For those of you that may not remember, back in 2009 Viacom dropped a cool 60 million to buy the rights to the TMNT from Mirage and 4kids entertainment. Well coming sometime next year, Viacom and Nickelodean are going to put that purchase to work for them when the relaunch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Not a ton has really come out about the relaunch. The only info we have at all aside from this image comes from the show’s executive producer Ciro Nieli who has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal has stating that the turtles will have “more individual attributes”. I’m assuming that means they are going to REALLY play up the differences in the turtles personalities.

There are two other noted changes that can be seen in this teaser image. First it looks like Nickelodean is going to go back to giving each turtle their own unique hue of green again (as Playmates did with their infamous run of 80′s toys.) The second change is the UNGODLY AMOUNT OF ATHLETIC  TAPE each turtle is wearing! I imagine they would go through some injuries, but.. DAMN! Actually we have seen the athletic tape brought into play once before, when Jim Lee re-imagined the characters for Image when theybought the license for the comics. (On a side note, if you are a TMNT fan and you haven’t read the criminally short run of TMNT comics Image put out, you really need to)

It’s no secret that I’m a huge TMNT fan (I have that tattoo to prove it) so you know I will be watching this one closely. Hopefully Nickelodean can do right by the license as I really enjoyed what 4kids did with the 2003 relaunch. Plus, with Michael Bay (God help us all) behind the next movie; this relaunch may be the only bright spot us TMNT fans have to cling to at night.