As if using religion to further spread their message wasn’t enough, PETA is now trying to get the beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to only eat vegan pizza on their new Nickelodeon series.
With Nickelodeon set to release the brand-new 2-D series “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” later this year, PETA thought it would be a good time to ask the network to change the turtles’ beloved menu to dairy-free pizza.
In their letter, PETA claims that people (including Nickelodeon’s young viewers, their siblings, and their parents) are going vegan at higher rates than ever. And pizza joints are following suit, especially in the Turtles’ New York City home.
“Modern kids are embracing vegan food, so why shouldn’t modern Ninja Turtles?” asks PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “Vegan pizza is popular, and it’s healthier and far kinder to animals than old-fashioned dairy cheese pizza. PETA thinks that’s something the ‘Heroes in a Half Shell’ would support.”
Considered one of the most popular kids’ television programs of the 1980s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a classic, global property created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It first debuted as a successful comic book series and then became a hit animated TV show, a live-action television series and later spawned numerous blockbuster theatrical releases.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reimagines the characters in a fresh new way, featuring jagged-shelled Raphael as a snapping turtle, wielding twin tonfas as his weapons; Leonardo as a red-eared slider, using an ōdachi sword; Donatello as a soft-shell turtle, sporting a tech-bo staff; and Michelangelo as a box turtle, arming himself with a kusari-fundo.
We hope their pizza doesn’t get reimagined as well — who doesn’t love seeing the turtles munch on a jelly bean and sausage or a pepperoni and pickle?
