If you grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the late ’80s and loved it, then have I got a treat for you! Animator Kyle Roberts teamed up with artist Nathan Poppe to faithfully recreate the original 1987 cartoon series intro using action figures, original drawings and other wizardry to bring us this totally tubular nostalgic tribute. It’s definitely a labor or love and perhaps one of the better tributes for the lean green fighting machines that I’ve seen.
More information from the original poster:
With over 4,000 individual pictures, Kyle Roberts and crew wanted to recreate the nostalgic 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon introduction in stop motion. Artist, Nathan Poppe, created over 60 hand-drawn images to establish a bright and vibrant backdrop to complement Roberts’ use of action figures. The original TMNT theme song was covered by Oklahoma native band, The Boom Bang, in their “garage surf punk” style. Each of these pieces can stand alone by themselves, but when infused together they create a radical tribute.
Sponsored by the Toy and Action Figure Museum, curator Kevin Stark designed many of the pieces in the original 1990 TMNT toy line.
NECA action figures were used to make the video, but I can’t help but wonder how Roberts and Poppe might be kicking themselves now knowing that their masterpiece could be a bit more masterful if they had waited and used Playmate’s upcoming TMNT Classic figures based on the cartoon series from the ’80s.