#J. Gordon Hungerdunger is extremely fun to say

[turtlethon]

I was thinking instead of all the minor mobster characters, a better TMNT 1987 could make them all these mafioso, Don Turteli, promoted to regular. Don Turteli would eventually get turned into a turtle mutant, thus coinciding with Playmates releasing an action figure of Turteli.

Do you think that'd work better? I'm trying to think of something for the generic mad scientists too?

I think that if you had a smaller pool of writers during seasons three through five working on fewer episodes, with a stronger focus on coherent storytelling, then yeah, you could absolutely consolidate all of TMNT's mobsters into one, and Turtelli feels like the obvious candidate. You could mutate him into a villainous gangster Turtle, either from the outset or later on. Certainly that kind of character would be more marketable, more appealing to kids, more likely to work as a potential toy in the Playmates line, all that fun stuff. But the key thing is that he would need to be presented as a true threat to the Turtles, ideally in a way that would differentiate him from Shredder and which would be compelling.

There are a few characters throughout the show's run who are able to apply pressure and challenge the Turtles in ways different to Shredder, but they tend to be guys with some kind of money or institutional power (think AJ Howard or J. Gordon Hungerdunger, who each have money/clout but who aren't much to look at, and who I doubt would shift many units as action figures). IMO, the best example of what could be done in terms of introducing a second big bad is actually from the much maligned Red Sky era, and it's Titanus. Here we have a guy who ticks all the boxes: an actual crime boss, in this case from a far-off future, who commands a group of generally interesting mutants, has a compelling look that works when placed next to other characters in TMNT, who can go toe-to-toe with the Turtles but also has clout via his H.A.V.O.C. group. If we're talking about just having one strong recurring mutant villain in the show from S3 onwards, someone who isn't Shredder but could be almost as compelling, I think Titanus is the blueprint, it'd just be a case of implementing something like that several years earlier.