I've started rewatching the Fred Wolf series, which I have not really looked at since its original run (and which I never finished). I doubt I'll watch the whole thing, but the first episode was just self-aware enough to be a fun diversion. There's a cute recurring gag where April can't tell the turtles apart.
Have Eastman or Laird ever given a detailed description of their role in the toy line and the Fred Wolf cartoon? I think Laird has posted some design sketches, but I'm really interested in how the characters and plot from the Mirage series mutated (heh heh) into the cartoon. The end result was really elegant in a way--you can't chop up people in Saturday morning cartoons, so you need robots, and the Utroms build robots, so you need an evil Utrom. Enter Krang and his Technodrome. The problem is solved and you get a duo of villains who can deliver exposition, bicker and quarrel, etc. You can't tell action stories with an unemployed computer programmer/junk store proprietress, so April becomes a reporter with a nose for trouble. Thus she can deliver new adventures to the Turtles every week. And The Hamato-Oroku feud is obviously unfit for a toy commercial, so he got a new story, too. It gave the Turtles motivation that didn't involve murder, but you know there's no chance they're ever going to permanently de-mutate their sensei so it doesn't have much effect in the long term. The end result is an almost total inversion of several of the Mirage concepts: the advanced, peaceful Utroms become an interdimensional warlord; the gentle, out-of-her-depth and slightly traumatized victim becomes a daring investigator; and the cycle of revenge and murder becomes something more wholesomely heroic.
To stay on topic, I guess, were any of the changes in Mutant Mayhem necessary adaptations for the medium? Did they improve on the original story or subsequent takes?