As of today,  Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob have four new brothers. Or four new pets, depending on how you look at it. Nickelodeon has acquired the global rights for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $60 million. Considered one of the most successful franchises in the past 25 years, the Turtles have had a successful run in comics, cartoons, movies, toy lines, and of course video games.

 
You can pretty much be sure that a new game is in the works, as a new movie, produced by Scott Mendick (“Where the Wild Things Are”), and a new CG-animated cartoon are in production for a 2012 release. The Ninja Turtles have been in a string of video games since the NES, with their first game published under the Konami/Ultra label. Over the years, over 15 different games have been released. The series has made its way to the arcade, and most recently the Wii with a game called TMNT: Smash-Up, which came out in Sept of this year. Currently gaming rights to TMNT have been licensed to Ubisoft, so its unclear at this time who will retain those rights for future games.

As quoted by Cyma Zarghami, the president of  Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group,  "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shares a comedic sensibility with the Nickelodeon DNA, with added layers of action and fantasy that have kept this property an evergreen favorite with multiple generations of audiences. We are extremely happy to have the opportunity to be able to focus on this property and creatively re-introduce it to a new generation of kids."

While I’m quite happy for the creators of the characters, who have pretty much held onto the rights for their creation since the start, it’s been disappointing to see the Ninja Turtles skew towards a younger and younger audience over the years. I still own some of the original comics that came out, and back then the Ninja Turtles were clearly geared towards a mature audience.  In many ways, the style of writing and drawing were more reflective of Frank Miller’s Ronin comics than something that Nickelodeon would produce.  Somewhere along the way, the Turtles turn into kiddie fare, with their faces plastered on cereal boxes, and lunch boxes. I held on as a fan as long as I could, that is, until the Turtles went on a “concert tour” in the 1990s. By then, it was clear I wasn’t their target demo anymore.

Source: Variety