When it comes to the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a lot of the credit goes to Playmates Toys. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the characters born out of a joke. Credit them for having the vision to think this joke had appeal beyond their small circle as they self-published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1984. It was basically perfect timing from there as the product quickly got the attention of Mark Freedman and his Surge Licensing brand which, much like Mirage Studios, existed largely in name only. He saw the property’s potential as a kid’s product and was able to get Eastman and Laird to grant him permission to shop the IP to toy companies. Aside from a prototype created for Mattel, no major producer bit, except for Playmates. Known more as a doll company, Playmates wanted to get into the action figure business and took a chance on the franchise. They co-developed a television mini series with Fred Wolf to help sell the toys, and the rest is history.
Because of that early involvement and ridiculous level of success, Playmates has been intertwined with the TMNT franchise ever since. And for a long time, they were the only ones to make action figures based on the property. Then, in 2008, NECA Toys released it’s own version of the brothers. Marketed to collectors and sold outside the usual avenues occupied by Playmates, NECA sent to market a version of the turtles that had never really been done before in toy form. Based on their original appearance in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, the turtles hit retail with hopes of more Mirage inspired characters to follow. Then, it stopped. Details are murky, but some have blamed Playmates for stepping in and essentially squashing the toy line by exercising its contractual rights as the master toy license holder. It also could have just been poor sales. NECA’s Randy Falk indicated years ago that the comic turtles weren’t big sellers. Anecdotal evidence suggests he may be correct as I personally can recall seeing both the standard issue and black and white variants hanging around comic shops for years and only finally vanishing after hitting clearance. It’s possible NECA was just a little too early and TMNT nostalgia just wasn’t ready to take off in 2008. Only a select few know for sure why the line was ultimately cancelled.
Flash-forward 15 years later and NECA is back with a new iteration of the Mirage Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If fans weren’t ready for turtle nostalgia in 2008, they certainly are now. The property is now owned by Viacom who has wielded its mighty powers to loosen the toy license and we’re basically swimming in TMNT action figures from various companies. And since then, those 2008 figures have become far more sought after. Where once they could be had for clearance prices, they now command over 100 dollars a piece on the secondary market. This helped turn them into a magnet for bootleggers and some have even suggested that the physical molds were swiped from whatever factory NECA had been using. If NECA felt their dance with TMNT was over, it’s possible they let them go. Either way, because of a desire to do something different or because the figures have been bootlegged to hell and back, NECA decided to forego ever reissuing them. Instead, they opted to do new turtles based on later issues and for fans who have been dying to get ahold of some affordable Mirage turtles their wait is finally over.
The original 2008 figures have commonly been referred to as the Peter Laird turtles by fans. That’s likely due to Laird being the one who worked with NECA at the time when they were in development. They also seem to clearly be based on a singular image from the first issue which has been credited to Laird over the years. I have no idea how much of that is true as Eastman and Laird had a unique drawing style in which the two literally drew the same issue switching off in an unconventional manner as they passed papers back and forth. That’s why it’s just easier to consider them first appearance turtles. As the franchise took off, Eastman and Laird moved to the business side and away from doing the actual art which allowed for other artists to come into the fold. One such artist was Jim Lawson, who would go on to do pencils for a number of TMNT books. Initially, his take on the turtles was to emulate what Eastman and Laird had settled on when he stepped in while adding a little of his own influence. Eastman and Laird both loved Lawson’s work and have heaped praise upon it over the years. With their encouragement, he brought more of his own style into the books which can easily be seen during the City at War arc. His turtles were rather blocky, their heads almost resembling inverted mushrooms, and it’s that style that I think most comic book fans associate with the name Jim Lawson.
For this release, NECA hired Paul Harding as the sculptor and directed him to design the turtles based on Lawson’s art, but not his later work as seen with City at War, but his earlier stuff when he first started on the book. Because of that, this set is being marketed as the Return to New York Turtles, though Harding clarified on Twitter that he didn’t expressly design them based on that story. It’s an appropriate shorthand though to place these figures into an era of the original comics. NECA’s approach to comic figures, unlike some companies, is to be very stylized and to try and emulate a certain artist’s approach rather than adapt a character from a generic model sheet or reference material. American comics have almost always allowed for an artist to imprint their own style onto established characters and such can be seen across basically all of the major comic books published by the likes of Marvel and DC. It’s both a cool approach for fans and a wise one for a toy producer since it opens up the possibility to re-release popular characters like the turtles over and over with slightly different looks.
With all of that background out of the way, lets finally talk toys! This long-awaited NECA four-pack has recently started showing up at Target and was even sold online via Target’s website on June 25th. It seems like Target may have actually purchased stock from NECA for this release in contrast with the usual vendor-driven system they usually have in place for NECA. That’s likely due to this being timed with the drop of new toys by Playmates for the upcoming Mutant Mayhem film and because this release is the actual turtles, not some obscure side character that could possibly shelf-warm. This set will sell, even at the steep price of $150. The real question is – is this worth that steep price? If you’ve been waiting years to get a set of official Mirage turtles, that answer might be an easy “Yes” regardless of how this set turned out. If you are like me and have those 08 figures, or maybe even bootlegs you’re happy with, do you need to drop a bunch of money on yet another set of turtles? Read on.
The turtles come packaged in what is essentially NECA’s standard four-pack box. It’s an oversized version of the Ultimates, or Deluxe, releases with a front flap and window on the package. It’s adorned with new artwork by Kevin Eastman which looks great. This is the type of box that will display well for you in-box collectors. For the rest of you, you probably only care about the contents. Each turtle is on the same buck so you basically have four nearly identical figures inside. The main difference between each is the headsculpt which just features a different expression for each turtle. Since this is a Mirage set, they’re all in red bandanas with brown straps and pads giving them a very uniform look. There’s also a different deco applied to the plastron of each figure with Raph’s featuring the most “scuffs” than the other three. They’re done with black lines as opposed to being sculpted in.
The turtles stand at approximately 5.875″ in height. They’re quite chunky in appearance and fully-painted in a fairly neutral shade of green with lots of black linework to emulate the comic art. The linework is present on the pads, bandana, and belt and really sells the look well. It’s all relatively clean and consistent across the board. The only area I see as being a bit uneven is the linework around the bandanas. On a shelf, it’s fine, but up close there are some parts where there’s a smidge of green in-between the black line and the start of the red mask. My Michelangelo also has what looks like a scuff behind his right eye so there’s a little green showing. My Leonardo also has a speck of brown on his right bicep, but in general, I don’t see much in the way of color transfer throughout the four figures.
The paint is acceptable as is the level of quality control present throughout my set. Harding did a really good job of honing in on a design style for the turtles and capturing that with his sculpt. The only thing I personally would have changed are the legs which look really chunky. I think they could have been shrunk as the calf muscles basically extend outside the profile of the thigh muscles. That’s more of a subjective critique though than an objective one as these look quite close to the source material from what I can tell.
I think these figures are pretty much a homerun from a presentation point-of-view and that’s definitely where NECA’s strong suit lies. Where it often does not is with articulation, and these guys aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re not likely to wow anyone. Since the figures are essentially the same, they articulate the same as well. The heads are on a double ball peg (and in case you ever mix-up the heads, they’re stamped with the character’s initial inside) and the range is solid looking up, down, and all around. The shoulders are hinged-ball pegs and they can’t quite raise out to the side all the way. They rotate fine until they hit the shell, and past that is a biceps swivel. This joint was the only joint I had any issues with as 7 out of the 9 biceps joints in my set were stuck. I used the hot water to cold water method to get all of them working. The peg for the joint is pretty snug so I also pulled out a little before twisting and it required a pretty forceful twist. The peg is rather thick, so it should be pretty durable, but if you leave the joint in a hot water bath for too long and then try to twist it you could shear it off, so be careful. Once I essentially broke the seal on the joint it was fine.
With that out of the way, the elbows are the next spot and NECA opted for double-joints this time. This is a welcomed addition as the cartoon turtles feature hinged pegs for the elbows and I wasn’t sure what to expect with these. The addition is worthwhile too as they can bend past 90 degrees at the joint. The wrists swivel and feature horizontal hinges. There are no vertical hinged hands in this set at all. That’s disappointing as the toon turtles had vertical hinges for the hands. The Turtles in Disguise set I believe came with two sets of vertical gripping hands, and this continues to be a problem with NECA. Where they once did a decent job of including the proper hinge, they seem to have essentially abandoned it for TMNT. Gargoyles characters get it, so I don’t understand the oversight. This is a set where essentially one set of tools creates four figures and it’s also something they’re likely to reissue many times so the fact that they couldn’t find it in the budget is absurd to me. It’s my biggest pet peeve with NECA of late.
At least at the waist we get an improvement over the 2008 turtles. NECA included a waist twist which they set fairly high behind the plastron to conceal it. It’s not going to provide the same amount of range a waist twist would with a non-shelled character, but it works all right. NECA added a “diaper” over the hips as well, but it doesn’t seem to get in the way. It does have the tendency to shift a bit though and my Leonardo has more of the part visible on his right leg than his left by quite a bit. The legs can kick forward past 90 degrees before the leg wants to go off to the side while the shell keeps them from kicking back. They also can hit a split. After that it’s pretty typical as we get a pivot point for the thighs where the ball connects with double-jointed knees past that which bend just a touch beyond 90 degrees. The ankles have the hinge and rocker setup, though the chunky nature of the ankles does restrict some of the range, but there should be enough to keep your figures flat-footed in most stances. These guys also have tails and there is a swivel point there if you want it. The bandana tassel also pegs in, and while it doesn’t really spin freely, you can reposition it if you want by removing it and re-inserting it even if you can’t get it to swivel.
The level of articulation is acceptable, aside from the lack of proper hinges for the gripping hands. Where this set surprises in the wrong way is with the accessories. If you have the Turtles in Disguise set or most of the other four-packs NECA has done over the past few years then you’re accustomed to getting a bunch of stuff in these boxes. With these turtles, despite the amount of tooling needed to produce these guys, we don’t really have much. Each turtle comes with a set of gripping hands out of the box, and then there is one set of fists, open hands, style pose hands, and gripping hands with more space between the fingers. Those hands are intended for use with Raphael when he grips his sai with the middle blade going through his fingers. Since it’s four sets the boys have to share, you can’t have all four turtles with their hands in a style pose or chop. There’s at least an entire set of four alternate bandana tassels that can be swapped in and out. The figures come with the bandana draped over their right shoulder and each one has a straight bandana piece to swap to.
Of course, the main accessories are the weapons. Each turtle has his signature weapons and they all appear to be new sculpts. For Leo and Raph, the metal portions of their weapons are painted the way I’ve wanted metal to be done for a long time now: white with light blue shading. It looks so good and is much better than the flat gray so many companies use. Even the very expensive Mondo sixth scale Wolverine has flat gray claws. I attribute it to the idea of metal being white as “wrong” since we know it isn’t white in real life, but that’s how it often looks in print or in animation. With Leo, the effect is perfect, though with Raph the blue shading is basically all over. I think if they did it exactly how they did Leo’s katana it would have turned out better, but it’s minor. Mikey’s nunchaku are done similar to the movie figures with brown, plastic, handles connected via black thread. Donnie’s bo is done in an orange-brown with a slightly lighter brown wrap, which is an interesting choice. Perhaps an off-white would have contrasted more, but basically every Donatello figure does that with his signature weapon so I don’t mind the difference. There’s also three gear-like throwing weapons included painted in the same light blue as Raph’s sai and the shading on Leo’s katana. Why three instead of four? It’s an odd choice, but one I can’t get too worked up over since I’m not going to use these anyway.
Lastly, we get a couple of accessories that are specific to Raph from the comics. His bandaged right arm is included as a swappable piece, but since all four turtles are the same mold, it can actually work with any turtle. The right arm pops off easily (the left does not) to facilitate swapping. The bicep was stuck on this arm as well, but I was able to free it up. Also included is Raph’s hood which is done in a soft plastic. It slides over his head easily after you remove the bandana piece and it’s a cool look for him. There’s a texture to the hood that helps sell the illusion it’s made from a rough fabric and it has some black linework as well. It looks good enough that I think I’m going to use this for my display since it does break things up a bit.
That’s it though. Four extra sets of hands for four figures, an extra set of bandana pieces, three throwing weapons, and Raph’s hood and arm. The melee weapons are a given because every set of turtles needs to include those, but why so skimpy on the hands? How about an extra head for each turtle? Especially since they’d function as an extra head for any turtle given they all look the same. With so many shared parts and the high price tag of $150, it feels light. It’s like we’re paying an undisclosed “Turtle Tax” since this is a set NECA knows will be in high demand and can make a larger profit on. Maybe I’m completely wrong and the profit margin is unchanged from past four-packs. And maybe I’m just still salty about the lack of vertically hinged hands.
Basically, what I said several paragraphs ago is what applies most here: if you’ve been waiting years for a set of Mirage turtles then you’re going to get this set. And you’re probably going to be relatively happy with the outcome. The figures are fun to handle and pose and look great together. I think they pair well with most of the other Mirage releases, though placing them with Shredder does make me wish we had a beefier Shredder for them to fight. They’ll look great with Zog though or the Shredder clones or even just off on their own. In spite of the inflated price point, I do think they’re worth getting even for those who have the original Mirage turtles given the difference in style.
If you’re on the hunt for these boys you can keep an eye on Target’s website. Set alerts for if they come back in stock as you never know. They also have shipped in waves to Target stores so keep checking there. If your store is like mine, they’re being stocked on an endcap in the toys section rather than in the usual NECA section. Since these are a Mirage release, it also stands to reason they’ll be sold in other places after this initial Target run is over. NECA hasn’t come out and said that, but it would be crazy for them not to make the actual turtles available to as many customers as possible.
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