Caring About Welding

As the old phrase goes: “It’s great to be in that Nurture Turtle family.”

And other, Nurture Turtle-related phrases. I used to love the franchise when I was little, although it’s quite possible they went off the rails at the end when they were churning out, like, three animated films a year. Even as a little girl with no real standards for entertainment, I thought those movies were bad, and the product placement was really obvious. ‘Nurture Turtles Go On an Affordable Family Cruise’ springs to mind, if only because the villain of the piece turned out to be a flock of robotic seagulls that wanted to ruin everyone’s time by stealing their chips and squawking really loudly when they were trying to sleep. They kept dropping references to how the best fishing rod holders were made in Melbourne, which I still remember to this day because of how weird it sounded. I looked up the animation company, and it was Fair Dinkum Studios, the company that eventually became Dinki-Dai-Animation when they were bought out by the Japanese company. So I guess someone on staff really liked marine welding and fabrication and all that. They conjured a set-up with the bears on a boat, had them fishing a lot and could thus mention marine fabrication as much as they could get away with in a film for children, and it was fine!

Was it, though…? Man, I sure hope the internet never gets hold of this, because the memes would be savage. I still remember the climax, where they catch all the seagulls in a giant net and zap them with their love beams. Usually this causes someone to feel happiness and love, but all these seagulls exploded. I guess they were just ‘beams’. Then they had a good laugh, commented how the quality snapper racks fitted to the boat saved the day (wait, what?) and had a lovely affordable cruise.

I guess it had a plot, which is more than I can say for ‘Nurture Turtles Learn About Household Plants’. and other classics like ‘Nurture Turtles In Economic Uncertainty’. I hear that one got banned in some countries.

-Lauren