Cowabunga! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Is Bringing Back ’90s Nostalgia

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. Alas, my parents refused to buy me nunchucks, katanas or sais, and while I was able to improvise a bō like Donatello’s with an old broomstick, I was not able to use it without repeatedly conking myself in the head.

What I could do just like reptilian heroes, though, was eat pizza like nobody’s business. Even though I’ve since grown up into a semi-respectable adult, that hasn’t changed. When I learned of the existence of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza, I needed to get my hands on it immediately.

Since When Can You Buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza should have been a thing since the late 1980s, but it’s a recent invention tied to the release of a new TMNT movie. (Better late than never, I suppose.) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is an animated action-comedy produced by Seth Rogen, featuring an all-star celebrity cast that includes Jackie Chan as Splinter, John Cena as Rocksteady and Rogen himself in the role of Bebop.

To celebrate the seventh Ninja Turtles movie to hit the big screen, Walmart released an exclusive line of TMNT merch, including clothes, toys, school supplies and, of course, food. In addition to snacks, cereal and mac and cheese, there are five varieties of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles frozen pizza:

• Cheese: Made with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce
• Pepperoni
• Sausage & Pepperoni
• Supreme: Topped with sausage, pepperoni and bell peppers
• Mac Attack: Topped with elbow macaroni, cheddar cheese sauce and mozzarella cheese

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Review

Allison Robicelli For Taste Of Home

Let me preface this review by stating that I honestly believe all pizzas are beautiful in their own special way. Is it fair to compare a gas station pizza eaten at 3 a.m. to a wood-fired pie made in the heart of Napoli? A toaster-oven English muffin pizza to an authentic New York slice? The only rule one should accept in regard to pizza is that there are no rules. There is no correct time or place. Pizza needs to be whatever you need, whenever you need it.

That being said, by most culinary standards, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza is not good. I, however, am no snob, and have it within me to see these mass-manufactured frozen pizzas for what they are truly meant to be.

The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book made its debut in 1984, and while Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael have never once become culturally irrelevant, they were at the height of their powers in the late ’80s and early ’90s. This was the era of action figures, live-action movies, funky-fresh Vanilla Ice anthems and, above all, the TMNT animated series. For my generation of latchkey children, this half-hour cartoon was one of our most beloved babysitters, keeping us safely glued to our television sets and out of trouble while we waited for our parents to come home from work.

With no adults at home to prepare after-school snacks, we latchkey kids had to fend for ourselves. Kid Cuisine frozen dinners. Micro Magic fries. Single-serve chicken pot pies. And then there were frozen pizzas; a category which, within itself, contained multitudes. There were pizza rolls and pizza bagels, French bread pizzas and pizza-stuffed Hot Pockets. Every frozen pizza product was wildly different, but they were all objectively terrible and we loved them.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza from Walmart is, too, objectively terrible, and because of that, it’s amazing. The crust is solid and crumbly like lightly salted drywall, much like the store-brand pizzas of 1989. The tomato sauce was pasty, sweet and seasoned with generic Italian seasoning. The cheese was chalky. While the box advertises that each crust is printed with a turtle shell pattern, not a single one of the pizzas I tried looked like a turtle shell, unless you count the fact they were round.

The Verdict

Allison Robicelli For Taste Of Home

If you’re looking for quality pizza, this is not it. But if you’re looking the sort of nostalgia that cannot be called to mind by classic cartoons or silver-screen reboots alone, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza will, quite literally, feed that craving. It’ll transport you to another time and place and fill your heart with joy. And isn’t that what pizza is truly about?