What happens when four turtles end up in the sewer covered with some kind of toxic slime? Well they turn into humanoids obviously. More importantly they turn into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Luckily for these 4 turtle, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael they meet recently mutated rat Splinter who used to go by the name Hamato Yoshi (when he was a ninja before he himself was transformed into a humanoid rat). When Splinter teaches the Turtles the art of Ninjitsu they have no choice but to fight crime. With the help of there news reporting friend April O’Neil they set off to foil Shredder and his army of foot soldiers.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are no new story for me as a long time fan so when I got the 289 minute 12 episode volume five I was planning on taking a happy trip down memory lane. But alas I realized something: maybe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are entertaining for children but as an adult it's quite flawed, and (don’t get me wrong there’s many an afternoon you’ll catch me just as entranced in children’s cartoons as my 5 year old cousin as we watch in silence together) but I've realized the turtles isn’t all it used to be. Now I'm not trying to come across as a hater but after watching the grainy poorly written repetitive episodes I've decided that this cartoon isn’t all I that great any more.

First off there’s not as many characters in this show as you think considering there were something like 193 episodes it seems the turtles rarely have to fight anyone other than Shredder, Krang or the two imbeciles Rocksteady and Bebop. The other problem is the dialogue, which was even a little cheesy for the nineties - but I think the biggest problem trying to watch all these old episodes is how far advanced cartoons and anime have become. Not only is the writing much better and deeper to boot but the artwork has been amazingly improved in the last decade. But I've decided to look at this as a DVD for children only and not adults because I know even nostalgia seekers won't be able to keep their interest in watching this collection. As far as a children’s cartoon it's still a little boring but I can admit that it's better than some of the violent programs surfacing out there now. I know you're thinking ninjas, its got to be violent, but if you remember the turtles rarely drew their weapons and they usually let the idiots they were battling foil themselves.

As I've said there’s 12 episodes in this volume; Corperate Raiders from Dimension X, Pizza By The Shred, Super Bebop and Mighty Rocksteady, Beware the Lotus, Blast From the Past, Leatherhead; Terror of the Swamp,Michaelangelos Birthday, Usagi Yojimbo, Case of the Hot Kimono, Usagi Come home, The Making of Metalhead and finally Leatherhead Meets the Rat King. Unfortunately these episodes are nothing really special although I can appreciate the episode titled blast from the past where Splinter has temporary amnesia ant the turtles have to tell him how he got there as well as himself which lends itself to fill in a little background information on the show. On the other end of the spectrum there’s an episode with leatherneck that features the complete knock off characters "the frogs," who are cheap counterparts to the turtles. They make you think that even that early in the game the writers were either getting lazy or running out of ideas.

My biggest gripe about the whole thing is the packaging; the outer box is relatively nice being holographic so you can move it to make Raphael move with his weapon in his hand. But the problem doesn’t lie in the overall look, the problem is that at one DVD at a time with twelve episodes it's not only going to get costly but its going to be a huge set that takes forever to get if you want all 193 episodes in your collection. Again I'm not trying to knock the turtles that hard but it's just not for adults and at the average price of 14.99 for 12 episodes you may want to skip it all together and put on sponge bob which incidentally has a better storyline or make sure your kids going to be interested by borrowing a copy from someone who has already been suckered into buying before you rush out and get it for your kid. The next release in this collection slated for December of this year. - Dean’Willy’Martell.