Let's talk Turtles, shall we?

The first episode of the original animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series aired on December 28, 1987. I was eight years old.

I was already a veteran of classic children's television programming He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The Transformers. M.A.S.K. G.I. Joe. I didn't think that this new show, that seemed to feature talking turtles in the real world, would be anything special. If we were lucky, it would be something like the ThunderCats. If we weren't, we'd have a GoBots situation on our hands. Surely it wouldn't be something like the Smurfs or the Snorks, the type of cartoon I was aging out of that still enthralled my toddler brother.

What it ended up being was a revelation.

The original TMNT felt different. It had humor. It had style. It was absolutely, unapologetically, completely weird. For a kid that loved movies about UFOs, Bigfoot, and the supernatural, it felt like this was right up my alley, and I quickly latched onto the show in that way that only children still looking to forge their identity can.

I taped the first five episodes and watched them until the VHS fell apart (note* for those of you younger than Magic: The Gathering itself, "taping" was when you used a VCR to record the live airing of a show so you could watch it whenever you wanted, a primitive ancestor of "streaming").

And, it's not like I was alone. TMNT hit my age group like a blue, purple, red, and orange nuclear bomb. Back then, "Which Turtle is your favorite" was our version of, "What's your Hogwarts house?" (I'm a Michelangelo). The show even changed the very language we used, making, "Radical!", "Tubular!", and, of course, "Cowabunga!" part of our daily vernacular.

If you'll grant me a moment of nostalgic self-indulgence:

I was nicknamed, "Ninja Turtle Travis."

I owned the cassette tape version of the, "Coming Out of Their Shells Tour" album (and still remember most of the words to some of the songs). I played it until it broke and bought a second copy.

I watched and rewatched an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show that had the Turtles as guests.

I was in the theater for the original film on opening night (and took my kids to the rerelease last year).

I can still taste the TMNT themed Pudding Pies.

I ate all manner of toppings on pizzas, which is probably why I am big proponent of pineapple pizza to this day (peanut butter and corn on a pepperoni pizza was actually pretty great too).

All of this is just to say that I was ecstatic when the Universes Beyond Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle set was announced. You can imagine my surprise when so much of the discourse around the set has been negative.

It feels like everything that could go wrong for this set has done so. The Spider-Man set flopped in many ways, but one of the most glaring was the New York setting. Some of the disdain for that real world setting is obviously carrying over into TMNT, which is taking its place as the, "middle child" of the New York block setting (with Marvel Super Heroes arriving this summer).

The Lorwyn Eclipsed Prerelease found TMNT cards slipped into the sealed packs, to the point where the entire Rare/Mythic print run was spoiled. Preview season has felt like a blip, with little fanfare in response.

It follows our return to the Lorwyn setting so closely that fans are grumbling about giving Lorwyn Eclipsed the proper time for Lorwyn Eclipsed to breath, and yet it will only have the spotlight for a few weeks before Secrets of Strixhaven drops.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle set feels cursed, and it was starting to break my heart a bit. The discourse online hasn't helped, but I'm going to go against it here. I think the set looks better than it is being received right now, the art pays homage to the characters across the properties history very well, and the cards look interesting on their own.

This is a small set, and I don't think it will inspire an entirely new archetype (though that could happen, there are some powerful cards, and Sneak will probably play better than it initially looks) but it will impact Standard.

And, I'm hoping that's what will turn the sentiment on the set in the end. There are some FUN cards in this set (early take, I love Mutagen Man, Living Ooze). Some that will see play on tournament tables. And, unlike the unfortunate Spider-Man set, we will get this art on Magic Arena, so people will have the chance to actually bond with the cards across platforms.

Universes Beyond is here stay, because it is accomplishing what WOTC (... and more importantly, Hasbro) want it to accomplish. It's driving sales, and, more importantly, it's getting new people into the game. I love Magic, and I've been playing for 30 years, but I recognize that new player acclimation has been the area where the game's growth has seriously struggled.

It's hard to dive into Magic, and you really need an incentive to do so. If someone seeing Donatello on a card, or Aang, or Shadowheart, draws them in and convinces them to give the game a shot when they wouldn't have otherwise, that's a good thing!

There are many issues I have with the game at the moment (the struggles to reinstitute a LGS competitive scene, the rising costs, the 6-7 set yearly release schedule), and it feels like, in the face of those things, getting upset over the IP being used for a particular set feels overblown to me. Magic purists, we're still getting the three big in-universe sets we've always gotten, every year, for 30 years, there's just a little Universes Beyond sprinkled in each year for flavoring.

And I think that's my final thought on this. Give the TMNT set a chance, and I think (hope) you'll find some fun cards for your next game.

You can find more of my Magic musings on Twitter/X @travishall456 and on Bluesky.