Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Team Up With A Powerful Former Ally In This Pizza Hut Ad

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

You may not know this, and this could come as quite a shock, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles really like pizza. Shocking, I know, they are turtles after all, not a species known to chow down on pizza in the wild, but somewhere along the line, between encountering a powerful mutagen, extensive martial arts training, and entering adolescence, they developed a taste for the Italian delicacy. And now the Heroes in a Half Shell have teamed up with a powerful former ally to rake in a little extra dough (see what I did there?), as they’ve joined forces with Pizza Hut.

From the inception, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has always been one massively merchandised franchise, despite the misgivings of creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. There have been countless toys, games, video games, movies, TV shows, and various other tie ins, and Jonathan Liebesman’s upcoming version is going to be no exception.

As you can see in this commercial, the Turtles are helping the monolithic pizza chain re-launch their Cheezy Bites Pizza, which is a pizza that, instead of crust, has little cheese-filled pieces of bread that you can tear off, dip, and devour. According to Carrie Walsh, Pizza Hut’s Chief Marketing Officer, “There’s no denying the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ love of pizza, which is one of the many reasons it fits having our brand fuel their hunger in the upcoming film…Coupling the popularity of the Ninja Turtles to our pizza innovation, we’re thrilled to be bringing back a fan favorite in Cheesy Bites Pizza that combines the great pizza taste with a little ‘food fun’ for fans to enjoy.”

As we said, this isn’t the first time that the Turtles have teamed with Pizza Hut. There was a massive media marketing campaign that accompanied the 1990 film version, though ironically enough, the company that actually delivers pizza in the movie is their rival Domino’s.

This rekindled partnership isn’t just as simple as a few advertisements on TV and a product placement. They’re hitting social media hard, with a hashtag campaign, #TBTMNT, which stands for Throwback Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, on Twitter and Instagram so that fans can post pictures of themselves and win prizes. In addition to that, there will be online-only “hidden menus” where you can learn the favorite pizzas of your favorite Turtle, should you want to know that piece of information. You can even unearth exclusive videos and other goodies to play with.

I still think Donatello looks like garbage decked out in a utility belt and what looks like a proton pack from Ghostbusters, but I’ve ranted about that enough that I’m even starting to annoy myself, so I’ll let that go for the time being and hope this movie winds up being fun.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens everywhere on August 8.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles