'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Returns Home To Pluto TV’s Totally Turtles
The channel is running the 2012 series after several months away, and 90’s Kids is running the original series.
When the world needed them most, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vanquished the Avatar. Last year, I heavily covered the return of the original 1987-1996 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series to broadcast, as well as its streaming debut, primarily on the Totally Turtles channel on Pluto TV which quickly followed the announcement of such happening at San Diego Comic-Con. It was literally within days, beginning that July 31. While the cable run on Nicktoons didn’t last long and seemed to have solely served as a tie-in for the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, it seems the upcoming August 9 debut of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has finally been the impetus to shake off a long-ongoing invasion.
In the months following the original series debut, it basically overtook the weekday lineup away from the three successor series. Okay it’s understandable, there’s lots of episodes to show after so many years away, and they were airing in blocks that would loop. Weekends though, were having other action shows Danny Phantom, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and its sequel series The Legend of Korra. There were rumors of a channel rebrand. But suddenly, everything changed when Netflix was gearing up for the debut of their live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. It took over weekdays, Korra got weekends to tie in. Months went on, even well after the buzz died down on the live-action adaptation. It wouldn’t leave. Only the Almighty Sponge’s birthday celebration that invaded every Nickelodeon-branded Pluto TV channel was the one reprieve on July 14, just two weeks before the reclamation, which seemed to have finally happened on July 29.
Currently, the channel seems locked in on Nickelodeon’s first iteration, which ran from 2012 to 2017 and stars Jason Biggs, Seth Green, Rob Paulsen, Greg Cipes, Sean Astin, Hoon Lee, Mae Whitman and Kevin Michael Richardson. Totally Turtles first launched in 2019 and featured it and the 2003-2009 4Kids-produced iteration. Rise came later but both should be back relatively quickly now that things are back to normal. As for the original, it seems it has begun appearing on the 90s Kids channel, the first animated series predating the original Nicktoons to air on it. It’s currently an all-day runner there, believed to be temporary promotion for Tales. In addition, mid-July saw the launch of its own non-Pluto live channel, bringing a light of hope for what was still thought to be a bleak time. It’s just called by the show title and runs on Amazon Prime Video and Freevee.
Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stars Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, and Ayo Edebiri as Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and April O’Neil respectively, with Alanna Ubach, Pete Davidson, Jillian Bell, Timothy Olyphant, Danny Trejo, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and the returning Natasha Demetriou, Rose Byrne, and Post Malone. Its 12-episode first season premieres on Friday, August 9 on Paramount+ in the United Stares and Canada. It is executive produced by Chris Yost and Alan Wan.
