There are signs that let one know when they’ve truly arrived in the entertainment industry. Your franchise gets a big budgeted movie. A Saturday morning TV series. A line of clothing with your name on it. However, you know for certain that you’ve made your mark on Hollywood when your franchise comes out with it’s own cheesy breakfast cereal. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are no exception to this honor. Yes, the Ninja Turtles had their own breakfast cereal. We now present you with the glory that is the first TMNT cereal ad:

Is it just me, or did Michelangelo sound kind of stoned in that? Anyway, just a minor inquiry: Did the Shredder have some sort of grand master plan that involved the possession of this one particular box of cereal? Or was he just doing this to screw with the Turtles? Honestly, I don’t know what’s more embarrassing for Shredder; the fact that he’s been reduced to stealing breakfast cereal from a couple of kids, or the fact that he completely failed at accomplishing this task. This is right up there with the time when Shredder opened up a pizza restaurant and operated it for several weeks, possibly months, in the hopes that the Turtles would show up as customers. There’s a little thing called food poisoning. You might want to look into that.

At least the Ninja Turtles managed to escape from this mostly unscathed. This ad was hardly the most embarrassing career move for them. The following bit comes to mind:

I’m curious as to why an amphibious creature needs to travel by rowboat anyway? And what was that weird thing you were doing with your arms there, Leo?