When 2025 is all said and done I think we’ll look back on it in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collector sphere as the year the NECA toon toyline started showing its age. For some, that probably already happened. Jersey Red, Chakahachi, Lotus Blossom – who the heck are these characters? They are pretty deep cuts, but they are unique characters with unique sculpts, at least. This year, there have been new deep cuts like Creepy Eddie and Tattoo, but also a what-if Leonardo and beach variations on the turtles – twice! And now we have maybe the silliest release of all: Granny Bebop and Baby Rocksteady.
Bebop and Rocksteady have been NECA’s go-to characters when they want to do something offbeat. And it’s easy to see why as the pair were comic relief in the cartoon series. They did a lot of dumb stuff and had different looks. We’ve seen them as superheroes, rabbits, vacationers, and robots. Now, we have Bebop in drag and Rocksteady in a giant diaper. It’s ludicrous, but when I look back on the original TMNT cartoon it’s the silly stuff that I recall most easily. The show was dumb, and if I’m being honest, kind of bad, but I loved it! I don’t know how many hours I spent watching it as a kid, but it never felt like enough in the moment. A lot of the silly looks from the show I actually wanted to see in the companion toyline and now NECA is making that a reality.
Bebop and Rocksteady, being a mutated warthog and rhinoceros, couldn’t just walk into a public place and not freak people out so they needed disguises. One such disguise was Bebop as a grandmother and Rocksteady as his baby. It obviously made no sense since it’s pretty obvious that they’re still a warthog and rhinoceros, but that was the show. And now it’s immortalized in plastic. These two guys are pretty familiar if you’ve purchased others in the past, but there’s new stuff here. Rocksteady stands about 6.5″ to the top of his head while Bebop is about 6.75″ to about where the top of his head should be under that wig.
The pair share a lot of the same parts with only slight modifications. They have the same arms and legs as far as I can tell with Rocksteady just having ruffled socks and Bebop open sleeves by his wrists. The torso on both is done with an overlay, NECA’s modus operandi when it comes to this pair, and I’d suspect whatever is under that is the same. Hands appear to be recycled from the vacation set while both figures have new feet and new heads. There are similarities with the rest of the limbs compared with the vacation set only this time around everything is pin-less. They may have began life as the same digital mold and were just recut for tooling. The box lists three sculptors on this set: Brodie Perkins, Tony Cipriano, and Tomasz Rozejowski. Usually, that seems to happen when pieces from past sets are utilized along with new parts.
Regardless of how these two came together, both certainly look the part. The paint is clean and there’s plenty of linework emphasized with the paint job by Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo. It’s very clean on both figures even in tight places like the teeth or Rocksteady’s safety pin. Bebop does utilize some soft goods for his skirt and it looks okay. It’s not the nicest material, but they at least included a purple hem at the bottom. There’s some loose threads on mine right at the waist that are kind of annoying. The skirt is glued into place so I can’t just take it off and either trim them or push them behind the skirt. I’ll have to see if I can snip them. I like how they managed to sneak some lipstick onto Bebop and I like that his ponytail is sticking out as well. Like other recent releases in the line, there’s no cel-shading on the backs of these figures. I guess that’s out with the line, but Panda Khan had it so who can know for sure?
Accessories for this set are pretty light. Each character gets 3 sets of hands: fists, open, gripping. Rocksteady also has a pacifier which can fit in between his teeth or be held with a gripping hand. Bebop has a green purse which is made from a soft plastic and does open, though he doesn’t have anything to put inside it. The main accessory is the baby carriage which is pretty big for a baby carriage, but still not big enough for Rocksteady. It’s simply painted and does feature real wheels on it. Rocksteady can be placed in it and made to look pretty damn ridiculous which helps sell the comedic angle of the set. The handle is a very rigid ABS plastic that won’t easily slide into Bebop’s gripping hand. It almost certainly be done, but you will want to heat the hand up first or else risk snapping the thing.
Articulation for these guys is super basic and pretty standard for the line and these characters. Both feature a ball jointed head with a hinged jaw. You’ll get some nuance posing and rotation, but not much up and down. The shoulders are ball-hinged with a bicep swivel, double-jointed elbows, wrist swivels and hinge. A ball joint at the waist allows for rotation and some tilt, but little in the way of forward and back. Ball-socket hips will basically go as far as the skirt and diaper will allow on each, which is short of splits and 90 degree kicks. You can roll up the skirt for more range on Bebop, if you desire. There is a thigh swivel at the joint as well as double-jointed knees, ankle hinge, and ankle rocker. Bebop, being that he is in heels, will be a bit difficult to stand, but not impossible. There are no loose joints on either while some of the elbows and knees were pretty tight. The bicep swivels can be tricky to get moving as well due to the shoulders moving so freely. It looks like they were lubricated at the shoulder so getting the leverage needed to break the seal on the bicep took some effort.
These two aren’t going to do anything spectacular on your shelf and they’re not really designed to. Rocksteady is meant to go in the stroller and to do that he doesn’t need to do much. Bebop just needs to stand behind it either pushing it or doing very little. They’re capable of doing as much and anyone who sees your collection is probably going to ask about them because they look so stupid. That’s basically the joke and the whole reason to get this one. If you think it’s funny then you’ll probably be happy. If the idea of these two in these outfits just seems too dumb to spend money on then it probably is. It doesn’t help that they’re sold exclusively at Target for $65. That’s a steep price. I was able to knock 10 bucks off with a current promotion going on at Target which may or may not still be active when you’re reading this. I think it’s stupid and funny so I probably would have paid full price, but I’m definitely happy to not have. They don’t appear to be shipping in big numbers, but these variant sets have a tendency to hang around either way so you could always wait for the next deal. My local store also had them in their inventory, which usually doesn’t happen with NECA unless Target is stocking them. I don’t know if that is the case or not, but if it is, then there’s a slim chance they go on sale if Target can’t unload them. With the holiday shopping season upon us, that seems unlikely.
At this point, there’s enough releases in NECA’s TMNT line for it to be a Bebop and Rocksteady line:
NECA TMNT Toon Vacation Bebop and Vacation Rocksteady
Pack your bags and grab the sunscreen because today we’re heading to Florida! It’s vacation time folks, and even the bad guys deserve a little fun in the sun sometimes. Coming from NECA Toys we have another fun variant of the duo Bebop and Rocksteady. Always more comic relief than true threat, the boys come…
NECA TMNT Cartoon Super Bebop and Mighty Rocksteady
2021 introduced a lot of good things for collectors of NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures based on the classic cartoon. The toy maker still kept the line a Target exclusive when it came to brick and mortar, but it also started selling a lot of it online to coincide with each…
NECA Cartoon TMNT Mighty Hog and Rhino-Man
We did it! We finally made it to the end of the Haulathon releases from NECA Toys and we may have saved the best for last. Back in early 2020, I made a wish list for what I wanted from NECA and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was only 10 deep, though there were some…
The Nostalgia Spot 
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