It’s Donatellos all the way down

This blog, as long-time readers know, is pretty much my never-ending quest to preserve the absolute dumbest thoughts that go through my brain. Today, we take a look at the box art of TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection in hopes of discovering the graphic designer’s favourite turtle.

Hey, I prefaced this with a disclaimer that it’s stupid. You were warned!

The collection’s cover, at a base level, is very cool. It’s a collage of the original cover art from several of the included games, and even some Japanese promo art that I’ve never seen before! It game me a reason to sit around Googling TMNT art for a solid half hour, and I’m thankful for that opportunity.

See! A very nice box! It showcases the rich history of the 8- and 16-bit TMNT games with style and ease. Or, at least, the cover art of those games. A wide assortment of visual styles are on display here, but if you look just a little bit closer, you’ll notice that there is not, in fact, a wide assortment of turtles!

I took an entire 30 seconds out of my day to conveniently highlight each turtle featured on the box, so that you can easily see and count along, if you should so choose:

On the front cover, we can see:
  • Four Donatellos
  • Three Raphaels (technically four, but one is mostly obscured by the Konami logo)
  • Two Leonardos
  • and one lonely Michelangelo

While I do respect the abundance of Raph (the best turtle), it’s really not fair to Mikey, now is it? They could have easily replaced one of the Donatellos with a Michelangelo. Especially when you flip over to the back cover to find that it highlights two more Donatellos!

It’s clear that the only conclusion we can draw here is that whoever designed this box art is a major Donnie fan. I mean, six total Donatellos? That’s an awful lot. It’s even bordering on too many, if you ask me. We appreciate Donnie here are TE, but not quite that much. None of them are even Rise of the TMNT Donnie, who is easily my favourite incarnation of the character.

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