Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25139993-20180828225733/@comment-995426-20180902150205

Well, the key word is "kids." TMNT works created primarily for an audience of children were necessarily going to make the turtles more distinctive in appearance, especially if they were also toyetic. In truth, if a ninja's targets can identify them at all, then the ninja has failed in their mission. As such, it doesn't really matter what a ninja wears, as long as they remain effective as ninjas.

This means that in works like Mirage TMNT, written for adults, the turtles' (all red) bandannas were never disguises or camouflage, but merely polite social clothing to show they were dressed and presentable, for training, etc. They only removed their bandannas when they were sleeping, bathing, etc. Most ordinary people were never meant to see the turtles at all&mdash;with or without their bandannas. In volume 4, when the turtles started living more public lives, their disguise was the plausible deniability that they could be aliens, so as not to embarrass the recently public s over the debacle they were still trying to keep a secret. As such, when walking around in public, the turtles dressed normally, with gear and bandannas. They also each got temporary tattoos for their plastrons so the Utroms could tell them apart without their weapons; they considered color-coding their bandannas (like in the various cartoons), but decided that would be too dorky.