“We’re bigger than the Beatles, dudes!” Leonardo yelled over the crowd outside the Academy of Music. The leader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emerged from a van to join franchise co-creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman at the totally tubular premiere of their second feature film in Northampton.

It was March 1991, the height of Turtlemania. After the release of their first movie, which grossed nearly $202 million worldwide in 1990, the 4 talking, walking, pizza-eating and crime-fighting Turtles were household names. Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello were no longer just revered Renaissance artists; instead, Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donny were down-to-earth dudes who inhabited the sewers of New York City.

Like Leo said, they were also mononymous superstars like Paul, John, George and Ringo. And they were even in a band, however short-lived. During the 1990 “Oprah Winfrey Show” dedicated to the international “Coming Out of Their Shells” tour – otherwise known as the most “Radical, radical, radical!” episode of “Oprah” in existence – the Turtles sing and dance like a boy band while Winfrey touts their “triple platinum” album. As Raphael puts it, “Singing in the sewer is a wonderful sound!”