Recommended music: Electric Wendigo – TMNT 2 Scene 1 (Fire!)
For this #TurtleTuesday, let’s check out the Helm Toys Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shooting Gallery!
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shooting Gallery is an obscure, self-contained tabletop arcade toy first made by Helm Toys in 1988, and then by Kid Works around 1990. Depending on where it was sold, it came with either the usual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo or the European Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles branding, since the word ‘ninja’ was sometimes censored. The game art shows Shredder in the center, surrounded by Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady, and the Technodrome, and they’re all targets behind a counter at a restaurant for some reason. The toy has a large plastic blaster attached to the front, a clear window for the targets, and small plastic pegs on the bottom that act as a stand.
To play, you load small metal ball bearings into a hole at the top connected to the launcher. Holding the launcher handle, you squeeze the trigger to shoot the ball bearings at the targets inside. When you hit a target, the ball bounces off the back wall and rolls back down to the loading area so you can keep playing without the need for electronics. The targets show different TMNT villains, each with a point value. Because the blaster arm can’t move much, it’s hard to hit targets at the very top or in the corners unless you tilt or move the toy. A manual score dial on the front lets you keep track of your score up to 100 points.
In North America, Helm Toy made its own licensed version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shooting Gallery in 1988 and 1989, which is the one I owned. It worked the same way, with a front blaster shooting metal ball bearings at targets, but Helm Toy used a different mold and artwork than the Kid Works version. Helm Toy was known for making these self-contained arcade target games for many popular brands. They used the same basic housing and launcher for other shooting gallery toys, like ones for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and generic military themes such as Strike Force Alpha. For each brand, they just changed the graphics and target stickers while the rest of the toy stayed the same.
Besides these versions made by Helm Toy and Kid Works, Helm made an alternate battery-operated version in the style of other big toy companies making tabletop shooting gallery games based on popular action franchises from the 1970s to the 1990s. Companies like Marx Toys, Ideal, Arco, and Playmates created both mechanical and electronic target sets for brands like Batman, RoboCop, The Terminator, Transformers, The Flintstones, and G.I. Joe. The games used different types of toy guns depending on how they were built and the safety rules at the time. Smaller units usually had a front-mounted turret blaster attached to the housing with a ball socket so you could swivel and aim it without taking it off. Other games used separate handguns like magnetic pistols that dragged pellets along the screen, spring-loaded dart pistols, disc shooters, or rubber-band-powered cap guns that shot at free-standing tin or plastic targets.
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Dale's Toys 