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.
NECA tends to scale these guys up. I don’t think Shredder was shorter than them in the show.
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.
Light accessory load-out for this pair.
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.
“Hey, big boy!”
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.
“You’ve made me the happiest warthog – I mean, woman alive!”
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?
“Hey toitle! Check my diapy!
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.
“Somebody save my baby!”
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.
Things are getting silly.
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:
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…
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…
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…
When NECA released their first set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures based on their appearance in issue number 1 of the Mirage Studios comics I was a day one buyer. Even though NECA is riding high with TMNT these days, that initial set wasn’t the catalyst for it. Those figures came and went and came again in black and white, but they didn’t launch a whole new toy line for NECA. Some of that had to do with interference from master license holder Playmates Toys, but also NECA conceded that they weren’t big sellers. At the time, the company concluded that the comic book versions of the characters weren’t that popular and it would take awhile for them to get into that sweet, sweet, cartoon gravy.
In my opinion, what really got things going with NECA and TMNT was the unveiling of the quarter scale action figures based on the 1990 movie. I am not a big quarter scale collector, but those turtles are some of my favorite possessions because they turned out so damn lifelike. Collecting them was pretty fun too as they were pretty much released on a quarterly schedule initially with the first one out the door being Donatello in time for Christmas 2016. I loved it and I made sure to get each of the next offerings to assemble a full squad of turtles. I was going to go deeper initially and had a Shredder preordered at one point, but once NECA revealed the 1:10 toy line based on the movie I decided to go without the villain. They take up a lot of space and aren’t exactly cheap.
Four babies and a pizza box.
One item I was tempted by, but never pulled the trigger on, was the Baby Turtle Accessory Set. I don’t remember what it cost originally, but it felt too steep for what it was. As the name implies, the set centered on baby versions of the turtles as seen during the flashback scene pretty early in the film. To make it an accessory set, a pizza box and four additional slices were to be included which, together with the four pizza slices included with the figures, made for a whole pie. There was also a bag of corn chips in the same style as the pork rinds which came with Michelangelo, but the thing that really tempted me was an additional accessory for Mikey: his spinning nunchaku effect.
The scale seems reasonable to me.
One of my favorite scenes in the film as a kid is the “‘Chuk-Off” between Mikey and an unnamed Foot ninja. I originally saw the film on the big screen when it came out, but most of my viewings of the movie were on VHS. There, the dark, grainy, picture always made it look like the scene ended with Michelangelo just spinning his nunchaku like he often did by holding one end and twirling it over his head. It didn’t make sense to me, but I thought it was funny like he was clowning on the guy. Only when I got the movie on DVD many years later could I see the scene for what it was: Mikey balancing the weapon at the center of the ropes and twirling the whole thing like helicopter blades. It makes no sense, which is why the Foot look absolutely stunned by what they’re seeing and it remains a favorite scene of mine. The real question was, did I want to pay $60 or whatever just to get an extra hand and effect part?
At least the big boys have a full pie now.
No. I passed, but I’ve kept my eye on the damn set all these years hoping to score a break. I even tried buying just the accessory I wanted secondhand, but never could find one worth the price. The set finally was discounted recently on Amazon, but only slightly. Ten bucks off making the set $50. For all I know, the set originally was that or even less considering the quarter scale figures used to be around $100 but now cost anywhere from $130 to $150. I was kind of sick of looking though so I just went and did it. Was it stupid? Probably. After all, I’m really only interested in the nunchaku part. The rest of the box isn’t worthless, but not exactly appealing either. Time to see if I’m mistaken.
At rest.Whirling.
The box this thing comes in is pretty nice. It’s a big window with the film’s theatrical poster adapted for the art. Mine did arrive damaged with the window cracked and broken. Could I have complained and got a few bucks refunded? Maybe, but I don’t really care about the box so I can’t in good conscience get worked up about it. The part I wanted was actually flopping around loose in the box, but since it’s just a hand it was fine. It’s a pointing finger hand with a hole drilled into the tip of the index finger. The color seems a little lighter shade of green compared to my quarter scale set. This is likely a production variation as I’m guessing this thing has been in and out of production over the years. Had I bought it when it was originally made available then maybe it would match better. Even so, it’s not really noticeable and the nunchaku part pegs into it effortlessly. It can then spin freely – wee! It does what it’s supposed to do, but I do wonder if it would look better as a sculpted, whirling, effect? We’ve seen NECA do that with the toon line, but this being live action probably made them just go with the real deal and you can spin it if you want. It might have been nice to get both though.
3 bucks off if late!Convincing grease.Old slices on the left.Gotta check those ingredients.
The pizza box and food items are what they are. The box is designed to look like a Domino’s box, but it’s parody. The grease marks inside are convincing and I like that the price is listed as $13. The four slices of pizza are actually different sculpts from what came with the turtles. That’s pretty cool as it gives a more realistic look, but also probably wasn’t necessary. The new slices appear a little darker than what came with the boys, but it will work. The toppings at least match. The corn chips are done just like the pork rinds so it’s a foil bag sealed at both ends. There’s probably a little piece of a spongey material inside to give it some volume, but it probably could have done with a touch more. The turtles can grip it easily and that little scene with Mikey and Don at the table was perhaps the one my sister and I recreated the most as kids, though always with potato chips as we never had pork rinds.
They can just barely hold a slice.
The main attraction here is obviously the baby turtles. These guys are about 4″ tall and are articulated at the head, jaw, and shoulders. They’re all identical and while they look pretty good, I was surprised at the lack of articulation in the legs. They do a solid job of resembling the puppets in the film, though if I am to nitpick I think the beak could be sharper and more yellow. One of them appeared to have a bandage on their face in the movie (I assume Raph since he has a scar on his cheek) and NECA included an optional sticker sheet if you want. It has two Band Ade style bandages and two that look more like wraps. I’m not sure if I’ll bother as stickers have a tendency to curl and come off eventually and my collection is kept in my basement where it can get a little humid. If one is supposed to have a bandaged face then NECA should have just sculpted it.
Well, they’re here to stay.
Did I just pay 50 bucks so my Michelangelo figure could spin a nunchuk on his finger? Yeah, pretty much. The little guys aren’t terrible, but they don’t add much to the display for me. They can at least hold a pizza slice, but the articulation is so minimal that there isn’t much they can do. I think I like the pizza box and corn chips more than the baby turtles. If this set included more food items like soda cans, juice boxes, and Raph’s apple then I’d probably like it a lot more. Or if it just had most of the stuff the 1:10 scale accessory set wound up coming with (a set I passed on, but probably should not have). This one is very light and retails for $60. I don’t feel great about my purchasing decision, but I wanted that stupid effect part and now I have it. In time, I’ll forget about the cost and just enjoy seeing Mikey spinning his weapon on my shelf so I guess that will just have to be good enough.
These reviews are old as hell and I’m reluctant to link to them, but if you want to read my thoughts on the quarter scale line here you go:
The good thing about NECA’s Michelangelo, the final turtle to be released from their quarter-scale line of action figures based on the 1990 film, is that it’s just like the previous three turtles to be released. The bad thing about it is that it’s just like the previous three turtles to be released. Let’s start…
NECA is now 3/4 of the way through the release schedule of their TMNT 1990 movie line with the release of Leonardo – the REAL leader of the group. And like Donatello and Raphael before him, he’s a pretty impressive specimen. The original 1990 movie impossibly never had dedicated action figures. Playmates half-assed a line…
It took awhile, but I finally have my hands on the second turtle from NECA’s 1/4 scale series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles based on the original film. Raphael was released back in February, but I left the preordering of this series to my wife who saw them as gifts for basically the coming year…
NECA has gradually built out the ranks for Shredder’s Foot Clan via its line of action figures based on the pages of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as published by Mirage Studios. The clan got started way back in 2016 with a box set released in conjunction with New York Comic Con. That set featured Shredder, two Foot ninja, and a Foot Elite ninja. The sculpts were based on the original Eastman and Laird intended one-shot that became anything but. As the comic went on, the look of just about every character changed. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird grew as artists and refined some of the looks they had devised initially. Once TMNT became a marketing juggernaut, the pair stepped back allowed other artists such as Jim Lawson to work on the books which further moved the characters away from their initial looks. NECA has marked that with its re-release of the turtles which emulate the work of Lawson and now we’ve moved onto other characters like the Foot Elite Assassin.
He’s far more intimidating than the old Foot Elite.
I’m not sure if the Elite Assassin was ever intended to be different from the old Foot Elite. With Shredder dead, these guys basically assumed leadership of the Foot Clan and they were depicted as bigger and badder than what NECA gave us back in 2016. The design is more or less the same though as a regular Foot ninja with a faceguard like Shredder, a round hat resembling a conical sedge hat, and the remnants of a cape or cloak. Where this guy differs from the old look is in the proportions and overall size. He comes in at just about a full 7″ to the top of his head. His chest is much broader and there’s more meat front to back as well. His arms and legs are equally beefy, though not on the same level as the Foot Enforcer. He’s overall just way more imposing and shares none of his parts with the old figure.
He also has some size on the turtles.
The version of the figure I’m looking at today is the standard colors one. We already have seen two other colorways with the first one being an all red and black edition. I think that one is based on the IDW reissues, but there’s also a black and white one which was released around the same time as this standard one. The standard one follows the basic Foot coloring with a brownish-red tunic, gray pants, and brown wraps on the forearms and shins. There’s a big brown sash across the midsection and from the hat drapes a red hood of sorts that leaves the face visible. For the face, we have the faceguard which is done in silver and the flesh is painted all in shadow with two, beady, white eyes peering through. The hat can be removed and the red hood is attached to it. Doing so reveals a somewhat comically small head, but if the head was made any bigger it would probably look a little too big with the added hood. Plus, it’s not meant to be displayed without the hat since it leaves a big peg hole in the top of the head sort of like a Lego mini figure.
If you don’t like the cape it can easily be removed.
The paint is fairly simple, but clean, and has the usual NECA comic embellishments. There’s a lot of linework the emphasize the muscles and to outline all of the wraps. There it’s remarkably clean though if you get in close you’re likely to find some places where the linework doesn’t precisely match the carved-out groove. The faceguard is a nice, metallic, silver and the forearm armor contains a hit of light blue shading at the edges to create the illusion of a metallic surface. It’s a nice effect and so simple which makes it a shame that other companies don’t do the same with their figures often opting to just use bare, gray, plastic for metal parts. I do very much like the proportions on this guy so a tip of the hat to sculptor Gurjeet Singh. Nicole Falk is also credited, though I see her name most often credited with “fabrication” which makes me think she handled the cloak, which is also well-tailored and looks fabulous. Geoffrey Trapp and Mike Puzzo handled the paint for this guy.
OopsTime’s up, turtles!
The Elite Assassin comes with a fair amount of weapons and other assorted parts to do some assassinating. The hands available include sets of fists, gripping, chop, and open/style-posed hands. He also has an alternate portrait with no faceguard. According to the box, the face is supposed to be a clean-shaven face and there’s some shading applied to the lips, but some wires were crossed at the factory and the lip shading turned into a mustache. I’ll never use it so I don’t care, but it is kind of funny. For weapons, we have a short sword, a handheld sickle, a longer sword with a ball and chain attached to the hilt, and everyone’s favorite weapon, a pair of gray sticks. These guys may have been drawn with such weapons in a comic somewhere, but I don’t think it’s something we really need. He also has a time bomb which I’m sure is from the comics and it’s well sculpted and painted. The bladed weapons are all silver with some blue applied and it looks nice, though different from how they do metal with the turtles. For some reason the Foot get silver and the turtles get white. Makes sense to me!
“I’m not exactly feeling intimidated here, dude.”
Articulation is where these NECA figures often come up short and the Elite Assassin is no different. He does some things well, and some things not so well. The head is the unusual setup of a ball peg because the head is so small. This is the type of joint a lot of import companies utilize for wrists, too bad NECA doesn’t do the same. As a joint for a head, it’s fine, but the hood is going to limit rotation quite a bit. Shoulders are conventional hinged ball joints and we have bicep swivels, double elbows, and swivel and hinge wrists. The bicep swivels on mine are tight and when they do move they feel like they’re binding more than rotating as the bicep wants to kick back to where it was. Definitely something to be careful with. The hands all have a horizontal hinge, including the gripping hands, which is unfortunate and honestly quite annoying at this point. I’m thinking of just boycotting NECA figures that don’t come with the proper wrist articulation at this point because they’re so, maddeningly, inconsistent with it.
He’s not a total stiff, but some waist articulation would have really helped out.
The only articulation in the torso is a ball-joint in the upper diaphragm. It kicks forward and back a suitable amount and will rotate some as well. It’s not going to provide a true ab crunch though, but it would have with a ball-jointed waist. Given the large sash around the waist I don’t know why NECA didn’t just do this. A ball joint there would give him some nice forward and back and provide for more natural rotation. Hips are the typical ball and socket with a thigh swivel built in. There’s double-jointed knees and ankle hinges and rockers that work fine. Missing is a boot swivel and forearm swivel, even though there are natural places for such to exist. It’s annoying with the forearms since the armor continues onto the back of the hands so rotating the hands breaks that up. Lastly, we have a nice wire going through the cape which does allow for some dynamic posing of that.
I guess if he doesn’t want to get up close, this ball and chain thing will have to do as a ranged attack.
This is a solid figure that’s so close to being a great figure. The missing waist articulation is more of an annoyance for me than the wrists and I don’t know why NECA didn’t put that in. If he had that he’d move pretty damn well. I think much of this figure is utilized for the new Shredder currently available in a two-pack. I don’t know if that one has waist articulation and I don’t plan on finding out until it’s available as a single-packed figure (or it hits deep discount). And for an assassin, I do think this guy should have some kind of a ranged weapon. The sword with the ball and chain is pretty cool, but doesn’t seem very practical for an assassin. He looks cool though and isn’t a total stiff so if this is something you’re interested in based on the look of it you’ll probably be content. I found this guy at Target where it only set me back $35. He’ll probably be available in various other places eventually if he’s not already, though probably at a small markup.
If you feel like your Foot Elite Assassin needs some companions then these might interest you:
Back in 2008, when NECA was planning out a line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures that they hoped would run for a long time, they turned to the turtles’ most trusted ally when it came time to do a fifth figure. The line wasn’t long for this world, and that figure of April…
Where do you take your heroic comic book franchise when you kill your main villain in the first issue? Well, you first undo that rash decision by bringing him back! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird famously killed The Shredder in the first issue of their comic. They never intended to…
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…
For the second time, we’ve got a set of convention exclusive toon turtles with art by Ken Mitchroney!
2025 was almost an end of an era for me. After being a regular buyer of NECA’s convention exclusive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures since 2017, I found myself passing on such a set. If you’re new to the exclusive game, each year for San Diego Comic Con NECA makes an exclusive set of TMNT figures to sell at the convention, but also online before the event takes place. Usually the sale is spread over three days and sell-outs are guaranteed to happen, you just don’t know how fast. Some years it’s practically instantaneous, other years it may take a half hour to an hour, it depends on the set. This used to be the only way NECA was allowed to sell TMNT action figures, but ever since the license was freed up some by Paramount it’s been less essential for collectors to snag every last exclusive NECA comes up with.
That’s a lot of box.
This year’s exclusive came from the toon subline based on the old Fred Wolf cartoon. It depicted the four brothers in beach attire which was all taken from different episodes of the show and paired them up with surfboards and a giant wave accessory. The sculpts looked to be new and more in-line with what we’ve seen from the Archie subline, but aside from that detail there wasn’t much to get excited about. It’s a fine looking set, I just never had beach turtles on my wants list when it came to the property. Four packs start at $150 and I was curious if this one would go higher since it was an exclusive. It can only be bought by non-attendees on NECA’s store and they did away with their flat-rate shipping a year or two ago so the price was expected to be substantial when all things were considered. When the item went up for sale, I took a look and found it would cost about $190 for me and I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe I’m finally growing up, but I was able to walk away and break my streak of TMNT exclusives from NECA.
The main event with new sculpts by Tomasz Rozejowski.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. The set hung around for an hour, then another, and it became clear that this wasn’t the most sought after exclusive NECA ever came up with. This was day one of a three day sale, mind you, so it certainly looked like NECA was going to have more than enough product to meet demand this go-around. Perhaps that made the company nervous? How else can one explain NECA out of no where sending a coupon out that evening for forty bucks off the set? They’ve never done that before and called it a loyalty deal. Supposedly, if you had bought a lot of TMNT product from them you got the email with the coupon code. I have bought a ton of TMNT stuff from NECA over the years, but not everything, and I didn’t get it. It didn’t matter though since it was a simple coupon code that was quickly shared online. Everyone who had already ordered had the code automatically applied to their order and for me it brought my total down almost to MSRP at $154 after shipping and all fees (yes, there is a tariff fee). It was enough to get me to pull the trigger and the set eventually sold out that day. I don’t know how it did the following days or what NECA charged at their booth, but it ended up being slightly less than what I would have paid at a retail store for a NECA four-pack.
There’s quite a bit of stuff in the box.
The price may have been right, but it was still a set that I wasn’t exactly jazzed about getting and my hope was that once in-hand I’d sing a different tune. The box it comes in is pretty massive as it’s basically a four-pack that you would find at Target, but it also goes deeper because of the giant wave accessory. The wave is in its own box that has the same colorway as everything else NECA does for this line, but doesn’t feature any graphics. Coincidentally, it’s one of two NECA convention exclusives this year to feature a wave effect and NECA also revealed a beach Slash that should pair nicely with this set. The figures themselves are all new sculpts that resemble the pin-less, Archie sculpts. Per Trevor Zammit at NECA, these are pretty much the new default turtles going forward so if you didn’t want this set don’t fret, I would expect more evergreen turtles to follow at some point on these bodies. Each turtle is in beach clothing taken from the show, though not all the same episode. It’s also a mix of materials as Leo, Raph, and Donatello have plastic shirts and soft goods shorts while Mikey just has soft goods shorts. Donatello and Leonardo also have ridiculous top hats while Raph has a more conventional baseball style hat. Mikey is hat-less and can easily be converted to a base Michelangelo if you so desire while the other three can’t without considerable work.
A new take on an old design.
When I first took these boys out of the box I expected to find some mix of old and new. I took Michelangelo, being the most basic of the four, and compared him with the Stump Wrestling Raph since he’s practically a naked sculpt. To my surprise, these figures do not appear to share any parts. They may share some internals, basically what’s hidden by the shell and plastron, but that’s it. I figured the hands would be the same and the new ones even have that same, rounded, quality to them the Archie figures possess, but they’re all new as well. The Archie turtles appear to be just a touch bigger than these new toon bodies which in turn are bulkier than the old toon turtle body, but not really any taller. I’m not sure how I feel about this new look. There’s certainly a pleasing, toon, quality to these sculpts, but if anything I’ve felt the turtles were a little oversized for the line. They look too big mixed with the human characters, in particular. NECA basically fixed this with Shredder at least by giving us a new, bulkier, version of the villain. Do they intend to do more new sculpts of Casey, April, and others? Maybe. I guess these new ones help make Zach seem smaller.
With Archie RaphThe shell sits a tad lower now.I guess this works?
The figures also feature a much darker green for the skin. It’s definitely a lot closer to the Pizza Club reissues we saw a year ago or the Punk Turtles from that four-pack, but perhaps darker than both. We did just establish these are new sculpts, but if you were still hoping to mix and match with the old figures that’s not going to work. The colors will be off, plus the old hands are too small and the heads are as well even though they feature the same expression swapping tech. It’s an odd choice as I think the color of the turtles has always been pretty screen accurate. I know there are episodes where they’re darker, that’s just what happens with multiple studios working a show that’s trying to pump out as many episodes as it can in a short amount of time, but this does feel less accurate. I’m left to assume there is more of a subjective element at play here and NECA feels that these just look better with this shade of green. I did see someone speculate that maybe they’re darker since they’re at the beach and I suppose that’s possible too. Whenever new base turtles arrive we’ll dive into this more then, but for now I’m a little conflicted on where NECA is going with the turtles.
This gap is something I’ve never noticed before.It’s far more severe on the new figures.
We’ll continue with the body talk here and just jump to articulation. If you have those Stump turtles then you know what to expect as the setup is basically the same. There’s a ball joint at the head and neck, hinged-ball shoulders, waist twist, diaphragm, bicep swivel, double-jointed elbows, wrists, ball-socket hips with thigh twist, double-jointed knees, and ankles that hinge and pivot. Because they’re turtles, the diaphragm joint is pretty useless. They also have elbow pads and knee pads which hinder the range at the elbows and knees. They go past 90 in both spots, but not to the degree you may expect. The hinge on the gripping hands is a horizontal one and not the preferred vertical, weapon-wielding orientation. Since these guys don’t come with any weapons, it’s not that big of a deal at the moment, but I hope it’s not indicative of what’s to come. There’s also a noticeable gap between the top of the thigh and the sidewall, if you will, on the shell with Michelangelo. The same gap is present on the old toon bodies as well as the Archie ones, but not to this degree. I wonder if there’s going to be a filler piece here like the plastic “diaper” on the Mirage Jim Lawson turtles? NECA may have skipped it since Michelangelo’s shorts hide it, but if so that’s kind of a cheap tactic. It probably does give him better range at the hips where full splits and high kicks are possible so I guess that could be their excuse. I do think most would have preferred this to just be a standard Mikey with soft goods pants though.
The shirts look good, but I do wish they were removable. The same is true of the hats and glasses.
For Leo, Raph, and Don, we have a soft plastic overlay in place of the shell and plastron. The shoulder is also a different piece as it’s a sculpted sleeve. The arm plugs into that and you get your bicep swivel inside the sleeve so the articulation is essentially the same as it is with Michelangelo. The shirts are designed to seem big like they’re hiding a shell underneath. There’s even some of the plastron sculpted into the piece at the collar. Because it’s soft and there is no hard plastic underneath, these guys do move a little better at the waist as they can actually pivot some in addition to rotating. I still can’t get the diaphragm joint to do anything though even though I can see it at least. The hats are also pegged onto the head and appear to be further secured with glue as they don’t want to spin. They’re soft and it’s easy to peel them back some to see there’s a big peg sticking out of the top of the head so even if you could get them off it would look hideous. It sure would have been nice if NECA just made them separate. Leonardo also has sunglasses and they’re glued to his head like the ones with the Punk Turtles. While the plastic shirts help give a more toon appearance, I do find they clash a bit with the soft goods shorts. And I probably speak for most when I say I wish they went with soft goods all over so we could convert this whole group into a standard look, but then we wouldn’t buy the eventual four-pack release that’s sure to come, right?
I can’t tell if Raph is happy.
The paint across all four is mostly good. The cel-shading is gone as that appears to be a thing of the past now and instead they’re the same shade of green all over. The patterns on the shirts are handled very well and there’s some black linework painted onto the sculpts. Basically, NECA is taking the same approach now with this line as it does the Archie one when it comes to paint. These turtles do have massive pupils now and it’s a bit weird looking. Their eyes almost look dialated. Raph also seems kind of pissed, but maybe he didn’t pick the outfit? He also has some black linework on his hat that basically just goes from one “ear” (I realize they don’t have any, I just mean where an ear would be) over the top of the hat to the other. There’s a sculpted shape to the top of the hat though and I almost wonder if the line was supposed to follow that because it looks weird to see that left unpainted. I do have a couple of paint dots on the forearms of all but Leonardo. They’re very small and in the color of the turtle’s elbow pads. I’m not sure if it will come off, or if it would just be easier to go over it with a little dab of green paint.
The only picture I took of my original set: Mikey’s broken bicep.
Unfortunately, I do have a quality control issue right out of the box. Michelangelo’s left arm is barely hanging on at the bicep. The peg looks to have split as I can see right into it. It was obvious to my eye just looking at him. Had it not been I probably would have twisted the arm right off. In addition to that, Raph’s left shoulder won’t budge at the hinge and his arm has some wiggle at the bicep as well. It’s possible it just isn’t seated perfectly in the joint or it could also be defective, but just not to the extent of Michelangelo’s arm. Some hot water would likely free up that shoulder, but with Michelangelo basically broken I didn’t want to try without first reaching out to NECA. I emailed them after 5 PM on a Thursday and they got back to me before 9 AM the next day with a shipping label for me to return the entire package. Thankfully, I had only removed the turtles from the box so it was pretty easy to put everything back in its place and ship it out. NECA did say they would send me a replacement if one was available. Since it is a Comic Con exclusive, it’s possible they don’t have any to replace it with and if that’s the case they’ll refund me. It’s kind of annoying that they couldn’t commit as maybe I’d elect to keep it if I couldn’t get a replacement? At any rate, I’m writing this in between shipping the set back and receiving a new one from NECA so if it all went according to plan then you’ve seen a bunch of pictures and the review can continue on from here. And if not…
After just over a week after receiving the first set from NECA I had a new one. Michelangelo is now fine and the Raphael appears to be an improvement as well. The only new issue is my Raph has a little blemish on his nose. It’s not really visible because of the darkness of the skin, but can be felt. All in all though, a good customer service experience and no complaints from me. Now we can move onto the other stuff in the box.
Mikey drew the short straw and got the bad stand.
For hands, these turtles each have a set of gripping hands, fists, open, and thumbs up hands. We also get one extra set of open hands for good measure, I guess. Every hand as a horizontal hinge which is unfortunate for both the gripping and thumbs up gesture. Hopefully this doesn’t mean the eventual standard turtles aren’t missing the vertical gripping hand. Each turtle also comes with a surfboard. They’re not really color-coded to the turtles as we get a purple one with shell pattern, orange with a shell tamp, pink with red stripe, and a solid purple board with an attachable orange sail. These are all almost certainly taken from the cartoon, but it was still surprising to see we don’t have a simple blue, red, orange, purple pattern. The sail plugs into the purple board rather snugly. It won’t even rotate once inserted so maybe make sure it goes in the way you want it to because getting it out could be tricky. It’s hard plastic and probably would be easy to snap. The boards also need their fins attached to the underside and each comes with a clear, acrylic, stand like the old Turtles in Time figures NECA put out. Three of my stands work fine while the fourth is too loose. I’ll have to modify it so the boards can fit snug onto it. Right now, the board just tilts all the way back until the fin hits the surface it’s on.
That sure is a wave.
The big accessory, and what is probably the selling point, is the wave and fifth surfboard. The wave is done in translucent, blue, plastic, with white paint for the crest. There’s a black ball peg towards the front and that’s for the yellow board to plug into. The wave is about 8″ long and the board 11″ (the other boards are close to 9″) and once plugged in it will get your turtles about 4″ off of the surface it’s placed on. There’s some nice weight to the accessory and it does what it’s supposed to do. The board has no pegs on it for added stability, but does feature a rough surface which may help with grip. You can fit all four turtles onto it, though it gets pretty crowded. It completes the look and when all is said and done I’m guessing this thing is the only aspect of this set that will remain exclusive to it, but who knows? Maybe it will even show up in another line?
It is indeed possible to get all four brothers standing on this board.
The only other accessories in the box are three pizzas and two pizza boxes that just say “Pizza” on them. They are the hinged style, so I guess that’s good. Is that enough? Considering it’s a convention exclusive and the figures are all new (though destined to be reused many times over) sculpts I think it feels about right. The only real negative for me is that the figures can’t just be converted to regular turtles. Michelangelo might be, but the rest aren’t and none of the old expressions work here. Considering the change in skin-tone it’s not as big of a loss as it would have been, but it’s still annoying to go from a solid assortment of expressions to just what we have here. I’ll withhold final judgement on the sculpts as far as their appropriateness for the source and as replacements of the old ones. I have felt for awhile that the turtles have fallen behind some of the more on-model sculpts we’ve seen in the line over the past few years so I wanted new ones, I just don’t know how much of an improvement these are.
What day at the beach would be complete without pizza?
That’s a discussion for another day, as for this one, should you get it? Only if you love the concept. If you never wanted and still don’t want beach turtles after reading this then feel free to skip it. Yes, it’s a little exciting to get your hands on new turtle sculpts a bit early, but we’ll get the real thing eventually. If on the other hand you really like the look of this one then, sure, go for it. Assuming it’s not now overpriced. I have a feeling demand was soft and that NECA still has a bunch of these. Will they put them back up for sale? Probably, though with these things they usually first do it as booth exclusives at later shows. If they go up on a website it probably won’t be for a little while and without fanfare. Costumes.com was the website that would get that stuff in the past and it might in the future. Convention goers looking to flip this for a quick buck probably won’t find many takers so if you play the waiting game on eBay you may eventually find people looking to just offload this one at cost, especially if they were able to take advantage of the $40 off promotion. We also know these figures are going to get two-pack releases in a different colorway eventually so, as I said before, the only real exclusive here may just be the wave. As for me, I’ll probably make these guys a summer time decoration and that’s all. It will help make them kind of fun, but it’s not a set I’ll likely do much playing with. Hopefully, I can get them back into the box without too much fuss, though I also kind of want to get rid of it since it’s so damn big. Ultimately, it’s a good convention exclusive because it has a theme, it’s executed pretty well, and it’s not something everyone needs.
The Bodacious Beach Bros. are just the latest in a long line of NECA convention exclusives:
As the story goes, one night Kevin Eastman was drawing with his friend and partner-in-comics Peter Laird when the idea to doodle a ninja, anthropomorphized, turtle entered his brain. Laird was so amused by this drawing that he too drew his own take on it. What was done just to amuse each other eventually turned…
2023 marked the 30th anniversary of the much maligned third entrant in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film franchise and you just had to know that NECA Toys would mark the occasion. It was almost too obvious that I thought maybe the company would zig when everyone was expecting a zag, but they didn’t and…
It was a little over a month ago that San Diego Comic Con occurred, in person, for the first time since 2019. This was cause for a celebration, even if for those of us who take in the convention from the comfort of our homes saw little change. Even without the event taking place the…
Recently on #TurtleTuesday, I talked about a set of figures from JoyToy that lured me in just by being good toys. This week, it’s a two-pack that got me in spite of my feelings on the product in part via that annoying drive to have a complete collection and by retail’s favorite trick to lure in extra purchases: the discount. Target recently had a promotion on toys that meant consumers could get ten bucks off any toy purchase over $40. What’s a toy that is over $40 and in my line of sight? NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles two-packs!
This past spring, Haulathon returned to Target which meant more NECA TMNT figures based on the original cartoon series. Among those was a two-pack featuring the classic characters Tattoo and Wyrm. Yes, that “classic” is meant to be sarcastic as neither character fits that descriptor. Both were featured in the original toy line by Playmates, but I don’t recall either being a fan-favorite. Tattoo was perhaps one of the most boring releases in the entire line. He was simply a sumo wrestler who came with a bunch of stick-on tattoos you could apply in any which way you wanted to the actual figure. Wyrm was more typical of the line and a gross-out, mutated, worm. If any of these two were more beloved than the other it was probably Wyrm. For me, I owned neither as a kid. Tattoo didn’t interest me and Wyrm may have been a little too gross. Truth be told, I don’t remember ever passing him up at the store so had I been given a chance to buy Wyrm maybe I would have done so, but just because I can’t remember it doesn’t mean it never happened. Plus, he’s a mutant earth worm. That’s definitely not as cool as a wolf or a snapping turtle.
Not a ton in the box for this set.
Tattoo made his small screen debut in “Planet of the Turtleoids Part 1,” which was the closest thing to an event moment the cartoon series had. He’s a bit of a throw-away villain who opens act 1 and is dealt with pretty quickly. As for Wyrm, he actually never appeared in the show so why is NECA able to include him in the toy line? In addition to NECA embarking on more “What If?” type releases as seen with Panda Kahn, Wyrm did appear in animated form during the 90s, it just wasn’t the show. He was featured as an animated character in a commercial for the action figure alongside Chrome Dome, Dirtbag, and Groundchuck. The other three made their television debut during the Planet of the Turtleoids arc which makes one wonder if Playmates thought the same would be true for Wyrm? Or maybe it’s just coincidence? Wyrm would finally get to appear in the 2012 series, but he never did officially appear in the 1987 one.
Tattoo is more round than tall.
We might as well start by talking about Tattoo since his name comes first on the box and he’s the least interesting of the two. Tattoo is a big, chunky, figure and what you see is pretty much what you get. He stands about 6.25″ to the top of his head and he’s literally a big guy in sumo gear. The show did adopt some of his tattoos for animation like a black widow on his stomach and a lightning bolt on his leg, but they kept it pretty simple for animation. As is typical of the line, everything is painted on Tattoo even if the bare plastic underneath is the same color. You do have to watch out for the joints as they are painted over and that type of plastic won’t hold the paint. That means the elbows, especially, will flake off after repeating use. As has been the case for a few releases now, the old bisected shading with the dark on back and light on front is no longer in use here. Paint is mostly clean, though the right shoulder on my figure has some weird scuffing. It looks similar to a situation I had with the Neutrino Zak and I was able to get that off with a Magic Eraser. Hopefully it works here.
This blemish above the shoulder is a bit of a bummer.
Tattoo looks fine, it’s just that he’s not a very interesting design. I didn’t really want him, but if I wanted Wyrm I had to buy him. For accessories, he just comes with a set of clenching hands and a set of gripping hands. He also has a really large hamster which is technically himself. That’s because in the show this hamster, or gerbil, somehow was mutated into Tattoo. Yeah, it was pretty bizarre and is easily his most noteworthy fact. The articulation for Tattoo is poor. His head, being set forward and not on top of a neck, just pivots. His has articulation at the ponytail, shoulder ball hinges, bicep swivels, double-jointed elbows, swivel and hinged wrists, a diaphragm joint, a waist swivel, ball-socket hips, single hinged knees, and ankle hinges with rockers. The range of motion everywhere is pretty limited save for maybe the diaphragm, though even that just rotates. The elbows are pin-less, but also pretty ugly once bent. The left one is fused on my figure, but I don’t know if I’ll even bother to heat it up. He stands in a semi crouch which means his hips and knees do almost nothing. The range at the knees is probably less than 45 degrees, and since the joints will flake it makes this the sort of figure that is just begging you not to mess with it.
Not the nicest looking elbow joint.
Wyrm, by contrast, is far more of a typical design for the old Playmates line. NECA adapting him for this toon line actually means he’s a little more striking than a lot of the figures in the line since so many of those toy designs had to be toned down for animation. With Wyrm, you’re really just getting an updated version of that old toy as there isn’t much separating the two. He has some size to him as he’s about 6.25″ from the bottom of his booted foot to roughly the top of his head. He’s another character with a head that slopes forward and he has hair and a hat on top of his head to make it a bit more subjective just how tall this one is. He’s very bright though as the flesh is this royal blue while his outfit is basically a neon green onesie. In looking over my toon collection, I can say there isn’t much of either shade within it so this guy should pop. There’s obviously a lot of green in the display, but nothing as bright as this shade with the closest being Zork. The blue also stands out as it’s more saturated than Chakahachi or Rex-1. If you want to slot him in with the Night of the Rogues grouping, he’ll stand out amongst them. He feels like he belongs with the likes of Scumbug and Antrax.
Wyrm fits the aesthetic of the line much better than Tattoo.
Wyrm, as the name implies, is a mutated worm. And since he’s from the old toy line, he contains a lot of hallmarks one remembers from the line. The designers (who were mostly Mirage Studios artists) loved asymmetry with their mutants and that shows up here with Wyrm sporting a blue glove on his left hand and a red one on his right. It also shows up where it most often did: the feet. Or rather in this case, a foot and a tentacle. Wyrm’s left leg is fairly humanoid. It ends in a red boot with the toe ripped open exposing his digits of which he has only four to go with five digits on his hands. The right leg is basically a tentacle or worm tail. It’s blue on the outside and yellow on the inner part with little green and black suckers. It’s the most memorable aspect of the character’s design and I’m surprised he doesn’t have a tentacle left arm, though this is probably more manageable from a play point of view.
Donatello is right to be scared.
The design plus NECA’s ability to execute when it comes to the sculpt and the paint is what is going to sell Wyrm to most people. I suppose now is as good a time as any to list the credits which include Tony Cipriano and Kushwara Studios for the sculpt and the duo of Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo on paint. The detail work is all nice, but not overdone since this is supposed to be Wyrm as a cartoon. Still, animators would have hated this guy with his tattered clothes and this pattern of suckers on the inner, right, leg. He has a few bumps on his flesh and also what appear to be leaches in certain places. I think he’s supposed to be an earth worm, but he’s more like a tentacle monster. The eyes are bulgey and veiny and rimmed with dark green slime (I guess?) which helps make them stand out. The teeth and the green sludge in his mouth are all painted well and there’s a suitable abundance of black linework and detailing throughout. Like Tattoo, the toon shading is not in effect here and the approach is basically no different from what we’ve seen out of NECA’s Archie line. My assumption is that’s the approach we can expect going forward and I don’t hate it.
This mallet has been used to commit crimes.
Wyrm comes with a lot more stuff than Tattoo. He does equal the big guy in the hand department as he has just two sets: gripping and open. The right gripping hand is much tighter and I think it’s so he can get a solid grip on the included monkey wrench. The wrench is a salmon color with tape around the handle. It doesn’t articulate or anything and it’s just a wrench. The vintage toy came with the same, but it had some kind of rodent attached to it as well. The other weapon is a big old mallet and it fits into the slightly wider left gripping hand rather well. It has a wood grain texture and sculpted worms throughout it, or just one really long worm. Both ends of the head are covered in red slime. I guess it’s supposed to be blood? The shade of red is a little light, but what else could it be? It’s certainly one of the most gruesome accessories in the line up to this point.
NECA came up with a genius idea to replicate the original toy’s action feature.
That’s not all though, as Wyrm has a couple more extra parts he can utilize. The old toy had an action feature which was bug-out eyes and these little worms in his mouth that would pop out. NECA isn’t going to include an action figure on a line aimed at adults, but it can simulate the effect with optional parts. Wyrm comes with a second set of eyes which are elongated. To use them, you simply pop out the stock ones and pop these ones in. They’re keyed in such a way that you can’t mix them up and that green goop behind his eyes doubles as an easy way to find some leverage to pop them out. For the worms, NECA included a bonus tongue. You open Wyrm’s mouth as far as it will go and just lay this one over the sculpted tongue inside his mouth. This new one has the worms sculpted onto it and they’re done in a soft plastic so they feel similar to bristles on a toothbrush, just much thicker. It’s a clever way to simulate the effects on the old figure and I’m left surprised NECA was able to get away with reproducing it here when Super7 has run into so many issues with their Playmates homage line. I guess you get more leeway from the licensor when you’re bringing in more money for them.
“Dude, you are one big rodent.”
It’s a good thing that Wyrm comes with so much stuff and looks so good, because he articulates about as poorly as the worst of this line. There’s not much he can do as we have articulation at the head, jaw, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, thighs, knee, and ankle. The elbows are single-jointed so that also serves as the bicep swivel. The gripping hands at least have a vertical hinge so that’s okay. The head is fairly restricted by the placement and shape and there’s no articulation in the torso aside from what ends up being a basic waist twist despite the fact that it’s a double ball peg (it’s way too deep in the chest and the base of it is in a sculpted out cone of plastic so it can’t go anywhere – I took it apart to see). The knee is double-jointed, but that left leg isn’t very useful because we have to contend with the right one. For that, NECA went with a rubber tentacle over a heavy gauge wire. It will bend, but getting Wyrm to stand is a chore. I can get him standing, but it never seems to last long. This is a figure that ever since I got him I find toppled over every morning. The old figure went with a plastic, pre-posed, right leg which actually made him fairly easy to stand. NECA’s approach here is fun, but what good is the bendy wire? It’s just kind of a pain in the ass. I’ll probably bust out a disc stand for this guy and see if that helps keep him standing.
Also scary is Tattoo.
Wyrm’s articulation is obviously better than the old figure, but it’s so limited that functionally it’s not that much different. The range at his elbows is mediocre so you’re mostly going to post his arms with his shoulders and the swivel point. The legs need to be in a specific position to keep him standing if you’re not using a stand so he almost feels like a 5 POA style figure. We’re used to articulation in this line taking a back seat to the aesthetics, but in the case of Wyrm it’s more noticeable than most. He also will have the same paint-flaking issues as Tattoo, though it’s only really noticeable on the back of the left knee.
This is a set of what you see is what you get. If you like the look of Tattoo and Wyrm and want them in your collection then that should be the motivating factor. The accessories for Wyrm do make things a bit more interesting and I definitely enjoy his look far more than I do Tattoo’s. The real problem here is the asking price of $65. That’s at the high end for NECA two-packs (though there’s the threat of price increases looming meaning this could be the new floor) and thus a harder sell. This set isn’t nearly as good as the similarly priced Antrax and Scumbug or even some of the cheaper sets like Space Don and Samurai Mikey. This may be the first two-pack where I really notice the budget as it feels like Tattoo was only bundled with Wyrm because he could be done a bit cheaper. Just one extra set of hands and a slug figure so Wyrm could get extra stuff and a unique bendy wire leg. There’s also nothing unifying the two characters aside from the fact that both were featured in the vintage toy line. In the circles I frequent, I found most people were only interested in one half of this set with most favoring Wyrm but there were a few only interested in Tattoo. Maybe that can create some opportunities for folks to split a set? They’d almost have to be local though with the cost of shipping these days.
If you think these guys look cool and you’re okay with the price, go for it. This stuff almost never hits clearance as it is.
If you want this set your only option right now is Target. They’ve been in-stock on the website for some time, but may be gone by the time this goes live. They should be sold in stores as well, though I personally have yet to see either Haulathon two-pack show up on shelves. International buyers should be able to get these on the Haulathon website. The set gets a tepid endorsement by me. The quality is there relative to the rest of the line and I do genuinely like the look of Wyrm. Tattoo may be boring, but he looks the part of the character from the show, he’s just severely lacking in the accessory department. He should have slapping hands and a yelling portrait, at least. Wyrm looks great, it’s just a problem of cost. Even at the discounted price I got this set at, I still feel like I paid $55 for Wyrm and that’s a terrible deal. I definitely envy those who look at this set and see two characters they need in their collection.
We have plenty more thoughts on NECA’s line of TMNT Toon figures for you:
I’ve been looking forward to this one for awhile. Antrax and Scumbug only appeared in the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles once, but like last week’s figure review, they were present in the toy line long before their animated debut. And these later period episodes, such as “Night of the Rogues,” tended to just…
I encounter the sentiment often that the majority of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans in my age group (the over 40 club) associate the property with the vintage toyline first and foremost. The cartoon was a big hit, but it could only appear for a half an hour at a time where as the toys…
When it comes to character selection in NECA’s line of action figures based on the 1987 cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I think it’s safe to say we’re well into the weeds. This latest batch to arrive at Target as part of the company’s branded Haulathon have certainly illustrated that. Aside from heroic versions of…
San Diego Comic Con is always an exciting time of year for toy collectors. Even for someone like me who has never considered actually going to the event, I get up for it because I know the coverage is going to be coming fast and furious. Some years are bigger than others, but for me I think I can say that the 2025 edition has been the most surprising. I went into it with certain expectations some of which were met, but some were not and that’s not unusual. What was unusual for me is that some of the things I basically considered a “lock” did not come to pass and I left the event being perhaps most excited about a company and a product line I definitely didn’t see coming. Let’s start with the familiar though and my bread and butter franchise: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TMNT
NECA is heading down the 2012 TMNT rabbit hole this fall.
As has been the case most years, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had no shortage of coverage this year at the convention. There was even a dedicated brand panel that covered releases from several companies. We still have Playmates for vintage re-releases and some modern takes, NECA is hitting on the toon, Archie, and Mirage, Super7 has the 2003 edition of the show, and now we have Mondo doing sixth scale stuff. Mondo’s line is their own take on a post 1990 film franchise and it looks interesting, but isn’t really on my radar for the time being. I don’t have the space or funds for another Mondo sixth scale franchise. Super7 also reaffirmed its commitment to 2k3 by unveiling silhouettes for the next wave which will include Hun, April, and a motorcycle Raphael and Shell Cycle. This would seem to be the nail in the coffin for the vintage inspired figures Super7 started off with which is really frustrating considering the figures missing (topped by Heavy Metal Raph). I’m done with the 2k3 series after Shredder, and possibly done with Super7 after that as well.
NECA has been the company at the forefront for TMNT the past several years, but their showing was surprisingly light. They did announce a line of turtles based on their appearance in the game Fortnite, but that might have been the most noteworthy. There was a leak the week before SDCC of one of their reveals for the toon line, granny Bebop and baby Rocksteady, though that release wasn’t going to blow anyone away (even if it is entertaining). The only new figure shown for the toon line otherwise was a beach Slash. There was also no big display with dioramas and such, just figures in a case. It’s pretty clear that NECA wasn’t going all out for SDCC. Is that a shift in strategy? It certainly costs money to put these big displays up and staff a booth plus rental space isn’t cheap. Are they going to pivot more to social media for reveals? Is New York Comic Con considered their flagship event? Or did the reappearance of Toy Fair earlier this year just mean all of the stuff that would have been revealed at SDCC was instead shown there?
NECA didn’t have a lot of surprised in their booth, but this certainly was the most standout one.
I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I was very surprised at the lack of Tempestra. She has become the biggest missing piece for the toon line, even if she is very much a B-tier character in her own right. I’m not sure why they’re slow-walking that one. They mocked up an arcade cabinet accessory for a still unreleased movie April variant more than two years ago that most assumed was really made for a Tempestra. What I did like, even though none of the figures shown were new reveals, was how the 2012 TMNT line is shaping up. The sculpts look fantastic and they’re all dated for this year and will be sold as single releases so no four or two packs. I don’t think it’s been confirmed where we’ll be able to buy them, but they’re among my most anticipated releases for the second half of 2025. The only other showing that excited me was Garfello, i.e. Garfied cos-playing as a ninja turtle, which was unexpected. It looks great and comes with Odie and is the sort of silly release I’m very likely to get.
As for the rest, there wasn’t much to be excited by. Playmates is re-releasing its remastered turtles minus the bumpy texture a lot of people didn’t like. We actually knew about that going into SDCC, but that was basically the official launch. Mezco also showed off 1990 movie turtles for its One:12 line. They look worse than the NECA releases (which are coincidentally being re-released in single packs this year), but will probably cost more than twice as much.
Mondo
No one does animated X-Men better than Mondo.
We’ll pivot from an IP to a company here as Mondo had a lot to show off. Perhaps more than any other company, though I confess I’m not interested in everything they do (like Masters of the Universe and ThunderCats). What gets my attention first and foremost when it comes to Mondo are their plans for their X-Men animated line of sixth scale figures. It’s a line that is becoming much harder to collect because of the tariff situation in the country, but I’m in too deep to dump it. Heading into the event, we knew the next figure to be solicited was likely to be Mr. Sinister who had already been shown. There was also the reveal of an event exclusive Savage Land Rogue which went up for preorder before the show. They were both at the event along with the next figure: Storm. She looks awesome and was my guess for next up. It didn’t end there though as we also got to see concept art for the next figure and it’s Beast! I’m glad he’s a little ways off since he might be an expensive one. Perhaps things can improve economically before going up for order, though there’s always the chance things get worse. Little is likely to change before Sinister goes up though which is happening in August. I love the look of the figure and he’s an A-list villain from the show, but I do not look forward to the sticker with that one.
That was a hoot!
That’s the only sixth scale line I’m in, but Mondo did reveal more Marvel and DC figures (Superman, Two-Face, Dr. Doom, Lizard) in their other lines which all seemed solid. What really caught my eye though were their Mondo Squads which are more statuesque figures with swappable parts and sold in bundles of characters. Previously, they had done a set of characters from the Nicktoon Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and now they’re moving onto Rocko’s Modern Life. I love Rocko and this set of the titular character plus his mates Heffer and Filbert is pretty much an automatic buy from me. We don’t have a lot of Rocko merch out there so the scarcity will help. Also shown is a squad of Beavis and Butt-Head with their couch and the four fellows from King of the Hill (Hank, Bill, Dale, Boomhauer). Similar to Rocko, I may have to get King of the Hill since there’s so little out there for the franchise that I have really grown to love in recent years after previously dropping off around Season 5. Mondo also teased future squads based on Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show.
The last of the real Ghostbusters makes his debut in Ray.
Mondo is also heavily invested in The Real Ghostbusters, which was probably the biggest reveal of the 2024 show. We’re still waiting on the first release to drop (once again, thank you tariffs), but we have now seen all four of the busters and their companion ghosts. And, to no one’s surprise, everything looks great. I still have reservations about the price, but it is what it is and we’ll talk more about that when Peter finally arrives (hopefully sometime in August). Mondo also revealed that Janine will follow the boys and she’ll be in her more traditional secretary attire. To sweeten the package, she’ll come with her desk and an alternate lower half for a clean cross-legged sitting position. I’m guessing all of this extra stuff means she’s going to retail for $202 like the Ghostbuster + Ghost package we’ve seen up until now, but maybe that won’t be the case. That will be a tall ask and is probably something I won’t be interested in.
Marvel Legends
It’s all X-Men ’97!
I knew Hasbro would have some X-Men ’97 stuff for us, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much and how much I’d like it. We learned what wave three will be and those figures were all on-hand for folks to gawk at: Morph, Jubilee (final suit), Sunspot (final suit), Emma Frost, Cable (first outfit), Wolverine (classic civilian clothes). All of them looked pretty damn good. I’m mostly looking to supplement my ’92 display with these so Cable and Wolverine were locks. My dissatisfaction with the ’92 Jubilee puts the ’97 one on my radar, though I’m disappointed she’s in her black jumpsuit. Maybe I’ll swap heads with the ’92 one? Maybe even arms and coat? Emma just looks great though a classic take on the White Queen was enough to get me to put in a preorder and I love Morph so I’m in for the ’97 version. The only one I didn’t preorder was Sunspot. Nothing against the figure, I just don’t really care about Sunspot.
Gambit, what did they do to you?!
That wasn’t all though as we got a nice look at the made-to-order Sentinel which went up last year and there were some two-packs announced. We can look forward to a finale Cyclops and Jean (Marvel Girl), finale Wolverine and Storm, and a pairing of Rogue and Gambit from their basketball scene in the first episode. None are essentials for me and I don’t think I’ll be getting any, but I love to see how all-in Hasbro is with X-Men ’97. The one set that I would have had the most interest in is the basketball two-pack, but it is unfortunately the worst looking set of the two. That’s because it looks like Hasbro repurposed its Starting Lineup body of NBA players for its shirtless Gambit. That sculpt has a very unpleasant looking ab crunch in the middle of it. It worked okay for Starting Lineup because all of those figures had a jersey. Gambit doesn’t have that luxury and it looks terrible. It’s honestly one of those “How did this get approved?” moments that comes along once in awhile.
Aside from that, I had little to be critical of with Hasbro’s panel. They also revealed their next made-to-order figure: Mephisto. Mephisto was previously released many moons ago by Diamond in their Diamond Select line. Marvel Legends has not touched him though because he’s basically Marvel Satan and not afraid to show it. There was going to be one attached to the Engine of Vengeance HasLab if it hit a certain number of orders, but that product didn’t even fund. The Legends team had previously stated Mephisto could not be released any other way, but there was almost certainly some gamesmanship in those statements. Something obviously changed and now Mephisto is on the way, though he won’t be showing up at Walmart or Target. He is coming with his own throne and this thing sure looks familiar.
Hey! I know that skull!
Crystar fans can probably spot where this thing is from and the Legends team was not shy about stating it’s based on the cover of issue 8 by artist Michael Golden. We’ve covered that issue here and that’s because it’s also the cover musician Glenn Danzig stole from to come up with a logo for his band Samhain which then became the logo for the band Danzig. The Legends team, once again, was not at all shy about pointing that out and might even be hoping for some cross-sale appeal with that fanbase. As for Danzig, no comment has been made. The item was shared in the official Danzig fan group on Facebook and has since been removed so either he’s not happy or the moderators for that group think he would not be happy to see it. Fans have frequently traded and sold issues of Crystar there so it’s not like the group hides from the connection, but maybe he’s salty that he won’t get a cut? He probably thinks he made the image famous, and he probably did, but he has also made a lot of money off of art he never owned so I think we can call it square on this one, Mr. Danzig. Especially if Marvel never came looking for a cut of those t-shirts. Either way, the throne looks awesome and yes, I’m buying it. I don’t even care about Mephisto, but this thing looks too good to pass up. It’s an open preorder that closes August 26th and will set you back $80 when it ships next year.
As for other odds and ends, I continue to be impressed with the offerings from Jada Toys, even if the IPs they traffic in have little or no appeal to me. Except for Frosty the Snowman, I will get that. Big Bad Workshop had a variant of its upcoming action figure of The Tick on display and he might already be my most anticipated for next year. I love The Tick and it’s been at the top of my most wanted for a few years now and I hope the line is a success. We also know who will be the next character: Chairface Chippendale. The Naughty or Nice collection is also continuing and we’re finally getting a Mrs. Claus. I assume she will go up for preorder around Christmas time and hopefully will fund. She’s not the design I would have gone with, but I’ll be happy to have a Mrs. Claus join Santa on my shelf some day.
And that’s a wrap! Thanks to all of the people who cover this event every year and whose videos I snipped screen grabs from: Pixel Dan, Toy Anxiety, Robo Don’t Know. Toyark.com also has some great coverage if you prefer still shots. All of the folks involved help people like me who can’t make it to the con enjoy from my home or wherever I happen to be.
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I would wager that when it comes to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character Ace Duck most fans will immediately go to the Playmates figure as their first frame of reference. His creation is credited to the trio of Jim Lawson, Steve Murphy, and Ryan Brown, but I don’t know if any had a hand in his original look. That version of Ace, who was an anthropomorphic duck dressed like an old fighter pilot, made one appearance in the 1987 cartoon series as basically a show within a show. He flashed across the screen of the TV in the sewer lair in the episode “Attack of Big MACC.” That was it for old Ace as he never got to be a featured guest like many other characters who first appeared in the toy line. The character wouldn’t get a substantial look until he showed in the pages of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures published by Archie, only there he wasn’t a fighter pilot, but a pro wrestler.
He’s one big duck.
NECA’s TMNT Adventures line of action figures has been committed to giving fans basically everyone associated with the fictional Stump Wrestling. We have the turtles, Leatherhead, and Cryin’ Houn’, and now we have Ace Duck. This version of Ace is quite different from his Playmates counterpart. The only things the two share are the fact that they’re both ducks and they both have wings. While the original Ace is of average build for a human, this duck is massive. The phrase beefcake comes to mind, but also feels inappropriate for the massive mallard since he’s not a mammal. He’s a big boy and would have fit right in with the WWF of the early 90s. Even the whole duck thing probably could have worked in the promotion that introduced the Gobbledy Gooker. He also has a bit of a Buddy Rogers thing going on as he’s kind of a pretty boy. Part of me wonders if this design was influenced by Daffy Duck’s foil in the short Muscle Tussle because even the trunks are the same to go along with the physique. As a character, he’s neither friend nor foe to the turtles and even though he’s depicted as champion, he sure seems to lose a lot.
Ace Duck with the Ace Duck most know him as.
Ace Duck from NECA comes in the usual packaging with new artwork by Ken Mitchroney. He’s a big figure and comes courtesy of Walmart Collector Con which actually took place several months ago where he was available as a preorder. NECA is now finally shipping the figure and it’s expected that he’s just first run at Walmart and will eventually be available from other outlets. This chiseled sculpt was handled by Tomasz Rozejowski with paint by Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo.
It might take two turtles to topple this guy.
Ace Duck stands right around the 7″ mark and as high as 7.25″ to the top of the curl of feathers on his head. I’m pretty sure the first impression most are likely to have when looking at this figure is that he sure is bulgy, in more ways than one. He is jacked as his shoulders are quite broad and his chest is puffed out like a man (or duck) of such musculature would be. He’s also quite bulgy down…there. It’s quite the comical look when compared with the old Ace and borders on ridiculous, but I mean that in a good way. Since this is just a big duck in a Speedo, there’s not much being asked of the paint department. He’s a pale yellow all over save for his beak and his feet, which are a light orange. There’s plenty of black linework on the figure to highlight the musculature and some of the feathers. He has a set of tiny wings on his back which are barely visible from the front. I guess he skips wing day when in the gym. The only other embellishments on the sculpt are the little feathers on his forearms.
I love this cocky expression.Itty, bitty, wings.
Ace is just a big muscle duck, but what helps sell the character in plastic form are the expressions. By default, Ace looks pretty angry and ready to get down to business in the ring. His teeth are showing and he’s got a legitimately intimidating glare. The head most (including me) are likely to find more enjoyable though is the cocky grin. For that, Ace’s eyes are partly closed and looking to his right and his beak is shaped in the form of a wry smile. This is him preening for the audience or just looking in a mirror. It just goes so well with the vibe of this figure. The third portrait features a squawking Ace. His mouth is open in a cartoonish shape with a big, red, tongue flopping out. His eyes are also all red with black circles in them indicating he’s dizzy. This is pulled straight from a panel in the comics where Leatherhead is swinging him around by the feet. This one also works for a punch drunk look or an impact which is definitely a worthwhile inclusion for a pro wrestler action figure.
This right hand is basically included just for this.
The rest of the items are in the box are reserved for hands and one accessory. For hands, Ace has a set of fists, relaxed, and gripping hands. He also has a left hand that’s somewhere in between a pointing gesture and a relaxed look and a right hand that’s puzzling to me. It’s almost like the start of a thumb’s up gesture or a guitar picking form. It looks so specific that I’m guessing it’s lifted from a panel, and sure enough, it is. There’s a panel where he’s basically posing after slamming Leatherhead and saying “later gator” where he’s making this gesture with his hand. The last item in the box is a folding chair. It’s the exact same accessory that came with the turtles and even the colors are the same. It’s a solid accessory to have for a wrestling figure and I like that we now have two in the collection instead of one.
He’s not above getting dirty.
The approach to articulation with Ace is pretty basic. While the turtles were used to show off NECA’s first attempts at traditional pinless double-joints, Ace is going more old school. There’s articulation at the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, diaphragm, hips, knees, ankles, and wings. Both the elbows and knees are single-jointed, but they will swivel at the point of entry as well. There is a thigh swivel, but it’s pretty limited and I was surprised by the lack of a waist twist. You will need to use the diaphragm joint for that and it’s pretty limited. Mostly, the figure is just so bulky that the range in a lot of places is hampered. The shoulders aren’t going to get much use out of the hinge and the elbow swivel isn’t as good as a proper bicep swivel. The hinge for the gripping hands is of the horizontal variety which is unfortunate. The legs have very little range kicking forward, though they actually kick backwards a decent amount.
You’re gonna need a bigger chair, Leo.
Ace isn’t going to do a whole lot on your shelf. In that, he’s a lot like Leatherhead and Cryin’ Houn’ who I also felt were really limited in the articulation department. Ace is probably a littler better than the hound, but a little worse than Leatherhead. None of them are going to be celebrated for their articulation and the best articulated figures in this line so far are probably the turtles. With Ace it’s just a little disappointing because there’s not much that NECA had to work around. He’s practically naked and it’s just the bulk of the sculpt that impedes things. And while I do like the sculpt, I do think there was a happy medium some where to make this guy more articulated without having to jeopardize the aesthetics. The hips, in particular, stand out as an area where there’s no real reason for why they’re as limited as they are.
Or not.
Ace Duck is another solid entry in NECA’s Archie Comics inspired toy line. The articulation shortcomings are basically a feature of the line at this point and collectors likely know what they’re in for with that. The sculpt is on point and this is a figure that just puts a smile on my face because he’s so damn fun to look at. The accessory count is suitable with three portraits and a folding chair to go along with 8 hands. The only other thing I failed to mention so far is the price. Ace Duck will set you back $50 if you can find him at Walmart (currently available for order as I type this) and may cost a little more when he makes his way to specialty retailers. That’s certainly a steep price and I guess it’s owing to his size and potential for reuse. The sculpt is such that maybe NECA can reuse it for other muscle guys though none in this particular line come to mind. He’s the same price as Cryin’ Houn’ who was a little bigger, but came with less stuff, so he doesn’t feel like a lesser release. I just wasn’t crazy about the price tag with that figure either. I do like this figure a bit more and if you’re okay with the price and its shortcomings then I can safely recommend it. It has a premium feel in-hand and it’s a musclebound space duck in trunks – what’s there not to like?
That duck has a family!
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Recently I took a look at the NECA Gargoyles release “Vows” which featured Goliath and Demona repackaged with a small upgrade for Goliath and some new accessories. It was a purchase brought on by news that NECA had cancelled the Gargoyles line of action figures which motivated me to reconsider some releases I had passed on. Today is another such release and quite possibly the last Gargoyles release from NECA that I’ll ever buy. The only figures I did not purchase are the Steel Clan robot gargoyle and the video game Goliath variant. There’s also a toon variant of Goliath that was sold with a copy of the Sega Genesis Gargoyles rerelease on modern consoles from Limited Run Games and I have no idea if that was ever fulfilled or not (looks like it was as it’s available to order right now from their website). It’s also likely to be the most expensive missing figure so there’s little or no chance I’ll ever go for that one.
“I’ll trade you these snacks for those wings.”“Done!”
This release, titled NECA Presents The Silver Falcon starring Broadway, is just the previous Broadway figure in a trench coat. The selling point is a new portrait and some new accessories as well as the much coveted caped wings. All of the other gargoyles to receive the caped wings accessory had them bundled with a new figure making Broadway the one and only gargoyle collectors were expected to re-buy in order to get this accessory. It basically went against how NECA had previously indicated these wings would be distributed when they said the wings would be packed with human characters and smaller ones like Bronx and Lexington. Lexington would eventually come out without any such wings. Perhaps he ended up costing more than originally thought? We were also supposed to get MacBeth who I am guessing would have come with Hudson’s wings. Instead, Hudson has to go without and so does Angela and Thailog while Broadway only gets them if you really want to see him in a coat.
If you want to use the old wings with this guy you certainly can.
Because of that, I initially passed on this one. I was hoping it would eventually wind up on sale somewhere, but NECA doesn’t clearance their items at Target and I couldn’t find this one on sale anywhere. It’s possible there are a lot of folks like me looking to buy now that the line is done. I also grew sick of the amount of opened wings on my shelf and felt like I just needed to tidy things up and getting these wings for Broadway would definitely help there as it leaves just Hudson and Angela (who I hope to actually outfit with Demona’s caped wings now that I have two sets) as the lone gargoyles with their wings extended on my “good guys” shelf. I also don’t hate the idea of Broadway sporting a trench coat on my shelf, but will he actually keep it? Let’s find out.
Those wings! Those are the style everyone wanted, but NECA never delivered.
This version of Broadway comes in an attractive box with a black and white interpretation of the figure on the cover. It is by Djordje Djokovic with paint by Emiliano Santalucia and features some nice, silver, embossed lettering. The profile shot of Broadway is the most toon-like illustration associated with this line and if I cared about packaging I’d probably hang onto this one, but I don’t. Broadway the figure is exactly the same figure as previously released a couple of years ago. The only difference is the default portrait is a new one where he has a closed, but full, mouth and looks pretty happy. It’s a good, light-hearted, take on a pretty light-hearted character and is meant to pair with the numerous food accessories included here and with the original release.
This new portrait is for stuffing his face.The stitching on the coat is pretty sloppy all over.
The look here is inspired by the episode of the same name, “The Silver Falcon,” featured early in the show’s second season. In that episode, we see Broadway’s love for old detective, noir, type films manifest in this look. Elisa’s partner, Matt, has gone missing and Broadway has volunteered his services in finding the missing detective. The trench coat starts off looking rather sharp, but gradually deteriorates throughout the course of the episode until it’s nothing but rags in the end. He also loses the hat. For this release, NECA is using a plastic hat and a soft goods coat. The hat is shaped to fit in between Broadway’s ears and it has indents inside it that fit over the spikes on his head making it useable with all three portraits. The coat itself is pretty basic. There’s a wire in the collar which allows for some posing as well as a wire running through the sash. The wire protrudes from one end on my release which is annoying and something to watch out for. The coat is not very accurate to the show as it’s missing buttons on the back and a belt buckle on the front. It’s also poor quality as it contains numerous loose strings along the seems. I have soft goods trench coats from multiple NECA releases and this is by far the worst of them all. I’ve left them in place for this review, but I’ll probably try to clean this thing up with some scissors when I’m done.
“Did I ever tell you I love a gargoyle in uniform?”
The big inclusion is obviously the caped wings. They’re styled like Goliath’s where they’re molded together in both the front and the back so the only way to put it on is by removing Broadway’s head first. In the episode, the trench coat hides his wings until he needs them at which point they rip out the back of the coat. He never drapes them over his coat, but should you wish to NECA did cut out two holes in the back of the jacket to allow the pegs to slot into the wing holes. It’s more trouble than it’s worth as trying to find the holes in the coat followed by the ones in the figure is more than a little frustrating. You can just get away with dropping them over his neck if you want, but it’s probably just best to use them without the coat. And they’ll work fine in that fashion. The wings are painted to match Broadway’s other wings, though there’s some sloppy linework right on the front of mine which bugs me. It involves the teal bleeding over the black outer wing membrane and I can’t tell if that black is the base color of the plastic or not so I’m hesitant to try and remove it. I think it’s safe, but I’d need to test it.
You can count on Broadway to bring the snacks.“Why are these jars impossible to open?!”
The other accessories included are the two original Broadway portraits we’ve seen already as well as some hands: open, fists, and a gripping left hand. The gripping hand is quite wide and seems to be intended to hold the sandwich he comes with. It looks to be a ham and cheese with some lettuce and tomato on wheat bread. There’s a bite missing and, as far as little plastic sandwiches go, this looks pretty damn good. Broadway also has a pot of chili, a takeout container with what appears to be lo mein, and a jar of jalapeno peppers. Everything looks pretty good. The pot has some nice dry brushing on it to make it resemble cast iron and there’s a ladle sticking out of the top. The contents are also molded like it’s boiling which makes me think it’s based on a specific shot from the show. The lo mein is convincing as well and the pepper jar is probably as good as it can be. There’s some paint spray inside of it that creates a cloudy appearance. I don’t know if it’s intentional or just a result of how the peppers were painted. He does not come with a lone pepper, but if you have Goliath then you’ll have one. My only disappointment here is I wish he had a biting portrait. NECA may have been able to get away with just doing eyeballs on the roaring portrait. Yeah, he still would have looked angry, but he could really use a head where he’s taking a bite and not just a mouthful.
“Hey Demona!” “Ugh, you repugnant ape!”
And that’s kind of it. The figure itself is exactly the same so it articulates the same only now he doesn’t have any open wings to get in the way. That makes him a little easier to pose, but he’s still pretty limited. I do think, out of all of the Gargoyles, this figure is the most toon-like as his face retains that look. As a result, it is one of the better looking figures in the line perhaps second to Hudson. From that perspective, I suppose if fans were expected to buy multiples of a figure then Broadway isn’t the worst one to have to rebuy, though it’s still unnecessary. I’ll probably just toss this in a drawer and leave my original Broadway on display with the updated wings. The trench coat looks like crap so I have little incentive to keep it on my shelf. The extra food accessories are fine, but hardly worth the asking price. As a result, it’s hard not to look at a release like this one and conclude that it was part of the problem with the line as opposed to a benefit. It’s a shame NECA never found a good solution for the wing issue and instead turned to low effort variants like this one. They set a bad precedent and discourage the fanbase. I doubt this specific release killed the line, but it certainly didn’t save it.
“Don’t worry partner, I’ve got your back!”
Does this conclude my journey with NECA and Gargoyles? Perhaps. As I mentioned earlier, the only figure I didn’t buy that wasn’t a variant is the Steel Clan robot and the only reason why I didn’t is because it’s more like an army builder. I have the armored Xanatos which is basically the same figure with only minor changes and a different deco. Perhaps I’ll go back and review figures like that as well as the others that I didn’t bother to post a review of. We’ll see. It’s a shame the line had to end though. I was looking forward to MacBeth and Coldstone, though I honestly didn’t need anything beyond them. It’s a solid assortment that we have right now, it just stinks knowing it would have felt that much more complete with those two (well, mostly MacBeth, but Coldstone is a kick ass design and the prototype looked awesome so it would have made for an interesting release). As for the future of Gargoyles – who knows? The comics from Dynamite are still going with the Demona mini series launching in July (after several delays thanks to the fiasco with Diamond Comics going bankrupt) and Mondo is working on their own figures, but in sixth scale. These figures are a chore to cram onto a shelf in 1:10 scale, imagine sixth scale? I’d love to see a company try Gargoyles again with a more toon aesthetic, but NECA giving up on the line probably isn’t tempting other companies to want to try their hand. As long as the franchise is still around and producing new content though, there’s always chance.
It’s been awhile since I last took a look at a Gargoyles release from NECA and there’s a good reason for that. While I was super pumped when NECA announced it had acquired the license for Gargoyles back in 2021, I found the figures to be a case of diminishing returns. Goliath, the first figure…
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a review on an action figure from NECA’s line of figures based on the Disney Afternoon animated series Gargoyles. That’s not due to me not getting any figures, it’s more just me not having a ton to say. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I…
We are getting oh so very close to assembling the original Manhattan Clan in action figure form! Disney’s take on gothic beasts originally included the following gargoyles: Goliath, Hudson, Bronx, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington. The clan would grow from there, but those six are still the first that come to mind for me when I…
It’s been awhile since I last took a look at a Gargoyles release from NECA and there’s a good reason for that. While I was super pumped when NECA announced it had acquired the license for Gargoyles back in 2021, I found the figures to be a case of diminishing returns. Goliath, the first figure released, was promising, but had some notable flaws. The flaws would then be shared by just about every figure to follow and while fans practically begged NECA to address the main issue, the company failed to do so. Instead, it quietly cancelled the line after releasing over a dozen characters and a few variants. What was that issue? Wings. Big, honkin’, wings. These things came packaged with their wings spread wide open sucking up tremendous shelf space. The only solution NECA came up with was to include the caped or folded wings with other releases. To get Goliath’s, you had to get Bronx. Brooklyn’s came with Elisa while Demona’s were packaged with Xanatos. If you wanted Broadway’s you had to re-buy Broadway in his detective guise and if you wanted the same for Angela, Hudson, or Thailog, well – you were just plain out of luck as none of them received the wings they were looking for.
Is that why the line came to a premature end? I don’t know. Sales initially were said to be hot. NECA boasted that its Goliath was one of the fastest selling figures they ever had for a new product line. Things must have cooled following that. Perhaps momentum was stunted a bit when the second figure was Thailog, essentially a Goliath repaint. Demona and Bronx followed roughly six months later as part of the inaugrual Target Haulathon which made the pair perhaps harder to acquire than it should have been. They eventually made it to other retailers and by the end of the year we had Hudson. There was a pretty wide gap in releases between Hudson and Brooklyn/Broadway who arrived basically at the same time. Did that slow sales down? Maybe, only NECA knows. The property was untested in this collector space and it’s possible a lot of folks were just happy to get Goliath and didn’t necessarily need anymore. Maybe they didn’t like Goliath after they got him and dropped the line? There weren’t any drastic quality control changes and most of the figures turned out roughly the same. Deciding which figure was best ended up being a fairly subjective exercise. There were a lot of unique sculpts so it wasn’t a low cost line. The boxes were fairly large as well and swallowed up almost as much retail shelf space as they did collector shelf space. Allegedly, Walmart was the first to sour on the brand and stopped ordering it and I guess other retailers must have followed suit. This means the other figures shown off – Coldstone, MacBeth, and Gabriel, are likely to never see the light of day which is a shame.
If you were curious what a Best Buy Open Box item might refer to, this seems to be the extent of it.
For me, my number one issue definitely were those wings. The wide open wings were the most dramatic, but not practical. The caped wings solved the space issue, but their design really hinders articulation and posing too. What I really wanted were just some relaxed wings. Collectors started referring to them as the A wings since they kind of make an A shape when at rest. They didn’t have to be articulated, just more manageable. In addition to that though was the articulation in general. NECA rarely prioritizes articulation with its figures. They tend to have an acceptable amount of articulation points and styles, but NECA is very much an aesthetics forward company. And the gargoyles are basically big, naked, monsters so they don’t present too much options for hiding articulation as well. Even so, almost all of them have their necks at a forward angle that really limits how their heads can be positioned. The torso joints offer little and these guys can’t hit most of their signature poses. Plus you add in their anatomy which makes them hard to stand to begin with and you can see how we might have some issues. My collection is largely a bunch of characters in vanilla poses as a result. They’re not very fun to handle and as a result I kind of stopped wanting to talk about them. I didn’t even review every figure I have for that reason.
Goliath gets 3 new expressions with the neutral one being a holdover. The hair is also new.
With the line’s cancellation, it has me rethinking where I left off. When I found myself losing interest in the line it made it easier to pass on some releases, especially variants. I passed on the Steel Clan and instead just got the armored Xanatos. I passed on the video game variant of Goliath as well as the Detective Broadway. I also passed on the subject of today’s post (I swear I’m getting to it), the Goliath and Demona two-pack, but when a Best Buy open box option popped up I decided to grab it since it was nearly 50% off.
Demona also gets 3 new expressions, but sadly no new hair.
This set, dubbed Vows, contains the same figures we’ve already looked at before of Goliath and Demona, but with one change. That change rests solely with Goliath who has had his head replaced with two new hairsculpts that function like Demona’s. The original release of Goliath just had two portraits with the same hairsculpt: neutral and angry. This one makes use of swap-able face plates so you end up with four expressions and two stylized pieces of hair giving you eight total display options. It’s the approach I thought NECA would have taken from the start and I’m surprised they didn’t, but at least it’s been remedied here. And the expressions packaged in this set for Goliath feel a little more alive to me and more evocative of what we saw out of the character in the show. There’s a stern expression that’s pretty much the same as the one that came in the first release, a smile, a teeth baring expression, and an angry yell. The yell doesn’t feature the whited out eyes so he’s not on the attack rather he’s probably pleading with Demona to not do something evil. His default hair sculpt is the same as the original release and it’s basically his normal look. The second has the hair more spread out and over his shoulders. It’s not exactly wind blown, but it’s a little messy. I call it his sexy hair.
The Phoenix Gate is sort of the main attraction as far as the accessories go.
As for Demona, she is also the same figure as before. And since she already had the face plate technology, there’s basically no change to her. We don’t even get another hair piece. What we do get are more expressions. Her default one is the same as the default one from before, but she adds to it a surprised look, a smile where her teeth are visible, and an angry look that also has a hint of surprise to it. It sort of looks like she smelled a fart. I like them, though the surprised face features a right eye that’s not in alignment with the left. It’s a little higher and tilted which is a bummer because I kind of like this expression the best. Since it’s an issue with the sculpt I’m assuming they’re all like this too.
Demona! No!
The rest of the accessories contain the usual mix of hands and a couple of unique items. For both we get fists and open hands. Both also have a gripping right hand and a trigger right hand. Demona also has a clawing left hand. I think of it as a spell-casting hand or a gesture where she’s reaching for something. Goliath’s gripping hand seems to be intended to work with the mace he comes with. I’m assuming this is another throwback accessory to the original Kenner line since the first Goliath didn’t feature such an item (Broadway, Brooklyn, and Lexington all did), or it’s the mace used to smash the gargoyles in the first or second episode. That would truly be a morbid inclusion. Demona has a new laser rifle that’s mostly blue plastic with a little black paint. It’s probably a direct pull from the show, but I don’t recognize it immediately. I was hoping the effect part that came with Xanatos would work with it, but the opening is too small. They also come with two versions of the Phoenix Gate item from the show: one fully formed and one broken in half. That’s where the whole vows theme comes into play as they each took half of the magical artifact for safekeeping when the two trusted each other. My how times have changed.
Goliath gets a mace, even though he has no real need for one.
What I have not yet mentioned are wings and with this set each figure comes with the caped wings and that’s all. It’s an odd choice because this set came out so long after the single releases of each character. Why wouldn’t NECA include both wing options? It seemed like this was a way to get newcomers to the line to jump on with two of the most popular characters in the franchise, but to not include the other wings is an odd choice. I do realize I spent quite a bit of time complaining about those wings, but my issue isn’t with the wings themself, just that they’re the only default option for every character. At the time this set came out, both Demona and Goliath were still fairly easy to come by. It wasn’t like they had sold out and become sought after by newcomers to the line. NECA gave the fanbase that had been collecting this whole time little incentive to double dip here. The accessories are fine, I like the new portraits, but enough to rebuy the pair? Goliath’s caped wings also came with Bronx, a character I doubt many would pass on. Demona’s previously came with Xanators and I guess some collectors may have passed on him if they were only interested in the gargoyles. I didn’t review that figure, but I did buy it, so I had no need for either wings in this set.
Demona has some new firepower which is always appreciated.
Is all of that enough? Bare in mind that I didn’t even mention the MSRP on this set yet. This thing was $70. Gargoyles fans were expected to drop seventy bucks for a few new portraits and the Phoenix Gate. That’s nuts. I don’t know what NECA was thinking with this one. Yes, it’s reuse of existing molds so that naturally makes the cost lower, but who did they think would buy this? I got it for $40 and honestly that’s even too much considering I already owned both figures and the wing options within. I only was willing to do it for a few reasons. One, I did like the new expressions. I’ve never been satisfied with Goliath’s default expressions and these seemed much better. Two, my original Demona wasn’t great. Her wings were floppy and the factory didn’t paint the claws on her right foot. And, after a few years standing on my shelf, her shin has become warped and I was hoping this one would be less gummy. And three, we never got caped wings for Angela. She and Demona share the same body and can share the same wings. Of course, Angela is shaped like Demona, but colored like Goliath, so I’m going to have to try to paint a set of wings to match. I honestly don’t know if I’m up to the task, but I have two sets of caped Demona wings so I might as well try.
These wings should work fine with the Angela figure, provided they’re re-painted.
As for the figures themself, they’re exactly the same as before. Same pros, same cons. Goliath is hard to pose, but with his tail he’s not that hard to stand at least. The caped wings mean his arms can’t do much though so he’s just going to stand there. The open wings work fine as well, provided you have them. Demona is also the same. Her caped wings really don’t want to plug into her back, or rather, the right peg doesn’t want to. I can probably get it in if I heat it up, but I have yet to try. I didn’t have any issues with the other caped wings and my first release. Demona is still really frustrating though because she’s basically always looking down slightly. I wish NECA had given her a second hair sculpt with her ponytail up or articulated or something. The angle of her face just drives me crazy. She’s also hard to stand because female gargoyles in the show keep their knees straight and stand on their toes while the males bend at the knees, making weight distribution simpler. A stand for the women would have been nice. These figures also really needed a neck joint or alternate portraits that allowed them to look forward while flying gliding parallel with the ground. NECA got some great sculpts out of Djordje Djokovic, but they really needed their engineers to do something more with them. They probably thought they were doing him a favor by not cutting them up more, but really they did him a disservice since these things just don’t pose well.
And the old wings will work just fine as well.
Should you buy this set? No, probably not. If you have been admiring the line from afar and want to try and get into it before it disappears forever, then I guess, yeah, this is probably preferable to buying the figures individually. It’s $70 and Demona alone costs $36 while Goliath was $32, I want to say. I think NECA charged a little less with him on purpose to lure fans in. Right now on Big Bad Toy Store, you can get Goliath for $26 and Demona for $42. They also have the Vows set, but priced at $80 which is crazy. If that set came with both sets of wings then I could see going for that, but you can also find it cheaper. It mostly comes down to preference. If you prefer these caped wings then definitely go Vows. If you like the big, open, dramatic wings then get the individual releases. You’ll get more expressions with this set though. For Goliath, I don’t think anyone is really missing the book and jalapeno pepper, though the first Demona had two guns that turned out pretty nice plus her grimoire. She’s a bit more of a toss-up. Wouldn’t it have been nice if NECA just made this two-pack the ultimate release of both characters like the box suggests? There’s a balancing act to doing reissues like this where you want to put enough new in the box to entice existing customers, but also make it a good jumping on point for newcomers. I don’t think NECA satisfied either group here which seems like a shorthand way to describe the Gargoyles line in general – so close to being great, but oh so painfully short.
“How dare you turn our daughter against me, Goliath!”
If you’re curious what I thought of these figures the first time around see below:
It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…
When NECA launched it’s line of action figures based on Disney’s Gargoyles, it seemed to imply that Demona would be figure number 2. She was not. That honor went to Thailog, the Goliath clone, and that might have had something to do with the many factory delays and shipping woes that were impacting the entire…
Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging…
Remember Panda Khan? Well he’s back – in toon form!
I encounter the sentiment often that the majority of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans in my age group (the over 40 club) associate the property with the vintage toyline first and foremost. The cartoon was a big hit, but it could only appear for a half an hour at a time where as the toys were always there and always willing to go on adventures. That is why when it comes to characters in the TMNT universe, most seem to think of the toy first, toon second. NECA is well aware of this and has seen from afar that just making modern action figures based on the old toys is a tough road to travel if Super7 is any indication. And while many characters from the toyline did eventually make the jump to animation, not all of them did. To get around this technicality, NECA has decided to make toon versions of those characters as basically a What-if? homage and it’s how we got ourselves a NECA Panda Khan.
Panda Khan has a little bit of size to him.
Panda Khan is a character that exists outside of TMNT media. If all you knew of him was the old Playmates toy, then that was probably not something you were aware of. The character was created by Monica Sharp and Dave Garcia and appeared in his own comic as well as some published by Mirage Studios. The character is actually named Li Yang, but goes by Panda Khan and he was essentially setup for the same deal as Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit, which turtle fans know as Usagi Yojimbo. For one reason or another, Panda Khan’s appearance in the cartoon never happened and he forever remained one of those characters who existed for TMNT fans in toy form, but no where else. The character is now owned by Gaelstone Media who cut a deal with NECA for Panda Khan to appear in their toyline. The figure was unveiled last summer and can now be found at Target as part of this spring’s edition of Haulathon.
Samurai troopers assemble!
Panda Khan in the Playmates line was basically a samurai Panda and not much has changed over the 30+ years. NECA has taken the same, basic, approach to the character, but livened it up with colors most would associate with the cartoon. The character is a solo release and comes in the same f.h.e. style packaging as other ultimate or deluxe releases in the line with artwork by Aaron Hazouri. There’s a rather elaborate (by modern toy packaging standards) bio on the back that’s basically a setup for an episode of the show that never came to be and is rather clever. The front fifth panel is held in place by Velcro and behind it is a nice window box to see the figure. If you wanted to keep this guy in-box, it would display pretty well, but this isn’t the sort of place that leaves a toy in its box.
One irksome paint defect with my figure is this black line on his teeth.
Panda Khan stands roughly 7″ to the tops of his ears giving him some decent size for NECA’s toon line. More so than the height is the heft. This is a chunky figure with a satisfying in-hand feel. The upper body is dominated by shades of blue as he’s sporting a light blue kimono with a dark blue vest over it. Clashing with that are the bright green pants, but with TMNT designs it often feels like the clashing is the point. On his shins, forearms, and shoulders are armored bits which are a darker shade of light blue rimmed with yellow and studded with red. He also has skirt armor with a similar approach and all of these panels are held in place by sculpted-in red straps which match nicely with the red bandana across his brow and sash around his waist. It’s a nice design and it pairs well with both Usagi and the samurai Michelangelo released previously. I do find the choice to have an armored skirt with no torso armor a little odd, but I guess they didn’t want to come too close in design to the Playmates release. The kimono looks like it should continue past the belt, but I guess he tucks it into his pants? I personally would not have gone with the green pants either, but I suppose it’s more interesting than black or blue.
If you want a more primal arsenal.
The cartoon styling for the face is very evocative of the Usagi Yojimbo design. The default portrait is a classic TMNT teeth gritting pose and he also has a more stern expression to swap to. I like the look of both, but the paint on the teeth of mine is sloppy on one side which is a bummer. For that reason, I’ll probably stick with the stern expression, but I also find it fits the look of the show a little better (the teeth-gritting expression is something I associate with the toys more than the show). The alternate head also has an added ponytail which is a bit interesting. I think it’s a NECA touch as I didn’t encounter any images online from the comics of Panda Khan with a ponytail. If you like it (or don’t) NECA has you covered too because the top of the head is removable and interchangeable between the two portraits so you can mix and match as you see fit. NECA is always doing small, clever, things like that which I really appreciate. The paint on the teeth is the only negative I can find with the presentation here as the rest is pretty clean and crisp. This is another Tomasz Rozejowski sculpt and he really nailed it.
You can fit the claws in here, but probably not much else.
In addition to the extra portrait, Panda Khan comes with the usual assortment of hands: fists, open, and two sets of gripping hands. I suppose that part is unusual as Panda Khan’s gripping hands are the same size, but one set features a horizontal hinge while the other features the melee appropriate vertical hinge, a practice I’m happy to see NECA start paying more attention to. For those gripping hands, Panda Khan has his trusty blade: the Morning Qi. The old Playmates figure featured a sword that resembled a rather conventional katana while this one has a bit more of a squared-off design to the blade. There’s a sculpted Yin Yang near the hilt and the weapon is painted very well. The hilt is pretty thick, but the figure can grip it just fine. There is a little give to the fingers of the gripping hand, but perhaps not enough to alleviate any fears of paint rub. If you miss the the old school katana of the original figure, you could always hand him one of Samurai Michelangelo’s blades, though it might look pretty small in his hands. If you have the Super7 Leonardo then you may prefer the look of one of his katana. As for me, I’m pretty content with Morning Qi here.
If you want something more like a katana, the Super7 Leonardo swords work all right.
The sword and the appropriate hands to wield it are probably all most would need, but NECA included a few more accessories in this package to better outfit this warrior panda. We have some optional equipment in the form of a bamboo hat and backpack. The hat plugs into the top of his in place of his ears and also includes a chin strap. It looks nice and the plug was a good choice to help keep the hat in place, though part of me feels like a toon version of the character would have impossibly had his ears poking through the hat. It might have looked kind of funny if NECA had done the same. The backpack can slide onto his arms pretty easily and even features a removable lid. The interior of the backpack isn’t very large, but it can store his other weapons which are two bladed instruments that slide over the fingers of either the gripping hands or the open ones. These claws give him a more primal method of attack since they’re reminiscent of actual panda claws. They’re neat, though probably too violent for a cartoon unless he’s being unleashed on robots. I do wish NECA had made the backpack just a little bit bigger so we could have fit the extra hands in it as well, but at least it’s not entirely useless. There’s no weapon storage for the sword though, but I guess you could wedge it between the backpack and the figure’s back or have it sticking out of the backpack itself.
And this brings us to the portion of the review that’s often the least fun to talk about: articulation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the NECA toon TMNT toyline is an aesthetics forward line where articulation is not quite an afterthought, but certainly not a priority. Panda Khan for sure embodies this approach as the articulation present is super basic. The double-ball joint at the head allows for swivel and tilt, but no range looking up. Being a tall character, he can at least look down. The ball-hinged shoulders are basic while the pauldrons will impede range going out to the side. They and the other armored pieces do flex, but you probably wouldn’t want to push it and leave them in such a state. The double-jointed elbows are pin-less and the range is quite good, but the joint is not very aesthetically pleasing. There is a bicep swivel, but the range in the arms is not sufficient enough for a two-handed sword pose, unfortunately. The waist twist barely moves while the hips are severely restricted in all directions. The single-jointed knees can swivel, but they don’t bend 90 degrees. He’s one of those characters that also is always semi-crouched as his legs can’t be just straight. The hinge at the ankle is limited while the ankle rocker is fine.
Those robots sure do cut nice and clean.
Panda Khan is a figure that can’t do much. Even expecting that of a bigger and bulkier character, I still can’t stress enough how limited the figure is. There’s no reason for the head to not work better and I wish they had made it a priority to allow the figure to grip the sword convincingly with two hands. Especially since that’s how they chose to depict him on the box art. There’s just a lot of stuff getting in the way when it comes to the numerous overlays on the torso and in the hip area. No one expects anything too crazy out of a giant panda, but he is supposed to be a samurai and should be capable of more.
If you’re a regular NECA TMNT collector, none of that is a surprise. The figure at least does look pretty good and I continue to be impressed with how clean the paint job is given the abundance of it. The only visual things about this guy that let me down is the sloppy paint on the teeth of the default portrait and I don’t like how those elbows look. They have a very McFarlane appearance to them as a lot has been chopped out. NECA is still new to the pin-less approach so perhaps it’s something that needs more refinement. They can get away with it on the turtles who feature elbow pads, but figures like Panda Khan aren’t able to do the same. And as always, your enjoyment of this guy will come down to how you think it looks. If you like the look of this one and don’t think it needs to pose all that well then it’s actually a pretty easy recommend. At $35, it’s a bigger character with plenty of accessories that features a ton of paint. With prices expected to rise in the very near feature, Panda Khan may soon feel like a bargain. And it should be pretty easy to track down. The figure is available online at Target.com and also being stocked in-store. I got mine via the website and wish I had waited for an in-store figure so that I could have perhaps landed a better paint job. I’d encourage anyone else interested in Panda Khan to do the same.
We have plenty more NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for your to peruse:
I am back! If you’re a regular reader then you probably didn’t notice much as far as content goes, but I’ve been out of commission for weeks now due to my laptop crashing. I was able to fix it, but it took some time to get around to it and it’s been a really long…
I think most people understand that when it comes to a toy line the most popular figures are of the most popular characters. The problem is, what do you do when everyone has the most popular characters? You make them again, but different! That’s sort of the genesis of the variant action figure of a…
The early issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released by Mirage Studios include a few guest stars here and there. One of them comes from the pages of Usagi Yojimbo, the samurai rabbit by the name of Miyamoto Usagi. The pairing of samurai rabbit and ninja turtles was a big enough success that it migrated…
The Nostalgia Spot 