Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an American comics, toy and animation franchise which gained worldwide popularity in the 1980s and has spawned numerous licensed publications in the UK and elsewhere. It stars four irradiated anthropomorphic turtles (Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Raphael) who fight crime frm their base in the sewers of New York City and apparently live solely on pizza. They were trained as ninjas by a similarly evolved rat named Splinter. In Britain, their name was at one point changed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, as the word 'ninja' was not considered suitable for a children's animated TV series.
