In 1994 the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were slowly losing traction but were still in a pretty good position when it came to market share, it was optimal to milk it for all it was worth before it kept slipping and so we got two direct to video Musical releases from the TMNT. This was not the same as Coming Out Of Their Shells since they were going for a much lower budget release and so we got two specials that change songs with TMNT inspired lyrics.
We’ll begin with the winner of the two which is We Wish You A Turtle Christmas, while it has been blastered by many “critics” this is actually a gem of a X-Mas Special. Yeah the costumes are not great and the lyrics are super cheesy but isn’t that what makes a Christmas Specials so memorable? We get a few X-Mas classics all with turtle inspired lyrics.
Most of their songs are catchy with their new lyrics and even the plot while as basic as you can get is followed through out the special. It cuts off randomly during the end and you can easily spot that they had a super low budget for it but it’s good. TMNT might have a few Christmas episodes but it really doesn’t have X-mas specials besides this one and it did a fine job and I do watch it every other Christmas.
The other direct to video music release by this same company isn’t a successful as the Christmas one. We get similar production values but the problem here is that none of the songs are catchy and none of the changed lyrics make up for it. Since it doesn’t have any special theme it just has random little kid songs that it interprets.
The plot is also much worse as it’s only the turtles who now have their own show and they proceed to show the world that they are not talented at this music thing. It might be that here they’re in broad daylight and that there is no X-Mas magic so it’s more difficult to ignore the low budget of the special but man is it horrible. Making through it is fairly difficult and you only ever do it since the X-Mas special isn’t that bad and you want to find some of that magic in this one too but it just isn’t there.
More importantly I think we should discuss continuity, given that these two specials are made by the same company they clearly take place in the same world. We know that it at least has some similarities to the Original 1987 Cartoon because of the lyrics of the songs and we know that these turtles can walk around New York City without any issues of being seen since they all know who they are. For a while I wanted to place it after Coming Out Of The Shells just to have one big musical continuity for the TMNT but I think it just works better for these specials to be their own thing.
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