way to setting the above records, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became the most successful “character introduction” in history and redefined the children’s entertainment and
trademark licensing and merchandising businesses for all time.
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