I cornered Isaac and here is the detail I have struggled with
4 days ago
– Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 05:27:57 PM
Rand here and I'm both happy and unhappy to share this update.
We are still behind, and the reasons are the same.
We're still waiting for that box of VHS tapes that Kevin found in his storage and we are not going to nag him any more than we already are. By "we" I mean Isaac, who has indeed been nagging him.
Whatever's on those tapes could change a fair bit of the material we've already shot and cut, so we just HAVE to see what's on them. This is the ongoing nightmare of making a documentary with unknown archives always just out of reach: you are loathe to call "Fine Cut!" and start outputting until you've exhausted every opportunity, and in this case, Kevin may well have found something amazing and surprising and so we're stuck until we see the tapes.
That box of tapes has also impacted our photo layouts for the book, which is no surprise, but that shouldn't take too long once we know what we've got. Isaac's chosen a bunch of stuff already and since we're using a Canadian printer, there won't be crazy long shipping times. No cargo crossing the Pacific for us. It's Quebec and Toronto.
We're also in discussions with some people who may have solutions for the shipping issues that have paralyzed so many business trying to move items cross-border, particularly to the U.S. Ideally, we will be able to minimize shipping costs for our backers and we've been working hard to find the best possible providers and solutions on both sides of the border.
And finally, the actions figures. Yes, there are only five different figures, but this has been a real challenge for Isaac and, not being an action figure guy, I never understand what's actually going on. Today, he's recorded a video in the shop to share the kinds of details that will get everyone up to speed. In short, he's been doing R&D on a few other projects to build the best production pipeline for TMNT stuff. We absolutely refuse to put out compromised product, particularly seeing as Kevin and Peter have graciously granted us permission to use their likenesses. I won't belabour your with details, but it seems like we've gone through so many periods where we had a process ready, went through months of waiting or development or tool building or machine fixing or new machine acquiring and then Isaac would set up a run and there would be some minute variable that he learned about only because it blew up a tool, or wouldn't cool fast enough or the material had some aspect to it that infringed on the quality therein. And that is not acceptable. As you watch this video, I want you to keep this in mind: money spent by our backers on TMNT goes ONLY to TMNT. More to the point, we've spent more setting up, testing and building capacity or researching to get this all right, and I'm not complaining, because that's just the way it is. BUT, when it works, as it is doing now, it works like a charm and the figs are great and, all being well, this is not just giving us these awesome rewards, but hopefully will allow us to move on to see what else we can do with Turtles, with the creators we love and a franchise we care about.
Thanks again for your patience and stay tuned for some long-awaited success videos from Isaac.
End of Year Update
2 months ago
– Mon, Dec 29, 2025 at 05:46:45 PM
Hey there. Hope this finds everyone well over the holidays, assuming you're taking some.
I've been putting this update off in the hopes that something we were told was heading our way had gotten here, but it has not yet arrived, so I'm going to post anyway and spoil a surprise. By the way, it will also be a surprise to us, and I'll explain that in a moment.
Here is the update:
The Book. I have cut the book down to a much more manageable size. This has been a huge task, extremely fraught, and I've wrestled with an overwhelming number of different versions over the past year, but I've in the past few months gotten it down to a word count that won't result in a ridiculously oversized block of book that poorly balances images and text. And we have some great photos, so I want them to really shine.
For any who might be concerned about the importance and interest of what I cut, suffice to say that I went after redundancies, and there were a lot of them. What I came to realize even after all my previous edits was that there were simply too many repeated facts that really weren't adding anything new. Many of the people we interviewed made reference to the same information we got from Pete and Kevin and I was working so hard to leave it in. However, when you're editing by chapter, even though each chapter feels satisfying, after you read it all in one go, which I started doing, all the redundancies began to rankle me. How many times was it said that Mikey was a party dude? Too many. How many times did somebody say that the turtles were rad? Too many. Once I was really thinking "big picture," I saw so many things that could be streamlined and once I did, I was amazed by how many such similar beats I'd left in on previous edits. To that end, we now have an awesome new version and I wonder if people would like to see an .epub version of this text copy of the book in advance? If enough people were interested for the pure love of reading, I don't see any harm in getting that out some time soon. I realize the fun of the book will be the photos, for most people... Anyway, I'm out to Isaac for photo selections and Mark to lay out and then it will come back to me for one more read and I will not do a ton more editing! I swear! I'm not sure how long this layout will last, but then we go to the printer and once we have that figured out, I'll let you know.
The Movie(s). This is where our big surprise(s) happened. We've had a basic cut of the feature version of the doc for years, along with a decent cut of four episodes that amount to the fan version of the doc for hardcores (as per the Kickstarter rewards). All that was left for us to do was add the critical B roll, which was a stopper because we had a few things we always expected to get "soon". And soon was being pushed further back by annoying logistics.
One of those areas we needed to supplement was our time with Steve Varner. It was a struggle to arrange that, but this past summer Isaac got a bunch more footage with him, which is great. As well, during that same production swing, Isaac was hoping to spend some time with Mark Taylor's wife Rebecca because Isaac was certain that she had some treasures from Turtle history in her garage. Most people know that Mark had a big impact on the Turtles, but it's possible people don't know exactly how big an impact it was. And now they will know, because Isaac and Rebecca discovered what I think will be completely unknown TMNT design material.
We'd long HOPED that there would be development sketches that would reveal the worth of Mark's contributions to that first TMNT toy line and indeed, there were thirty-some images and they were gold. Clearly, Mark had taken John Handy's initial design work and really strengthened it. It became clear that Mark really leaned on the comics, got to the heart of what Peter wanted to see in those first toys, and it was much of his work that went out for sculpting.
Here's one of those sketches before, and I think this one's been seen before (unlike some of the others, which I will share down the road when we're getting them into the book).
And then, after finding these with Rebecca, Isaac went back into the editing bins... Both he and I seemed to remember talking to Mark about Turtles, but could never figure out if we'd done it on camera. The footage wasn't there, or so we thought, until Isaac sent this text one day: "Unmmmmm so here’s an exciting thing. I COMPLETELY forgot that we did an ENTIRE interview with mark taylor about TMNT…….."
Indeed, during an interview about He-Man and Conan, Mark started talking about working on the Turtles. Was that interview on the He-Man hard drive instead of the TMNT hard drive? I don't know, but I do know that Isaac found it and it started more rebuilding even after the Steve Varner rebuild. Did Isaac like the interview he found? Well, look what this text:
That re-cut pushed everything back again, which is good. Maybe better than good. Isaac dived back into the edit with the new information and the new material and got everything to a good new place, a little bit richer, a little bit longer and then, one night, we got another Isaac text:
We called to find out that Kevin Eastman had texted Isaac the three photos you see above, and what you see in those shots is something we've talked to Kevin about for years. And it's wild.
Both Kevin and Peter have mentioned Mirage videotapes with unknown contents. Yes, we had been given a bunch of such tapes from Pete back in the day and some of the footage on them has been seen but there was an enduring mystery. What happened to Kevin's tapes? Did he keep them? Did they have anything new on them? Kevin didn't know for sure, nor did he hadve time to dig around and find them in his archives, which are both impressive and overwhelming.
Then, a few weeks ago, he found some tapes. Are they amazing? We don't know. Did Kevin say we could use some of the footage in this doc? YES. He said exactly that. Has he shipped any of these tapes to us? We don't know yet. Kevin is very busy and it's the holidays and Kev's got a ton on his plate, so we're not sure what's coming or not coming as of yet, however, we now have to face the idea that there may be some changes to our current cut AND the B roll used throughout the existing cut.
Or maybe these are dubs of Pete's tapes that we've already seen. Some are commercial releases of the movies. Others are eps of the animated series for sign offs. Others will be promos. But we won't know until we get them, digitize them and check them out. Isaac is foaming at the mouth and eager to see what might be on these so, as soon as we get them, we'll let you know here. If it's a big change, it might be worth it indeed. Fingers crossed!
Action Figures. This continues to be the biggest time and money sink and is fraught with technical issues as we strive to solve problems and arrive at the best figures in the best way.
I won't pretend to understand ANY of it, because it's truly Isaac's baby, but suffice to say that he has been challenged in every imaginable way and that includes in terms of technology, materials, mechanics, computationally, geopolitically, macro AND micro-economically and more. These are probably the main reason why we're behind, in spite of the enormity of writing the book and trying to collate all the incoming and changing material for the movie. These figures need to be cool and he is going crazy trying to get them to his standards. I'm going to get him to put together another video from the shop a place I am scared to go, so I stay in my basement and write a Turtle book, for the most part and I hope to get that out soon.
Other Stuff. Therea few other bits and pieces to be collected and created, but these three key factors above are eating all of our time, money and energy, as you can no doubt imagine.
In ending, I want to thank you all for your patience and understanding. We've bitten off SO much here and we're getting through it a bit at a time, but we'll get there. We hope you had/are having an amazing holiday time and wish you the best for 2026. We'll get through it together!
rl
The latest from the toy factory is coming up
4 months ago
– Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 04:51:02 PM
Randall here with a quick update prior to a real update, which will be next week. I've just nagged Isaac about a giving us a video update to catch us all up on the layers of production issues that have been slowing us down. That should be mid next week.
I'm not going to even try to predict where we'll be with all the shipping and border-crossing issues that have affected almost everything we've been doing (and trying to do). I know you all see the news, so you know it's hard to forecast exactly how things will end up. One unforeseen benefit of the slowdowns we've had has been that we all have some time to hopefully see at least some of the issues resolved before it's time for deliveries.
The Book: I've had new reader reactions to the text and there is a suggested round of deeper cuts to tighten the focus even more. I will note that one particular reader is not a hardcore TMNT fan, so I will have to consider his notes carefully. In short, he thinks I should really focus on the Q&As and strip out more of the context material I wrote to bridge the interviews. I wanted to set the table and build flavour, so I don't know if he's right or not, but I guess I could ask you: Do you think it's more appealing to read the collected Q&As with the people we've had in the doc without me adding much in the way of my own perspective or colour? His main note is that you folks would probably prefer to get your gifts (the interviews) without the gaudy wrapping (my words). What say you?
On the editing front, Isaac has been through a forced and panicky rebuilding of the project after a computer crash that erased a big chunk of his most recent work and, tempting as it is to yell and want to throw rocks at Apple for planting a crappy logic board in his rig, and rather than freak out at him for disabling Autosave (which, to be fair, slows him down like crazy when he's in a flow because of how long each save takes, what with the different kinds and qualities of footage in the timelines) I think it maybe turned out to be useful. Having a tech issue like that after working out a new flow for a bunch of material he's super familiar with allowed him to gain some new perspective and, once he had his rig back up and working, he had some new ideas, new solutions to old problems and some fresh ways to reframe some sequences that felt a little long in the tooth. Nice!
I'm not whining here (well, I hope you don't see it as whining), but there's a thing that can happen with any project you've been on for a long time, wherein you start to see the movie you know rather than the one you've got laid out in your Premiere timeline. It happens to all of us in different ways. Like, if you have kids, you maybe almost have them in your mind at a certain age, regardless of how old they really are, and it can almost be a shock to realize how much they've changed without you really seeing it. So much of what we do in our lives gets done on autopilot and it's only when you're forced to step back and see those familiar things from a distance that you realize what's really there. Okay, I didn't know I was going to say this, but now that I'm writing it, I realize my oldest child is about to turn 30 and how did that even happen? Wait. Am I really that old?
In ending, let me say that I'm sure I'm not the only one gnashing teeth about how long all this is taking, but we're a small team doing the best we can and this project is personal for us and we don't want it to be great, we need it to be great. We've come to be friends with both Peter and Kevin over the years and when we release any material about them, it's important to us that they like it. We also want their families, the creators they've worked with over the years and the people who look up to them to like it as well. It's a lot of pressure, but it's good pressure and it inspires us to push through. And we will! Thanks to you people, for which we are grateful. See you soon with a progress video...
