As one would predict, this bold thesis was initially shot down. The Turtles loved pizza! Remember? They couldn’t shut up about it. Yet my memory of how the Turtles behaved rather than what they said gave me cause to believe that there was something to this theory. Vague recollections from the show had given me cause to shoot my mouth off, but before doing so any further I needed proof. And, lo and behold, having checked the archives I think I was right. With an admittedly small data sample and research conducted by nothing more scientific than watching a few episodes of the cartoon and drawing the logical conclusions I can conclude that if anything, the turtles couldn’t stand pizza.
It doesn’t take long for the evidence to trickle in. In their first appearance in the very first episode one of them orders a pizza coated with ice cream while another goes for a jelly bean topping. Maybe they do like pizza. And maybe people that gorge on Terry’s Chocolate Oranges enjoy fruit. It doesn’t even look like pizza. It’s like alien roadkill. Look at that shimmering, sickly paste spread across the surface. What is it exactly? And why do they need salt, or whatever condiment is inside that salt-shaker, to accompany it?
Just as strange for would-be pizza obsessives, they repeatedly gorge on the pizzas, with their disgusting toppings, but leave the crusts. They never ate the crusts, but tossed them away with the box. So not content with adding extra ingredients to warp the concept of a pizza to a level that Willy Wonka would find disturbing, the turtles actually dispense with one of the fundamental parts of the original pizza. They want a dough-based product without the structural constraints of thick crusts or the flavour constraints of a cheese and tomato base. That’s a sandwich. Or a cake. The turtles liked sandwiches and cakes. They probably couldn’t have given a shit about pizzas.
Even in the later episodes, the really, awful ones, the implausible, nonsensical free for alls, we consistently see the turtles slavering over pizzas with overpowering, inhuman, anti-pizza toppings, hankering after them like a dog hankers over his worms medication provided that it’s buried deep in the centre of a rolled-up ball of tripe. Fast forward to 3:00 in this disappointlingly half-arsed installment to see what gets them excited. And at the start of this episode they reject free pizzas as a “punishment” because they are too small. Sure, a likely excuse. Coke addicts can snort it off the seats of public toilets, yet these picky bastards don’t want their free bite-sized pizzas? There’s obviously no pizza fixation here. Perhaps what none of them were prepared to admit is that they hated pizza. Perhaps the pressure of living up to their inappropriately selected Renaissance names and fitting in with New York City forced them to shovel pizzas down their throats, just like it compelled them to wear those unconvincing trench coats and spout their trendy catchphrases. They're living a lie, fibbing just to fit in. They’re not fooling me.
To finish, here is a special fruit pizza I endured in Colombia. No, of course it doesn’t work. I had to scrape the strawberries and blueberries off to enjoy it. That’s because I actually like pizza. The Turtles, on the other hand, liked cakes.
PS: Lots of Turtles episodes are available on YouTube
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