If you were male and a child growing up in the early 90’s and the era of the Wet Bandits from the movie Home Alone, you were one of two things, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fiend, or a Ghostbuster-a-holic. While I know most of us enjoyed both shows immensely, we always had liked one more than the other, a “favorite” if you will. This reason, and for this reason alone, I have decided to break it down, tale of the tape style, because of it being the best 1-2 combination since Larry Appleton and Balki Bartakamos of “Perfect Strangers” fame.

We will find out which toy can withstand Bryan Byrne’s dreaded throw the toy way up in the air and let it crash down into the driveway destruction. We will also see which show had the better commercials, action figures, bitches and villains, among much more intriguing categories we are all interested to see who will come out on top of.

Cartoon to DVD

Recently as we all know, there has been a “craze” in old cartoons/TV shows to DVD. As I was hungrily searching for a “Charles in Charge” DVD (preferably the one starring Nicole Eggert and the grandpa that was in the military), I found a DVD of one of my favorite cartoons of all time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This DVD included the first season (the ever-popular double first episode, the mouser episode, the neutrino episode, and the awesome tale of Krang getting the weirdest body this side of Jonathan Swotinski. If you don’t know the “Swot-Man” just picture your classic Jewish kid in the 7th grade. Then add spiky hair, a super-bizarre voice included with a lisp, and let us not forget his colossal fear of spiders.

Okay back to action. While those episodes of the Ninja Turtles satisfied my hunger faster than an “Arch Deluxe,” it left me with a thirst for my other favorite cartoon, Ghostbusters. Damn, Ghostbusters was a great show, but as of press time there is no DVD celebrating any of its seasons. I searched high and low, even sweet and low, but low and behold my search came up empty for Slimer and some Ectocooler.
Advantage: Turtles
Score: TMNT 1, Ghostbusters 0.

Action Figures/Toys

One word. Fugitoid.

On one hand we have the gazillion different turtles figures and the turtle van, not to mention the insanely awesome “technodrome.”

You had to be luckiest son of a bitch to get one of those bad boys,but man, was it kick-ass.

The other hand brings to the table a PKE meter, some proton packs (“can you get me one of those proton packs for my kid brother” – Bobby Brown from Ghostbusters II), and the really cool traps where we all used to pretend to throw it around a corner and snag that damn Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Of course the Ninja Turtles had their classic and basic figures that everyone had, but then there were oodles of strange and bizarre figures. There was Donatello with a trench coat and goofy mustache and glasses, Panda Kahn, who was some samurai Panda Bear that helped out the turtles, and of course let’s NOT forget Ugi Wasabi the classic rabbit that actually made its way into a couple of the cartoons. Then throw in Mutagen Man and some other classic ones that would come with a sidekick like that Australian dog looking dude, I think his name was Walkabout.

The one thing that pissed me off about Turtles figures was that they only sold “Foot Soldiers” one at a time. I mean the Turtles weren’t fighting these fuckers one at a time so what the fuck was I supposed to do with just one fucking Foot Soldier. I sure as hell did not want to buy fucking five, which would have run upwards of $25.00. Fuck that. That pisses me off.

But the Peter Venkman figure never pissed me off.

Advantage Ghostbusters
Score: Tied up at 1

Cat Fight

“Sign off time, April O’ Neill” has to be one of the best and most classic quotes in cartoon history. The two cartoons we loved each had their own hotties if you will. April O’ Neill versus Janine from Ghostbusters. Who would win in a catfight and more importantly, who would you rather … well, you know? Janine had that piercing voice but imagine if she was moaning instead of screeching at Egon; and you KNOW April could get down and get funky with her bad self as well. Janine also had that B-52’s look going for her. As a matter of fact, I think she is in the B-52’s. Well they don’t sing “Love shack” for nothing. That song was meant for Janine and yours truly. Advantage Ghostbusters
Score: Ghostbusters 2, TMNT 1

Cartoon to Movie Transformation or Vice Versa

Both series started off great, a push on their debut movies/cartoons. The first Turtles movie shocked me with every twist, as I could not believe Raphael would say, “damn” back when I wasn’t allowed to say curse words. They added Casey Jones and, if that wasn’t enough, they add to the drama when Raphael gets his ass handed to him by 100 members of the Foot Clan and he spends the rest of the movie in a tub.

Ghostbusters might even top that with the classic scene when Rick Moranis gets cornered against a restaurant by one of the stone creatures come to life, and the scene where the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is making a nutty face while getting blasted by the proton rays. They each somehow top themselves with their respective sequels. Tokka and Rahzar are icons in my book, as well as Vigo the Carpathian. As far as songs go Bobby Brown’s “On our Own” is one of the best party songs of all time and “T-u-r-t-l-e Power” was up there as well. Imagine being wasted and hearing this shit at a party randomly, IT IS GOOD. The straw that broke the camels back was that the Turtles saga brought back the ever-popular scrub Casey Jones and three Japanese guys in underwear, in Teenage Mutant Turtles III, which Macho Man Randy Savage probably was forced to watch over and over again while on cocaine. That movie blew. If the Turtles trilogy were a dick, the third installment would have most definitely caused “shrinkage.”
Which is why I have to say…
Advantage Ghostbusters
Score: Ghostbusters 3, TMNT 1.

Theme music

“Who you gonna call…”

To this day, if you say those four genuine words and someone is around you listening, they will most whole-heartily scream out “GHOSTBUSTERS!!!!”

Now it is hard to compete with one of the most popular catch phrases of all time but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles does quite well for itself.

“Donatello Does Machines” is actually not supposed to give you a mental picture of a turtle with a purple bandana humping the shit out of some machine Throughout the theme song we are told many things about the Turtles and their master Splinter. Among them are “We’re really hip” and we are also told to “Get a grip” as well. Well I have a grip on to which way I should lean towards this one.

Advantage Ray Parker Jr. and the Ghostbusters Theme song with Stay Puft swiftly dodging garbage cans for about two minutes straight outlasts April and the gang.
Score GB 4, TMNT 1

Who would win in a fight

This is like when WWF (I refuse to say WWE because I enjoy old school wrestling) bought out WCW and ECW and we long awaited the dream matches of Hulk Hogan or Scott Hall versus Stone Cold Steven Austin. Well wait no more.. let’s find out who would win in a fight:

Ray versus Leonardo: Ray pussy whips Donatello in a Chicago Street Fight when Ahmed Johnson interferes pretending to be Winston.
GB 5, TMNT 1

Egon vs. Donatello: Brains vs. Brains, Harold Ramis vs. some fucking cocktoe in a giant turtle costume. I’ll take the giant Turtle Costume.
GB 5, TMNT 2

Raphael vs. Winston: All of a sudden this made me wonder why there never was a Mike Tyson’s Punch-out type cartoon, it would’ve been the bomb.
Raph is cool but rude, give him a break.
GB 5, TMNT 3

Wrestlemania 18: Icon vs. Icon
The match up we have all been waiting for: Peter Venkman one on one with Michelangelo, the party dude. I both found of them equally the most amusing characters in each respective cartoon but since I am partial to Mikey and his fucking playing dumb gimmick for all those episodes I’m siding with him.
GB 5, TMNT 4

Last but not least, Cartoon to video games:

This hands down goes to Ninja Turtles although I do not know one person who even SAW the technodrome or anything even close to it in the first Turtles game for the NES. But Turtles in Time? Turtles the Arcade Game? I know Ninja Turtles has come up with some shitty shit in recent years but that’s just the Japanese in denial. The Ghostbusters game for the NES sucked worse than when I fell chin-deep into ice water in the winter after a football game in the snow.
GB 5, TMNT 5

So there you have it. Go ahead, if you have a sister kiss her. This baby is a push, a tie, and a fucking game of tug of war where the rope breaks in the middle. Both toons are equally as good, face it. They both made me part of who I am today. Yes I was that kid in elementary school who begged his mom for a pair of nunchuks. I used phrases like “Cowabunga” and “Holy Guacamole” like they were going out of style…because they were going out of style. Anything Winston from the Ghostbusters movie is in today, he will always be talked about as “Hey, isn’t that Winston from Ghostbusters.” One thing always got me though. In the Turtles cartoons, why, oh why did they switch the voices around ALL THE TIME? Raphael’s voice would be talking but for some reason it would be coming out of Donatello’s mouth. Or did Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air call in sick that day? Someone tell me.

By Mike Morano
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