New England Town Celebrates Being Birthplace of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Bronze statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are displayed as part of the permanent collection at the Woodman Museum, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Dover, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

As the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grew to become a pop culture sensation, the place where they were conceived rarely got mentioned.
It wasn't the New York City sewers, where the Turtles mutated from regular reptiles into a crime-fighting quartet who battled foes with nunchucks, snark and pizza. Rather, it was a small city near the New Hampshire coast.
According to The Associated Press, a new exhibit hopes to put that community, Dover, New Hampshire, at the center of the Turtles' story and, in turn, attract Turtle-obsessed fans or anyone else who grew up reading the comics and watching Ninja Turtles movies and TV shows. At one point in the 1980s, the frenzy around the Turtles was called Turtlemania.
“It's the birthplace,” said Kevin Eastman, who, along with Peter Laird, created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 41 years ago when the two shared a house in Dover. The first issue went on sale a year later. “That’s where the Turtles were created. ... It is very historic and very important to us.”
The Turtles' exhibit opened last month at the Woodman Museum, which houses an eclectic collection that includes a stuffed polar bear and a Victorian funeral exhibit replete with a horse-drawn hearse.
With its explosion of colors and cabinets full of action figures, the exhibit aims to be the place to go for all things Turtles.
It starts with franchise's humble beginnings in Dover, where the duo formed Mirage Studios, a play on the fact they were creating the first comic in their living room rather than an actual studio. Inspired by Eastman's fascination with turtles and martial arts, they came up with the crime-fighting Turtles and self-published their first comic in black and white.
“We hoped that one day we would sell enough copies of our 3,000 printed, $1.50 comic books that we could pay my uncle back,” Eastman said, adding that they had no intention of writing a second issue until fans asked for more.
“We loved our characters. We loved what we did. We told the best story we could. We hoped for the best,” he continued. “But I also could never have imagined that one comic book would lead to any of this.”
Ralph DiBernardo, whose store in nearby Rochester sells comics and games, was among the first to champion the Turtles. He knew Eastman and Laird from selling them comics and was the first person to sell their Turtles comic commercially after purchasing 500 copies. But he said at the time, it seemed more like a favor to friends than a business decision, with him thinking, “those guys are never going to make their money back.”
“To watch them go from two struggling guys just barely getting by to becoming multi-millionaires, it’s that American dream story that just never happens,” said DiBernardo, who remains friends with the two artists.
The exhibit details the emergence of the Turtles as a global phenomenon, featuring pizza-obsessed characters with catchphrases such as “cowabunga” and “booyakasha.”
Among the exhibit's highlights are a video game console where visitors can play Turtles arcade games, vinyl records of soundtracks from Turtles movies and signed, first-run Turtles comics, including some valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. The marketing power of the Turtles is also on display, with everything from Turtles-inspired Christmas ornaments, throw rugs and backpacks to a talking toothbrush.
In the middle of it all is a set of massive bronze statues depicting the four turtles — Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael — along with the mutant rat and resident sage, Master Splinter. The display was one of 12 made as part of a fundraiser by Eastman to benefit a museum in Northampton, Massachusetts.