For most fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the 1980s, you reside in two camps when it comes to how certain characters are remembered: either from the cartoon/comics, or from the Playmates toy line. For Wingnut and Screwloose, I suspect most associate them with the action figure, but there are those who think of them first as members of the Mighty Mutanimals, the Archie Comics sister book to their version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When it came to the toy line, many of those characters would be brought over and usually as villains. What many consider to be classic villains Slash and Leatherhead, actually started off as heroic allies of the TMNT. And when it came time to bring them into the animated universe, it was usually as characters based on the toys so to the rogue’s gallery they went. Even some of the few that were made heroes by Playmates would get the villain treatment, like Mondo Gecko, though he would come around by episode’s end.

For Wingnut and Screwloose, they too got the villain treatment despite being counted amongst the allies by Playmates. Their Playmates design also differed wildly from the comic as the toy maker preferred to envision Wingnut as a Batman parody. The mutant bat is clad in blue and gray evoking memories of Batman’s past. He’s also a little on the paunchy side, which might have been Playmates poking a little fun at actor Adam West. By the early 90s, the Batman most associated with the brand was the one featured in Tim Burton’s film. He was a brooding character sporting all black, muscled, features, even though actor Michael Keaton wasn’t exactly the brawny type. It was quite fashionable in those days to poke fun at the campy show from the 1960s and West’s “pure West” physique, while certainly not overweight or anything, was definitely not the muscled look the character had undertaken. Nevertheless, the design was quite interesting and Wingnut was a favorite of many of my friends. Screwloose, on the other hand, was just a sculpted lump of plastic, one of the earliest “buddy” accessories to be featured in the line. I’m actually not sure which buddy was my first, but I think it was either Screwloose or Joe Eyeball.

Why the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles decided to take a clear Batman parody, or homage, and make it a bad guy is beyond me. Sure, Wingnut is a bit fearsome looking, but I never confused him for a villain. The show decided to make him and Screwloose a pair of invading aliens, with Screwloose actually serving as the brains of the duo. Making them aliens actually kept them inline with their comic counterparts, who did start off a bit villainous before switching to the side of good, but otherwise they’re kind of their own thing here. The design for both is clearly taken from the toys, something the cartoon seemed more willing to do in later seasons, probably because it was hard to come up with a bunch of new designs with those larger episode orders. And now, NECA Toys has made it so we can have toon accurate versions of these characters for the very first time.

Wingnut and Screwloose come in an oversized two-pack box. The actual design is standard, it’s just massive. The height and width are essentially universal for the line, it’s the depth where this one gets beefy. I have it at 5 1/4″ which is about an inch deeper than the recent Groundchuck and Dirtbag box. The box depth obviously varies, but for comparison’s sake the Casey Jones and Foot two-pack was a miniscule 2 1/2″. The end result is you know when you’re handling this one as to grip it across the top with one hand results in me being able to feel the skin between my thumb and index finger stretching.

The box has to be this big because Wingnut is an especially large figure. As far as height goes, he’s a rather ordinary 6 1/8″ to the top of his head and a full 7″ to the top of his ears. It’s his bulk though that makes him quite large as this is a big boy. The Playmates figure was a little on the soft side, but cartoon Wingnut is a bat that’s clearly let himself go. He’s got a huge backside and then when you add in the wings the figure gets even deeper. And because he’s so chunky, he’s got quite the heft to him. Screwloose, by comparison, is far more diminutive and is in-line with figures like Baxter and Splinter. He’s around 4 1/2″ tall and not particularly bulky or anything. Though it certainly makes him a lot bigger than the vintage toy. I don’t have my old toy for comparison, but I think most of the sculpted details of the figure were carried over to the show so he’s got a tank top, four arms, pants, and shoes to go along with his bug features like wings and a tail. I remember the figure having a little belly on him, and the cartoon retained that. It was interesting getting a better look at Screwloose as a kid when he showed up in the toon, and it’s nice to see him finally have a proper figure.

Back to Wingnut. As I said, his design mimics the toy, but in bringing him to the show some details were either scrapped or simplified. He no longer has a logo on his chest and his uniform doesn’t feature any rips or holes. His face also just features less detail and his tongue is no longer permanently sticking out. The dominant color of his suit is a gray that appears to have a touch of purple mixed in. It complements the blue mask, gauntlets, and boots and the pale yellow of the belt and pouches is certainly evocative of classic Batman. In true NECA fashion, there’s lot of black line work painted on and the rear of the figure is cast in darker shades to evoke the cel-shading present in the show. In this case, the rear of Wingnut is very much a shade of purple while the blue is just a richer shade of blue. He has a somewhat menacing, teeth-gritting, expression on his face that was, more or less, his default look on the show. What really stands out though are those wings. Wingnut has these tiny, little, bat wings that probably weren’t suitable to handling his massive bulk, so either he or someone else outfitted him with metal wings that fit over them. They’re riveted and feature what look to be thrusters on the bottom and guns at the top. What’s really neat though is NECA was able to sculpt and paint the biological wings inside of them and the result is so impressive that I can’t tell if it’s one sculpt or two.

What’s less impressive though, is some of the paint applications. The paint on the wings is phenomenal, but on the figure itself there are some problems and chief among them are the teeth. Wingnut is supposed to have pretty normal looking toon teeth, but with two fangs in the front that were illustrated to fit over the teeth, rather than apparently exist as teeth on their own. This apparently caused problems for the painting as it looks like those fangs are sculpted, but the factory just did normal, grid-like, line work for the teeth. It’s messy, and it seems to be a consistent problem with this figure based on the others I’ve seen. Beyond that, the other paint imperfections are largely minor. There’s some black lines that aren’t quite lined up with where they should be and some bleeding over the edges, such as with the blue on the fingers, in other places. It’s the type of variance one would expect. I will add, that after a mostly paint-flaking free experience with Dirtbag and Groundchuck, this figure is definitely a messy one to handle at first. Lots of painted joints, which means lots of paint flakes winding up on whatever surface you’re handling him over.

With Screwloose, the expectation is that he’d be a lot less interesting in comparison with his box-mate based solely on size. And that’s true, but he’s also less interesting just because his sculpt requires far less detail. He’s dressed like a bum, though his shoes are a bit fancier than a bum would dress, so there’s not a lot of texture work with him. Possibly because he’s mostly yellow, NECA didn’t really do much with the paint as far as the usual light on the front, dark on the rear goes. They mainly just did it with his shirt, while his purple pants appear to be uniform in color. His stomach is painted green, which I always felt was an odd choice on the part of the toon and he does have some green spikes on his arms. He’s painted well enough though, but he does have some of the older problems from this line. Namely, the paint on the joints will flake off leaving a clear plastic beneath. It’s definitely not the eyesore some of the other figures experienced, but it’s unfortunate. There was also some paint rub from his arms or back to the wings so mine have a little yellow on them.

In terms of articulation, these guys basically do what you’d expect of them. Wingnut’s head appears to be on a double-ball peg so he gets movement at the head and the neck, which is concealed in the body. He can look down, and if you have a flight stand capable of supporting his bulk, he can even look ahead in a horizontal flying pose. The arms are ball-hinged at the shoulders with those bulky, NECA, double-elbows. They twist above the joint, and below, and genuinely look fine because there’s so much going on with the costume. He can bend his elbow a little past 90, but if anything I have a problem getting his arm perfectly straight. He’s tight, and I can’t tell if he’s only supposed to go so far or not. At the wrist though we have the usual swivel and hinge system. In the upper torso, there’s a diaphragm joint right below his “bust” that allows him to tilt, rotate, and even crunch forward and back a bit. There’s no true waist twist, and the legs on the new ball pegs. They’re plenty secure, which is good for such a big figure. The knees are just single joints and they’re either really tight, or slightly ratcheted, as mine kind of click when I move them. They don’t offer much range as this is a character meant to always be hunched slightly, but they work fine as far as allowing the figure to stand effortlessly. His ankles are hinged, and they don’t have much range there, but they do have rocker-tilt which works just fine. Wingnut’s tail, tiny as it may be, is on a ball hinge so there’s some play there. The wings are also on ball hinges so they can rotate and “flap” as well as they probably need to.

As for Screwloose, he’s basically the same. His head is just on a ball peg, but there’s enough range to let him look in basically any direction, he’s just going to have a bobble head from certain angles. All four shoulders are standard ball hinges and are quite tight. I think it’s due to them sitting fairly deep in the sculpt, but moving them around gets messy due to all of the paint flaking. The elbows are just single joints and they rotate as well. The knees are single hinges too and there’s a ball peg, I think, between the shirt and belly that lets him rotate and tilt ever so slightly in all directions. The wings are ball-hinged like Wingnut’s, though the tail appears to just swivel. It was also so tight initially that I wasn’t sure if it moved at all, but it just needed to have its seal “cracked.” I also think his ankles can pivot, but they sure don’t want to. He’s quite light though so he doesn’t need his ankles to do much in order to stand.

This set is definitely not the most dynamic as far as posing possibilities go. Screwloose just doesn’t have a ton of options, while Wingnut is mostly limited by his bulk. That doesn’t mean they can’t look interesting on your shelf, and NECA did include some accessories to help there. With Wingnut, we get three sets of hands: fists, open, and gripping. The gripping hands are meant to wield his massive bazooka. Initially I thought it was the Triceraton gun with some parts swapped, but this is all new and much bigger. It’s a gun he handled for all of 2 seconds in his lone cartoon appearance, but it is toon accurate. The grip is a touch loose, but that’s probably a good thing in order to avoid lots of paint rub when inserting it into his hands. And even so, you’re likely to experience some anyway. Screwloose, on the other hand, gets nothing. He has two open hands and two gripping hands and you can easily move them from one arm to another, but that’s all. He does come with a flight stand, and it’s the improved one we saw with the video game Baxter that has an extra joint in it. It’s still annoying in that you can’t have the claw at a true horizontal angle, but it works all right. Lastly, NECA included some paper goods. There’s a wanted sticker for Smash, leader of the Crooked Ninja Turtle gang, as well as Wingnut’s W logo from the toy and a sticker for a map. The map is from an episode where it’s discovered Splinter’s kimono hides a secret and you can stick it on your Splinter if you want. I probably won’t There are also four, mini, comic books for your turtles to read taken from the episode. A fun, little, touch, for sure.

Wingnut and Screwloose are a fairly iconic pair in the Turtle-verse owing mostly to their appearance in the vintage toyline. Their animated appearance was far more forgettable (especially since it was a Zach-centric episode and he sucks) and downright bizarre in some respects, but the designs were still fun since they basically mirrored the toys. As an action figure pair, there’s definitely some warts present, but nothing that comes close to ruining the experience. The accessories are a bit on the light side, but there really wasn’t much to source from the episode they were a part of and NECA even tossed in the deep cut that is the map sticker and included a flight stand for Screwloose. And possibly because they didn’t have to go too nutty on the accessories, this one comes in at a price point of $55, cheaper than Dirtbag and Groundchuck even though, like that pair, these guys appear to feature all new tooling. The only real issue I have are Wingnut’s teeth as they look rather bad and since they’re right on front of the figure’s face there’s no avoiding the issue. Again, it’s not enough of an issue for me to not recommend this set. These guys succeed like almost every other figure in the line in achieving that “pulled right from the cartoon” aesthetic, and a giant Batman parody and four-armed mosquito are inherently fun designs. I would definitely suggest adding this set to your toon display as it’s one of the better two-packs NECA has put out so far.

Wingnut and Screwloose are currently showing up at Target stores across the US. They appear to be arriving in solid quantities, and being that they’re cartoon appearance isn’t particularly memorable, the sets appear to be hanging around longer than a few minutes. Good luck!