4 out of 5

So, look, I know we have Harry Potter and the like to point to as ‘proof’ that kids read, but we also have an overwhelming amount of shit that’s evidence, moreso, of distraction – kids cartoons and movies as unwholesome as ever, defaulting more and more to a sense of anarchic wackiness because we can’t concentrate on something for more than a few minutes.  Has it produced some amazing stuff?  Absolutely.  And these types of arguments are also dumb, because its all perception – the kid of five minutes ago or five billion billion minutes ago are still kids, just kids of their era.  We’ll continue to adapt and grow and change and sometimes it will seem good and sometimes it won’t.  Womp womp.

BUT to make a direct comparison with the current Turtles magazine (as of this writing) being put out by Pannini, which is seriously mostly flash and ‘puzzles’ which require all the concentration of kicking a flamingo – though the comics are pretty great – the 90s version of the same was before we expected our touch technology in everything, so entertainment worked a little bit differently.  Thus for 13 issues, at about 30 pages each, there was a surprising amount of text in these things, and actually some good vocab and worthwhile lateral thinking puzzles.  The cartoons were by a lot of the original Mirage guys (Lavigne, Lawson, etc.), though they were definitely in the mood of the goofier Archie run, so depending on your preferences, the modern animated look / writing style might seem more professional.  But the Welsh issues gave kids a random, silly mutant each issue, expanding the Turtles universe by one random degree every month.  The features were also impressively informative, generally covering a sport or activity and pointing out how kids can get involved (from surfing to inventing) and either a brief history piece that ties into something in that issue or the monthly ‘radical reptiles’ piece which does a brief summary of various lizards or reptiles.  The writing level is much more mature than the Pannini issues but pitched appropriately to keep the mag accessible to various age ranges – Splinter’s ‘tale’ – appearing in about 2/3rd of the issues, written as a story being told by Splinter to the b0ys – would support normal kid morality lessons but generally find some kind of unique way to get there.  Creative stuff.

Production-wise, the mag fits its cheaper 1.95 price tag – thin, papery pages, and the middle poster has issue content printed on the non-poster sides of its pages – but I think the original feeling of the articles and comics far surpass any of those nits; Turtles fans were truly getting worthwhile extras with this series and not just some dolled up reprinted info.

A fun little relic; definitely worth tracking down for collectors.