One toy's revealing relaunch

When the producers of the new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (TMNT) cartoon began thinking about a model for the program they launched last month, they did not look to kid culture, but to HBO.

4Kids Entertainment, which produces the cartoon and licenses the toys the show helps to sell, wanted to draw kids into the world of the turtles in ways that no other cartoon had ever done.

Part of their task was designing a cliff-hanger cartoon with a story line that children would devotedly follow week by week. The program that seemed to most offer what they were looking for: "The Sopranos."

"We're trying to emulate what works well in prime time," says Norman Grossman, president of 4Kids Entertainment, which produces TMNT, among other cartoons. "We thought of all those people who can't wait to see the latest episode of 'Sopranos.' "

The serial format for their cartoon is just one example of how the Turtles have changed. The original cartoon aired about 1990, having made the leap from the comic-book world.

The turtles themselves are no longer primarily benign pizza-eaters who kid around with one another and get into skirmishes, but tough-and-buff dudes who disperse a few clever lines between prolonged combat scenes.

And the cartoon itself is no longer just a vehicle for marketing toys. Marketers now use cartoons to introduce children to a much more elaborate world of characters, details, and plots that extend from the TV to the Internet, video games, and a range of licensed products.

The evolution of the Turtles over the past decade shows how far marketers have come in understanding children's culture, and the lengths they now will go to win their attention.

"We're looking for things we can put on the air and extend into kids' lives in a variety of ways," says Mr. Grossman. "We're not only looking for ratings, but to get into kids' psyches on a day-to-day basis."

The experience of marketing the Pokémon brand over the past five years taught 4Kids a key lesson: Children like their current entertainment fad to be all-consuming. It is up to those who market the brand, according to 4Kids, to create a critical mass of details that they can strive to master.

"It was very clear from the beginning that if we could somehow harness the power of why kids want to learn details, it would be a very powerful thing," says Grossman.

After watching children pour themselves into Pokémon, Grossman and his colleagues came to the conclusion that children soak up details because they want to become experts at something of which adults have no understanding.

Because the cartoon is in a serial form, Grossman believes children will keep thinking about the TMNT narrative during the week, and talk about the show with their friends.

"If we can get them into the TV show, that's when they start sucking up the land of the turtles," says Grossman.

The details in the programs will pop up on the TMNT website, in comic books, trading-card games, videogames, and a variety of other licensed products.

"We hope it's the subject of discussion in the schoolyard, at the water fountain, and that they check it out online to see if we give advanced hints about what the story will be next," says Grossman.

That level of engagement might be unlikely among the age group to which the first cartoon was pitched: 4- to 8-year-olds. But 4Kids, like many entertainment companies over the past decade, has broadened its product's demographic base. Marketers in general have become more sensitive of late to younger children's interest in entertainment and products clearly designed for an older audience.

Partly for that reason, 4Kids chose to design the new cartoon to appeal to 9- to 14-year-olds. The producers' expectation: Younger children will be pulled along.

"Younger kids will want to emulate older kids. They are going to watch this kind of show anyway," says Grossman. "If it's just for younger kids, that's a turn-off for the older kids who don't want to be seen watching those shows."

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