The Original 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Series Makes Its YouTube Debut Saturday

So it turns out Nicktoons wasn't first after all...

Image source: YouTube

Yeah, this rollout is fast. After last weekend’s reveal that Paramount and Nickelodeon had finally secured the rights to the original 1987-1996 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, it was clarified to be Nickelodeon-owned and operated channels such as YouTube, Pluto TV and linear channels. Upon discovery of schedules, it was thought that it would start with Nicktoons on Monday night into Tuesday. As it turns out, it’s the franchise’s YouTube channel that will apparently be first.

On Saturday morning, July 29 at 10:30 AM, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles channel will not only premiere the first episode, but the entire original five episode miniseries that would ultimately form the series’s first season. Not as separate videos, but as one whole video. After all, they’re kind of all the rage right now. Whether it’s 13 combined hours talking about Victorious, 12 hours covering every season of Survivor, or even just 4 hours talking Fairly OddParents, or compilations of comic reviews that run several hours, people like letting it run like that. The channel itself is used to smaller compilations of scenes running a theme, like “31 Minutes of Splinter Being a Total Dad” or “20 Minutes of the Turtles Being Bros”, so about 106 minutes isn’t as daunting as the aforementioned retrospectives. It remains to be seen what the full rollout will be like, but it’s easy to imagine all 193 episodes will be released individually on the channel.

The series will air on Nicktoons in the midnight hour Eastern every night. It is also certainly not the first series to have their episodes uploaded in official capacity onto YouTube with the intent of free access. The Real Ghostbusters, ALF, Power Rangers, The Transformers and Extreme Ghostbusters have all made some sort of progress. YouTube is believed to be first, since there’s been no indication of Pluto TV arrival, likely on the Totally Turtles channel which airs all subsequent animated series in the franchise. These broadcasts are the first legal airings of any kind since leaving CBS in 1997, having last had a cable run on USA Cartoon Express from 1993-1996. The compilation can be watched below.