Every Turtle fan knows about the existence of the legendary Hostess teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies! They were released in 1991 and were pies covered in a Ooze green frosting and filled with vanilla pudding. These were delicious and if you pulled one of these out of your lunch box, you were the envy of every kid in the cafeteria. Having the Turtles endorse these pies was a huge selling point, but let's not forget the inclusion of stickers and trading cards inside each pie wrapper. I had some of these growing and just recently purchased these sets on ebay to add to my TMNT collection. Let's take a look!
These Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze cards were actually the second offering from Hostess in their pies. There were 5 cards in this set and the backs of all the cards had the same message promoting the release of the new movie. The cool thing about these cards though, was the fact that they were made out of plastic! They did this because the cards were packed with the pies and cardboard would have been destroyed if it was left in there.
These stickers were the original offering from Hostess in their TMNT pies. There were 5 in total in this set. One sticker for each of the Turtles and a fifth sticker showing all 4 Turtles together. The artwork on these was a modified version of the wrapper art on the pies. Hostess just replaced the pies in the Turtles hands with their weapon of choice. If you look at the Mikey sticker he can be seen still chewing on one of the delicious confections!
I honestly have no idea where these hologram cards came from. I know they were not inserted into the Turtle pies as a premium, but they have the same exact artwork as the TMNT pies stickers! There were only 4 of these holograms produced. One for each Turtle, the group shot was left out of this collection. Please excuse the scratches on these scans. The holders they were in really showed some wear during the scanning process. Overall though, these are pretty cool! Now let's take a minute and reflect on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pies by watching the commercial below.
Why has Hostess not brought these back yet? It's time for them to return fresh from the sewers to you!
I remember these!Crazy how TMNT became so huge!From comics to television.Television to toys.Toys to the big screen and lets not forget food items and video games!
ReplyDeleteThey were HUGE!!! I love that my kids are still into the Turtles today since they keep reinventing them for new generations. Right now we are enjoying the Nickelodeon Rise of The TMNT cartoon and the Totally Turtles channel on Pluto TV!
DeleteLove Pluto TV.I've caught the Turtle channel a couple of times.The great thing about It Is that It's always on.Good stuff,man.
DeleteWonderful write up on my favorite TMNT collectible of all time. You really did your research. I created the Instagram account @ninjaturtlepies, and through all of my research I've finally ended the mystery of the holograms. Before the pies were ever produced, the marketing team had planned to release an alternate wrapper with the holograms included inside. However, some time after the holograms were physically manufactured, they scrapped the idea. Hostess then slapped little round stickers on boxes of a new product called Brownie Bites, promoting the inclusion of a hologram. They didn't make much of a dent in the holograms, so they sold them to vending machine companies across the country. And now you know...the rest of the story!
ReplyDeleteHoly crap! That's AMAZING Mike!! Thank you for solving this mystery for myself and all those other confused TMNT fans out there!
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