Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Killing Kids Left and Right

It may not surprise all that many people to hear that I do not regularly watch the news. I have enough problems (trivial as they may be) to deal with on my own, let alone worrying about all the world’s problems as well. Screw the world, I say. That is, until I hear in the background of my supper-eating a few weeks ago, a news story that, not only hit close to home with me, but also infuriated me so much that 4 weeks later! Yes! That’s activism, baby! Anyways - what was this story, you ask? Seems, once again, the school boards of the Maritimes are banning Ninja Turtles toys from schools. And why are they doing that? Because, they cause violence.

I agree 100% with this idea that yes, these figures cause violence - AGAINST OTHER TOYS! It’s not like the kids take the tiny swords out of Leonardo’s hands and proceed to kill and pillage! I’ve tried - they’re very tiny and bend against pretty much anybody. Very useless for random assaults. If anything, the removal of these toys would cause MORE violence, in my opinion (which, in this article, is the only one that matters... huzzah). If the kids want to play ninja turtles, they’re going to regardless - you can’t put rules on kids playing. So, now instead of making a toy Raphael beat up a toy Shredder (or maybe Baxter Stockman; I’m not here to judge), it will be a kid acting as Raphael beating up another kid acting as Shredder (or maybe... no. No self-respecting kid would play as Baxter Stockman. Not by choice anyways...). I don’t really see how that’s better. Unless this thing is being headed by P.F.E.T.P.P. (People For the Ethical Treatment of Plastic People), then I guess I can see the reasoning. But, I don’t think those guys do too much in Canada.

Now, you may have noticed up in that first reference to this, that I said that they’re considering this once again. Yes, they tried this before. Some of you may recall when the original series/line of TMNT figures came out (and if you don’t... man, it was only like 10 years ago... what’s wrong with you?) They tried, as they are now, to ban the figures from being brought into schools. I myself thought that was rather strange, as they weren’t banning GI Joe, or Transformers or anything like that - just the Heroes in a Half-shell. And the other 2 used guns! All the boys in green did was punch, bludgeon, and occasionally stab (but very rarely). It’s just weird that they singled out TMNT. Especially considering that most of those GI Joe kids became serial killers. The TMNT kids? Not so many. I know I never killed anybody...

Anyways, you also may recall that no such law (or whatever) was actually ever passed, as it was kinda based on pretty weak evidence. That evidence being something along the lines of, “We find that young boys, around the age of 8 to 12 are violent. Blame these Turtles!” Seemingly disregarding the fact that most young boys are violent anyways. Actually, played with ninja turtles all the time (I had about 75 figures or so) and I was quite the mild-mannered kid. People used to beat the crap outta me all the time, and I never fought back. Where was my pent- up turtle-violence there? I dunno, but it probably woulda helped, and saved me lots of money given to psychiatrists later in life... Moving on!

Over the years, it hasn’t JUST been the turtles making the headlines. You may recall a few years back when Pokemon was huge, they banned the cards from schools. CARDS! They banned trading cards! It’s lamer than a board game for god’s sake! But, they banned it just the same, though, in all honesty, I couldn’t understand why. It had NO violence to people at all. It might have been an animal rights thing (you never hurt the Squirtle you love.), but then why just in schools? I dunno. I suppose my main argument here is that kids are violent little monsters, whether you give them props or not. Plus, I can’t stand to see Michelangelo get slammed like that. He acts tough, but he’s fragile. But, perhaps the main reason I wrote this response is because Mike just emailed me and told me the deadline was 2 days ago. Oh, and I’ve got beliefs or something. TURTLE POWER!