Ah, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They've had a long run considering the creators originally made them as a joke. Now, Nickelodeon owns the turtles and is going to be doing stuff with them later this year. Already, there's a toyline out, and since I kinda like the designs, I decided to give it a shot.
Never did pay much attention to the brains behind the team as a kid. My reasoning for picking him first was because he's voiced by Rob Paulsen, the original voice of Raphael. I used to own a LOT of Raphael, so it balances out.
The figures stand at 4 1/2" tall, and at this time I have NO idea how in-scale than is with your standard 5" action figures. They have a decent weight to them though and are VERY well made, so the price and size work.
Like the original toyline, this came with a sprue of weapons that you punch out and use. On top of classic bo staff, he comes with a naginata (bo staff with a blade at the end), a san setsu-kon (three piece nunchaku) and two throwing stars. These feel like VERY classic Ninja Turtle accessories, right down to the design of the stars. In particular they seem to advertise that Donatello using the naginata as his specialty. It's okay guys, it's still a bo staff, just with more blade.
The figure itself... whether or not you like the designs, the sculpting on it is really nice. The texture used on it reminds me a lot of the rubbery plastic used on the 90s movie figures, just more sturdy. Thing of note is that the belt is a separate piece which appears to be glued on at the side. The tradition of separate belts goes on!
If you look closely, even with my camera quality, you can see all these bumps and scratches in the skin, even the chest, which are all molded in and provide an interesting texture. It doesn't FEEL like your average Ninja Turtle figure, which I like.
My only real complaint is that keeping in line with tradition of the blank white eyes, the eyes are not accurate to the show models. Point is, he has blank eyes, when he should have pupils. I've fixed that already. A dirty secret of mine is that all these photos were taken AFTER I fixed it, so you're looking at edited photos! Ha!
The articulation is much better than I would expect. There's universal joints in the shoulders, thighs, knees and elbows, a balljoint for the head, the elbow and knee areas can swivel, and proper swivel joints for the wrists. In addition, the tan torso area is not glued down at the bottom and is very flexible rubber, meaning you can bend the leg all the way forward and not be stopped by it. In short, they thought a lot on these designs.
My only complaint is that the elbows REALLY should have been double-jointed somehow. Due to the design, you can only bend the elbow so much, about half as much as you should be able to. I kinda think ankle joints would be cool too but that's just a preference of mine.
Overall this guy is pretty cool. I kind of want to collect all four, we'll see how the cartoon goes first, though. If you like the designs then you'll like knowing that the figures are solid.
Now that about does it for my birthday haul. Here's hoping I'll have more things to bring up soon, possibly TV shows or movies or something. As said before, we shall see.
(PS, here's how the figure looks with added pupils. I used a fine-tipped marker.)
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