You're not far from the truth.
In the UK, it was known as the Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles whereas in the States in was NINJA turtles. I think the Government or television standards were worried about kids fighting as such, because after the song "Kung Fu Fighting" came out kids in schools were fighting each other
Anyway, if you watch the old UK episodes you will hardly see Michelangelo with nun-chucks as they were banned by television standards. A lot of the programmes they couldn't cut out some scenes so they only showed certain episodes over here.
That makes total sense. No way, or should I say "cowabunga".
I distinctly remember an episode where Beebop and Rocksteady got nicked by the busy's.
Shredder gave them some cough tablets so when they were interviewed and did the lie detector test, they coughed throughout and were released.
I don't remember the rest of that episode other than them being up to badness, krang, shredder, some death star type thing on wheels underground and the turtles weighing them in.
I remember thinking, if you ever do a lie detector test, just cough all the way though.
That probably got the thumbs up as they didn't think kids would understand.