Earlier last week I had the distinctive pleasure of sitting down and talking with Michele Ivey, who is best known around the media for being one of the biggest fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you’ve never heard of her, I recommend checking out her Youtube blog Cowabunga Corner for a little bit more about her life than any interview could potentially delve into. Michele has been collecting TMNT merchandise for the last twenty years and has amassed over 500 peices related to the franchise. In addition, she has met and interacted with many names related to the franchise, from creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, to writers and artists such as Ryan Brown and Stan Sakai, to voice actors such as Michael Sinterklaas and Townshend Coleman, to those involved with the live-action franchise. During the course of our talks, she revealed a vast knowledge of the franchise that restored dormant memories, for me at least, of Saturday mornings and racing with my brother the Party Wagon vs. the Ecto-1. Check out the links at the end of the interview for other media related to Michele.
Thank you for taking the time and sitting here with me. Please state your name for all those not familiar with who you are and where you’re from
I’m Michele Ivey, from Ferndale, Michigan.
Now, you’re known across the internet and assorted media for being “Turtle Girl”, the big fangirl for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You’ve probably told this story numerous times, but how did you come into becoming a fan of TMNT?
Back in October 1989 my brother and I went down the street to one of his friend’s. While there we were going to play toys, so the boy brought out a tin of toys Ghostbusters, He-Man & Thunder Cats. There was one weird toy in the tin, it was a Turtle with an orange mask and a belt with some loops on the back holding four weapons. I thought it was the coolest toy and insisted to play with that one.
The next week my brother came in while I was watching Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers and changed the channel on me over to Ninja Turtles. I was upset at first, but he reminded me that Chip & Dale was a rerun, and to try something new. The episode was “A Thing About Rats”. It did not take long for me to find I was hooked to this new TV series.
That year for Christmas I got all of the Turtle toys that was on the market besides for Rat King and Baxter Stockman (which we hunted for till we found at a store called “Children Palace”). In 1990 I was nick named Turtle Girl at my school, so Turtle Girl is a name I’ve had for 20 years now.
I understand that you had a hard school life. Would you like to elaborate on that for a bit?
School was very hard for me. When I started School there was a boy in my class who decided he did not like me, he got his friends not to like me, they got their friends and they got their older sisters and brothers to all hate me. I had only 2 friends, I didn’t let it trouble me that other kids picked on me… I was a normal girl for my age into Little Pony’s and Care Bears. In 1st grade one of my friend’s stopped being my friend which brought me down to one friend. By 3rd grade that friend left and I was alone.
3rd Grade was also when the fighting started, 15 to 30 kids would gang up on me at a time. I would curl up on the ground and let them beat me up. I never wanted to hurt anyone, so fighting back was not an option no matter what they did to me. From 3rd to 5th grade the fights kept getting worse… I was thrown in front of cars on busy roads, pushed into an iron poll so hard I needed stitches in my forehead, and the police were even breaking up fights. When asked why they were doing this, the kids reply would be “Because my friends are”. At school if we had a sub I would be pulled out of the class with a black eye, bloody nose or fat lip.
School was hard, though I had a great home life to make up for all the problems there. I learned a lot as a child, how to read people, how to not put all of my trust into anyone to fast, and how to be a good friend to anyone who wanted or needed a friend. I don’t hold any grudges against those who hurt me, while yes I will never make friends with any of them, at the same time I don’t wish them any harm.
In 6th Grade my mom put me into another school for the year, best school year of my life, though in 7th grade I had to go to Jr. High with the same kids that use to attack me. To end the fighting my mom put me into Karate, I had a few fights after getting into Karate and I’m very happy to say not me or any of the kids I had to fight were hurt. Just scared them enough to realize the fight was over before it started.
The kids never changed though, as never stopped picking on me all the way through High School. I did make some friends in Jr. High and High School who I am still friend’s with to this day. I don’t see anyone else from school anymore as I’ve been out of school since the mid 90’s.
On the episode of VH-1’s “Totally Obsessed”, I remember your parents being depicted as not quite understanding your hobby; however “Fanatical” shows that they were very supportive and nurturing of TMNT. Did they hold the same interest in TMNT as you do and what extent did they have with helping you develop this passion?
My mom and dad have always been there for me. I’m very close with my family, my mom is even a fellow Turtle fan as she has her own collection. My dad got more into it, in 2000 when he saw the good I was doing with it, as I held a booth at a convention which brought in over 50 Turtle fans from across the country. Though my dad’s sense of humor is the sarcastic type… which is why VH1 got that line out of my dad, they interviewed them for over 2 hours and that was the only line they used because the rest of what my folks said was very positive.
My dad is a bit of a celeb himself, as he works on TV shows and such in the Detroit area. Back in the late 70’s through the early 80’s he worked on a TV show known as the Ghoul Show, some of the golfers on that show have made it big like Bruce Campbell and Sam Rami. Now my dad works on a show called Wolfman Mac’s Chiller Drive In that is on RTV Saturday nights at 10pm.
My mom is one of the back bones of my fandom. She’s always been there for me, and being a fan herself she’s enjoyed all of the events as much as I have. From going to Chicago to see the Tours at Six Flags Great America, to driving to Northampton Mass for the parties at the Words & Pictures Museum. In the last 10 years she has not gotten to travel as much with me, as her health has been harder on her. Though she’s still very supportive of me going out to do what I enjoy.
Your dad does some amazing work, I looked up the Wolfman Mac series. Hopefully it airs here in Jacksonville on WAWSD, since we get RTV as well. The Michaelangelo costume is definitely interesting to beheld, and while I’m not sure if anyone’s ever asked you this, but have you retired it now that you’re older or do you still bring it down from time to time for special occasions and the like?
My costume got retired in 2004 after I got an injury at work, and am no longer able to wear my costume. Though I am going through surgery to be able to wear costumes again I am hoping to make a new one instead of using the old one.
Conventions are very amazing places to be, I love interacting with other fans and meeting collectors and even wheeling and dealing for new pieces to my own collection. What would you say has been your most memorable con experience?
I go to so many conventions and do so many amazing things, even this last weekend was pretty awesome as I got to hang out with some very cool people. To choose one event out of all these cons. Here’s a few good ones…
Motor City Comic Con 2000: Nick named Turtle Con 2000 to fans who came for the booth that I held, we had Tokka, another well known fan come in and he played Bebop. There was around 50 fans that came in total and gave us a wonderful weekend of hanging out and talking Turtles.
Anime Next 2003: An insane weekend, my first trip out of state driving without my mom with me. A friend and I went to this convention, only saw two panels… only went through two autograph lines before having to come home for work… but during that time got to meet the voices of Michelangelo and Leonardo from the 4Kids series. There first time seeing me in costume can be found on my youtube channel.
Toronto Fan Expo 2004: When I got to meet Scott McNeil, he called me to the front of the panel room to show my Bonesteel action figure than told the story behind the toy for everyone to hear.
Anime Vegas 2005: An insane panel of 30 Voice Actors, and Michael S (4Kids Leonardo) pointed me during the panel… a fun and crazy time.
It’s really hard to say which conventions are my favorite or to even get into the full detail of the ways… since I love so many of these conventions… they’ve been so good to me. I do post convention reviews with photos for every convention on http://www.tmnt-l.com/
Over the last few years, the media has definitely picked up on the fact that fandom is a big thing. It’s gotten to where it’s seemingly cool to be a geek and a fanboy, but sometimes this has been to where media outlets such as MTV and VH1 have turned such depictions into an episode of Freaks and Geeks, case in point your appearance on Totally Obsessed and the more recent True Life: I’m a Fanboy (along with earlier I’m A Gamer), do you feel that as much as we see t-shirts proclaiming geekdom and retro shirts showing Ghostbusters and TMNT on the shirts as well, that there is still a certain negative stigma connected with being a fan even now?
Fandom has always been a roller coaster with media… either made to look good or to look crazy. The thing is we’re in a world where everyone is different and see things differently, a lot of people out there feel that if adults are spending all their times with toys or cartoons, that they’re not grown up or there’s something wrong with them. So media finds this as a sale point and do their shows to make fans look crazy. Than there’s the people in media who are fellow fans and want to fix that, so they try to get the real story out. It goes into a circle of different views… in away it keeps things interesting though the main thing for people to know is that it doesn’t matter what everyone thinks, all that matters is that you’re enjoying your life, not hurting anyone and living up to your responsibilities.
One of the big lessons I learned in school was to laugh at those who are wasting their time picking on me, than I go on with what I’m doing… for it does not matter to me who they are, where they’re from, or what they do. If bored I might reply and toy around, but usually I got a lot more important things to do than to play games with people who are not going to truly affect my life.
Growing up, were you ever into other comics or cartoons such as Ghostbusters, Superman, Batman, or X-Men?
I’ve always been more of a cartoon fan than a comic fan, the only comic books I keep up with have Ninja Turtles in them. Though I still love all of the cartoons that I loved as a child. I watched and collected, He-Man, ThunderCats and Ghostbusters.
I still watch a lot of cartoons, Nicktoons, Cartoon Network and Toon Disney are some of my main channels to watch, for shows like Fullmetal Alchemist, Venture Brothers, Avatar the Last Air Bender, Gargoyles. Cartoons are fun, a lot of work are put into them and it helps lighten the load of all of the serious stuff going on in life.
As another kid who grew up on the 1987 TMNT series, I was disappointed with how they were depicted in “Turtles Forever”. But I’ve heard a story that the reason why they were treated as clown-like and incompetent was that Kevin Eastman has a long-standing hatred of the old series and thus wanted to ream it as much as he could, due to the fact that he did not have as much control over that series as he did on the 4kids one. Do you think that this is true?
Kevin Eastman had nothing to do with “Turtles Forever”, he sold his rights to Peter Laird, the other creator. While Peter wasn’t a huge fan of the original series I don’t think him or anyone else behind the Ninja Turtles would ever do something out of hatred. If you ever get to meet them, they’re all real nice guys very light hearted and the only area that they’ve shown real disappointment with was the Next Mutation. So I know that none of what you heard there is true.
I’ve done a video blog about “Turtles Forever” where I mention that while it’s true that the original series Turtles were treated goofy, it was a new set of writers handling them that I don’t think did a lot of research, they just went off of the general reaction towards the old series. And they did give a lot of nods to the original turtles on progressing the story, Donatello played a big role in solving their problems.
To be totally honest I think they wanted to pick on all of the group of Turtles in this and do it as one big nod to the guys. I mean look how the Mirage Turtles treated the 4Kids Turtles, and how the easy Mirage Shredder fell. It was all a circle of joking around and having fun. Just a lot of fans are being too serious about it. I really enjoyed Turtles Forever all the way through.
Be sure to tune into Part 2 of this interview on Wednesday, where we’ll discuss Michele’s legendary collection, “Cowabunga Corner” and future plans for that, and other goodies in store. Big thanks to Michele for taking the time to speak with me, and for more about her and her life as “Turtle Girl”, check out her Youtube page for a healthy dose of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nostalgia.
For more Cowabunga Corner, as well as Michele’s numerous other media appearances, check out: Michele Ivey\’s Youtube
But, if you care for a sampling, watch Cowabunga Corner #8, where Michele discusses the history of the 2003 4kids “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and see for yourself!
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