When a regular Foot Ninja just won’t cut it, The Shredder has to turn to the Foot Enforcer. This brute of a specimen is bigger, stronger, and comes packed to the gills with an assortment of weapons designed to reduce the turtles into a pile of flesh and shell. And they’re needed, because how often have you seen the turtles turn a practical army of Foot Soldiers into fodder? They need a challenge as much as the Foot need a win, and that’s why we have the Foot Enforcer.
The Foot Enforcer from NECA Toys’ line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures based on their appearance in the pages of Mirage Studios was actually a 2023 release. It was styled after some colorized issues of the books released by IDW, the current license holder/partner for TMNT when it comes to printed media. Those colors put the Foot in a shadowy scheme of black, blue, and purple. It’s a similar combination to what we saw way back with the Loot Crate Shredder. I am personally just collecting the more traditional color scheme of maroon and gray which is what the original NYCC edition of the Shredder and Foot came styled as so I skipped last year’s release. I was betting on this version eventually coming out and my bet paid off as part of this year’s Haulathon is the Mirage Studios version of the Foot Enforcer and he was worth the wait.
The Foot Enforcer comes in the standard trapezoidal box with new artwork on the sides from series co-creator Kevin Eastman. The Enforcer stands a tick over 6.5″ and is basically a normal Foot Ninja as far as costuming goes until you get to the head. There he sports a helm with a face covering not unlike the Shredder himself with some fabric draped over the back and side of the head. He also has some spiky gauntlets for added intimidation. What lurks under that helmet is a mystery as what would be the exposed part of his face is painted black with two red slits for eyes. He definitely looks a great deal more intimidating than the usual Foot and not someone I’d personally want to run into in a dark alley.
The paint job is typical NECA with lots of flat colors enhanced by black linework and a touch of shading. The shading is reserved for the top of the helm which has a nice comic look to it as well as the sides of the little spikes on his gauntlets. That’s an impressive little detail that adds a nice touch. Some of the parts of this guy are likely reused from the similarly built four-armed Shredder clone. Basically the arms and the legs which was to be expected. The forearm assembly is the same as the clone Shredder with the forearms plugging onto the meat just past the elbow. I guess that means, if you wanted to, you could swap forearms between the two. The hands wouldn’t match though as the Shredder clone had brown skin, but it’s there if you want it.
This figure looks awesome, there’s no simpler way to put it. I love the size of him and the heft I feel when I pick it up. This is a solidly built action figure, and after handling so many figures recently made by another company which charges almost 20 bucks more per figure, this is just like a nice treat to behold. And NECA made sure this bad boy was outfitted with all kinds of stuff to properly massacre the turtles on your shelf. For hands, he has a set of fists, gripping, chop, and a set of gripping hands also making a “Devil Horns” gesture. Those hands appear to be included just for the tri-handled nunchaku he has. The thumb is molded to the middle finger so the handles of this weapon can just slide snugly into place and look cool doing so. The other gripping hands are best used with the other weapons: short sword, long sword, and naginata. The short sword has a spiked handguard which looks vicious while the long sword has some nice size to it. The naginata is much longer with a long blade at one end and a pommel with red “ribbon” on the other. From tip to tip it’s nearly 7.25″ so it’s quite big. All of the weapons are well-painted with a little linework on the blades to give them that comic look. The nunchaku-like weapon is not painted, but it’s three, gray, handles all joined by black thread and looks appropriate enough.
For articulation, this guy is pretty standard. He was a bit stiff out of the box in some places, in particular the biceps, but nothing that couldn’t get worked out with a little effort and patience. The head doesn’t get much range looking up because of the cowl, but all of the other directions are adequate. The cowl is soft plastic and it can slide underneath the shoulder pads or over them if you wish. Arms and legs are standard with double joints where you would expect. The meatiness of his forearms means he can’t really bend the elbow past 90 degrees, but I think most will be satisfied. Because the forearms plug onto the arms you do get a swivel point there. All of the hands feature a horizontal hinge, a repeated error by NECA. The way the armor continues onto the backs of the hands likely would have made vertical hinges a little tricky to utilize, but I think NECA is more than capable of figuring that out.
This guy is good for mostly basic poses. The lack of a butterfly joint does limit how much one can do with the weapons. There’s also really nothing in the torso aside from the waist twist which is a bummer. I’d have taken the trade-off of breaking up the sculpt a bit to get a diaphragm cut into this thing. NECA likes to go with overlays for the torso of its figures so it’s not a surprise they did it this way, but it (along with the vertical wrist hinges) is a change I’d advocate for across the board with their figures.
If you’re collecting NECA’s line of TMNT based on the Mirage Studios looks, this guy strikes me as a no-brainer for your shelf. You could probably get by without a Baxter (I know I am) or a Renet, but a big, beefy, Foot Ninja adds some nice shelf presence. The real challenge is stopping at just the one. This figure is currently being shipped to Target stores in the US and has been solicited on costumes.com for international purchase. It is not a Target exclusive though and it’s expected that this figure will eventually be sold through online retailers in the near future. If you want it, it might be a little tricky in the short term (the online drop at Target has come and gone), but not long term so don’t cave for an eBay price unless it’s close to MSRP.
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