It’s our last Turtle Tuesday before Christmas, though probably not of the year, and it’s a pretty big one: The Turtle Van! NECA solicited its version of the Turtle Van based on the same from the animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in April of 2022. It was originally scheduled to be released before the end of the year, but that turned out to be far too optimistic. The vehicle did undergo a redesign between solicitation and release. Originally, it was going to have a big hump in the roof that most didn’t seem to care for (including me). To NECA’s credit, they listened and adjusted the design and the finished product looks much closer to the show than the prototype. Did that redesign account for the lengthy delay? Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. All I know is that the Turtle Van is here and I’m going to tell you how I think it turned out.
The Turtle Van was one of my favorite toys back in the day. Of course, then it was referred to as The Party Wagon by Playmates, but I don’t think any of my friends referred to it as such because on TV they called it the Turtle Van. Like a lot of characters and playsets in the vintage line, the toy wasn’t modeled to look exactly like the one on TV. The Party Wagon was pretty close, but had more of a VW bus design to it. I still loved it, and the Christmas it came out it was a very hot item. I have an old home movie from Easter the following year where my grandmother can be overheard saying how impossible it was to find the Turtle Van at Christmas, which is why I received it as an Easter present (don’t weep for me, I got the sewer lair from her for Christmas). It was a big deal to a kid, right up there with the Ecto-1 and the Batmobile. It was hard to have an assortment of TMNT action figures and no Turtle Van. The thing was a necessity.
As an adult, vehicles for my action figures have limited appeal. I’m no longer a kid looking to actually play with my toys, so everything is purchased for posing and display. Vehicles rarely offer much in the posing department and they often take up a lot of real estate and come at a much larger price tag. This item was $250 plus $15 shipping since it was sold exclusively on NECA’s webstore, and for me, that price was basically right at the tipping point. I was hoping for $200 and assumed that wishing for less than that was a waste of time and $250 was about the most I was willing to pay. At the same time, I felt like I owed it to the kid in me who always wanted a Turtle Van that resembled the one from the cartoon to get this, and NECA’s seemed sure to deliver.
The Turtle Van comes in a giant box adorned with original artwork by Tim Lattie. The box itself measures 13″ x 17.25″ x 11.75″ and inside is a big clamshell held together by some tape. The van comes almost fully assembled, only the laser canons need to be inserted into the top, and there are no decals required. The van is approximately 7″ x 14″ x 11″ at the highest/widest points (excepting the canons). It’s a big vehicle and it will take up quite a bit of space wherever you plan to place it. The body is a matte, pale, yellow with a green bumper and roof. The tires are rubber with the inner rim a flat gray. All of the paint details in the bumper, on the tire cover on the front, and the roof look great. They are applied very well. The only paint imperfection I could find on mine is a tiny nick on the corner of the rear door. The windshield is transparent plastic or plexiglass as are the windows. The lights on the front and rear are LED lights which can be activated via a switch on the underside of the vehicle. There’s a dome light on the inside that sadly does not turn on as well. It very much looks the part and I really like how it turned out. The only critique I have is that the scale seems a touch off. It’s probably bigger than it should be and that seems most obvious when figures are placed in the front, bench, seat as they get kind of lost in this thing. I’m guessing the scale of the vehicle in the show wasn’t the most consistent, and it’s better to be too big than too small, but it is something I’ve noticed.
The Turtle Van has numerous features to it which help replicate how the vehicle behaves on TV. The roof opens up just like it did in the opening, though there’s nothing inside to launch them out. The interior has a bunch of generic electronics built into the walls so you can have Donatello messing around with stuff in there, though there aren’t any working levers or anything that intense. The driver’s side flips down to reveal a platform as it did on the show for Leonardo to take a stance and slice at some enemies. The opposite side swings open with a little half door below it that flips down similar to the Playmates version. For that side, there’s an included seat and laser canon that has to be snapped together, but then can be plugged in. By making it removable, it creates more space inside and I honestly can’t remember how often the turret showed up in the show after its first appearance. Sometimes, a collapsed version appears on the wall and NECA included what’s basically a plastic brick of the same which snaps onto the driver’s side platform.
Speaking of show inconsistencies, the wall behind the front seat seemed to change constantly. Sometimes it was wide open which is the default look for the Turtle Van. Other times, there was a brown hip wall which NECA included which can be plugged into the back of the bench seat. And then on other occasions there was basically a full wall which, for some reason, featured a ladder. I remember seeing that ladder as a kid and wondering where the heck it came from. I think there was, on occasion, an opening in the top for the turtles to emerge from, but my memory could very easily be faulty at this point. Nonetheless, the ladder wall is also included so you can have the Turtle Van resemble basically whatever version shown on TV that you want. It’s the type of attention to detail that I think collectors appreciate of a company like NECA and it’s something other companies just don’t seem to care about.
In order to make use of these modular elements, NECA needed to make sure the inside of the van is accessible. We have the openings on the sides of the vehicle and the top and also the rear doors swing open too. The front of the roof can be removed as it’s just tabbed in and you’ll may need to do so in order to insert the optional wall parts. This is where some criticism can come in. The plastic feels a bit thin when it comes to the roof and removing that portion is definitely uncomfortable. The front doors, as well as the passenger side swing-open door for the canon, are attached via a lone, small, hinge each. It’s not the most reassuring design and I worry about displaying a figure behind the turret for a long time and what kind of stress that may place on said hinge. The driver’s side platform feels more secure, though the hinge could have been tighter as it basically needs to hit the surface of whatever you have the van on to support the weight of a figure when really it should be off the ground. The rear doors feel more secure, though are a tad finicky to get closed properly. The weight of the entire package feels fine though so this isn’t a cheap feeling product by any means, but there are some design decisions that aren’t as well thought out as I’d like. I would describe this as fragile, and if there’s one last thing I wouldn’t have minded to see included would have been some kind of stand to prevent accidental rolling of the wheels. A shelf drive would likely be catastrophic for this thing so plan accordingly.
NECA’s take on the Turtle Van easily qualifies as the definitive take on the vehicle from the show. It looks great, displays well, and even has some variety too in how it’s displayed. It may be a touch oversized, but at least that means you can fit a whole bunch of characters in it/on it which helps justify the amount of shelf space needed to display it. The only real bummer about the product is that it was pretty expensive and presently is not available to purchase at MSRP for those who wanted to wait and see how it turned out. I especially feel for anyone who disliked the hump in the original design, only to see NECA correct that after the preorder window had closed. Chances are, NECA will offer this again for purchase and it was even suggested by NECA that they may have extra after preorders are fulfilled. I guess keep your eyes open. At $250 (plus shipping), this thing is certainly in the luxury good category. No one needs it and your display of TMNT characters probably looks great without it, but there’s no denying it can also look pretty damn awesome with it.
Well, if you want a Turtle Van, you’re going to need some figures to go with it:
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