[megaman22]

That's kind of an inversion of who's leading things, but kids television and the toy industry have always gone hand in hand. Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and HeMan were cartoons before they were toys (I think...) but it was all about the merchandising.

[pfranz]

He-Man was an action figure made by Mattel. TMNT started as a comic book, but from what I understand was a parody of popular things; Teenagers, Mutants, Ninjas...not sure why turtles were thrown in there. TMNT didn't get gain popularity until they started making action figures.

[zhengyi13]

I hadn't ever thought of TMNT as being a parody, at least not in original Eastman and Laird form - I missed most of it, but parts of it were pretty dark, particularly Raphael's character IIRC.

I got introduced to it by way of Palladium's adoption of the world/setting as an RPG, who expanded the world with a whole bunch of amazing sourcebooks that never went anywhere near the silliness of the later incarnations involving "COWABUNGA DUDE!".