12 Old TMNT Licenced Products*

From roughly 1990 to 1992 I was obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not a lot’s changed), this didn’t exactly stop in 1992 the obsession just had to time-share with my new Sonic the Hedgehog obsession (not a lot’s changed). This was when the TMNT were at their biggest and every type of product you could think of had a smiling green face on it, TMNT products were so ubiquitous that if you had a Turtles obsessed kid there was no reason not to use TMNT versions of whatever they needed, from slippers to toiletries to party favours to little treats to food to ski and skateboard equipment. Today most old farts writing nostalgic waffle like myself seem to focus only on the comics, cartoons, action figures and food but there was so much more and as I go about my business on the internet I collect pictures of all these insignificant things I had, wanted or didn’t know existed - I have a lot of pictures and yet I still don’t have pictures of everything I had let alone all that was (officially) churned out, such a goal may be impossible. Today’s stream of bullshit includes some of the many ‘other’ TMNT things from their ‘vintage’ era. So are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: WWE Elite Legends Magnum T.A .and Kamala*

Welcome to the last of the Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza posts! I got all of them out before February 1^st! Woo! I did it on my own! I'm a winner! I'm a blackheart! ...*ehem* sorry these reviews just cause spontaneous outbursts of wrestling references.  I’ve wanted both of these figures since they were revealed (SDCC 2016? Probably) but since they’ve been around in stores I’ve been a) really busy b) really depressed and c) not affluent enough to waste £20 on fucking Kamala but then came Christmas. I was still busy but often busy in places that sell action figures (I have a lot of childish friends, it’s great), I was emotionally buoyed by the season and I could spend other people’s money on bizarre wrestlers who once fought Jake the Snake. Mum ended up buying me Kamala and I got Magnum TA in the post-Christmas sales.  

Both figures are from 2016’s WWE Elite Legends wave, Mattel seem to release these Flashback/Legends waves every so often but not often enough for Ringside Collectibles to bother numbering them. This Legends wave is pretty sweet, though Shawn Michaels looks nothing like him, and I ended up with three of the six and three of the four characters I didn’t already own a figure of, I’d be four for four if I’d ever actually seen a Chris Jericho in-store. Anyway WWE Elite is Mattel’s mid-price range that used to be their top-of-the-line range until they released the extra-posh Defining Moments line; they have extra flourishes like double-jointed knees and ab crunch articulation.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: Playmates Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Karai & Armaggon*

*digs around it the Star Wars bin* oh, I have new, current, TMNT figures to review *sigh*

Figures from Playmates’ current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line (their third to use that name and fifth TMNT line altogether) are one of my favourite things to get, there is a child’s joy in having a new Ninja Turtle toy that never goes away and I am delighted to have both of today’s unwilling subjects: my favourite version of a TMNT staple and the first figure of a villain who originated in my favourite incarnation of the TMNT franchise. BUT they’re my least favourite thing to review because they rarely review well; they’re cheap and nasty and oftentimes lazy feeling and reviewing them just makes me sad at how far Playmates have fallen, from the halcyon days of the vintage TMNT line and Toxic Crusaders to doing shit like these. Even adjusting my expectations accordingly - these aren’t’ collector’s figures and they aren’t aimed at adults - modern TMNT figures review poorly.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: My Little Pony: Guardians of Harmony – Queen Chrysalis vs Spike the Dragon*

Is this quick crappy review my Brony coming out party? No. 1) it’d be a really crap party, such a thing would deserve at least nibbles and I have no nibbles; 2) I don’t consider myself a Brony because I’m way too casual a fan and 3) I’m a rotten pony hipster and was a boy who liked ponies before it was cool and so I was out for years before the word ‘Brony’ was even invented. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I had a lot of girls toys as a kid (I’m sure my mum wanted a girl) and a spattering of G1 My Little Ponies was amongst them (including Applejack) but my major expression of fandom was watching the cartoon every morning at Centre Parcs, who used to play it as pretty much the totality of their kids programming back when they limited their TVs to just their own channels – my Grandad hated it, which just made me even more inclined to watch. My selectin of Pony merchandise though is very small; with my old G1 girls long gone it totals, I think, a Fluttershy action figure (she’s my favourite), a random G1 dragon, a cuddly Rarity a friend won me on a UFO Catcher and this set. I have more Darth Vaders than that.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: Mattel Masters of the Universe Classics: Collector’s Choice Tuskador and Horde Wraith*

I LIKED the subscription concept Masters of the Universe Classics used, it needed some refinement but in 2015 we got two of those refinements – we knew the whole subscription up front and the ‘sub or die’ scare tactic was retired. Of course late 2015 and all of 2016 turned into an absolute mess of delayed releases, no updates and squashed faces following the loss of Scott ‘Toyguru’ Neitlich and what seemed to be personnel changes once every 12 hours. But the concept I liked, every month you get (at least) a new figure through the post, it guaranteed you all of the figures (from the main line at least) you wanted that year and as a side effect you ended up getting characters you wouldn’t normally have bought. Some fans hates that last ‘benefit’, cross every time they had to receive a figure of a character they didn’t care for or from an incarnation of He-Man they didn’t like and I can’t say I was thrilled with getting Nepthu or Buzzsaw Hordak either but honestly it’s worked for me more than it hasn’t; without the subscription ‘forcing’ me to receive them I’d’ve never bought Icer, Batros, Geldor, Strongarm Strong-Or, Galactic Protector She-Ra, Lizard Man, Huntara, Calix, King Chooblah or Lord Masque and I’d’ve missed out on a lot of cool figures. I bring this up because 1) the subscription days are over for the foreseeable future, Super7 isn’t continuing with the concept, replacing it with the concept of doubling the cost of buying from them if you’re stupid enough to not live in America and 2) Horde Wraith is half of this review and while I’m not as in love with him as I am with Icer or Strong-Or I’m glad I now own one and that wouldn’t have happened without the subscription model.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: The Corps! The Corps vs The Curse: The Collection 3-Figure Set: Dozer, Rain & Puma*

Yeah I bought another Corps three pack so I could I could have a Puma to go with my Snake Bite, it was five quid and I had a lot of Christmas money (I have a big family), there was no reason for me not to buy it and I wanted to do a quick crappy review of it because I did a quick crappy review of the other set but…sigh…I’m not sure how much I have to say about things in the set that aren’t Puma. I’ll try to make this interesting for me to write and you to read, but no promises.

Post-Christmas Quick Crappy Reviewapalooza 2017: Mondo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1:6 Scale Leonardo (Mondo Exclusive version)*

It came, it finally came!... the big one!

Yes a Toy Story quote IS appropriate for a Ninja Turtle review because there’s actually a bit of story to this toy – see what I did there? I am a fucking whiz at this writing lark. Mondo previewed these 1:6 scale TMNT figures in 2015, apparently making 1:6 scale figures is the perfect way to make toys of things that someone else already has the master licence too because everyone’s doing it, in fact there are multiple 1:6 Scale and bigger TMNT coming out/already out in 2016 & 2017, Mondo have the rights to make figures accurate to the Mirage comic series. Buyers could choose between a regular edition of the figure or a deluxe edition of the figure – which is the same but with an extra accessory – but if you subscribed (to receive all four Turtles) you got the deluxe edition at the price of the regular edition, which is nice because the deluxe editions are a bit of a rip off, certainly for Leonardo. Leonardo was due out 1^st Quarter 2016 and each Turtle would ship in a subsequent quarter (so Donatello in Quarter 2 and so on), this figure turned up on the 10^th of January 2017, making him a year late. Mondo had an issue with completing the whole ‘buying from them’ thing in 2016, mostly they have an issue with the ‘sending you what you ordered’ bit. Some of it due to them being a bit eager to put the items up for order (possibly a side effect of needing to have the order to have them made? They are a pretty small company) and some of it might just be standard delays that happen sometimes, especially when you’re jumping from vinyl figures to a full collectors' figure line but I honestly have no idea why exactly Leonardo is so late. Mondo claim to have sent me updates on these figures but I can’t find them in my inbox, perhaps they’re lost amongst all the emails they sent me telling me about all the other great stuff I could buy from them despite the fact I had no reason to believe they would actually deliver the fucking things. Which is good advice Mondo: don’t advertise spin-offs to things you have not yet shipped (in this case: Mousers) and as far as at least this buyer knew, may never ship.