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06/25/2003: TMNT Review PLUS…how to make your own Krang!

So last night, I got this idea in my head. Wouldn’t go away. Had to be done. What was it? I needed to make my own Krang, of Ninja Turtles fame. No household is complete without its very own Krang, and this article tells you how it’s done. Really, for serious, it’s there, with pictures. That wouldn’t be enough for a feature on its own, so you can also read my episode review for The Shredder Is Splintered on the same damn page. For those curious, that’s the episode where Krang finally received his stupid fat bald panties-wearing android body. Enjoy.

Also, check this out. It’s an article I did for UGO about the top eleven movies where people get eaten by animals. Jaws, Anaconda, fucking Congo, all yer faves. I’ve been a busy boy, and busy boys eventually need to get away from keyboards to drink girly drinks in the hot sun. See you later…

OMG, I can’t beleive I got two first posts in one week. I get to write about Krang! He’s a brain! With a mouth and eyes! Cool!

I had a girlfriend at one time that could perfectly imitate Krang’s voice. Oddly enough, I am not with her anymore (I doubt my wife would approve). I think she was almost as evil as Krang, but she didn’t have mutants, monsters or ninjas working for her.

If I had seen an article like this when I was five, I might have actually made myself a Krang. Now, I’m too busy with not having a social life to make time for it. In any case, the Turtles rocked.

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian t’Leyte, we’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the squares in the old calendars like the Battle o’ Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, Reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. Three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the twenty-ninth, nineteen-forty five. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

As far as the switch to heavy-plot present day toons, I’d argue that it’s representative of a huge cultural shift in the opinion of what makes a good toon experience. All the big blockbuster have been based on comics or manga in one way or another, comics themselves are valued by their writers at least as much as the artist. If you compare the entertainment value of what cartoons have now to the average tv drama or ensemble comedy has. Toons and comics have been our cultural renaissance for the past 20 years! G.I. Joe, Transformers, (early) TMNT, Superman, Batman, right on up to our present incarnation of TMNT. All have wonderful characters, tight action, and a complete lack of the sarcastic irony that pollutes every other area of American culture. It’s fun, it’s simple, it’s sincere. God bless the comic, the toon, and the pile of goddamn fun it’ll always represent. And props to Matt for bringing all that excitement back.

I’m a huge TMNT fan, and I have the majority of the old episodes (there were 193 of ‘em!). This episode is easily one of my favorites. The new show is more my taste, being like the comic book, but I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for evil ol’ Krang.

Matt, I just have to say you are one crafty individual. I really enjoy it when you do these types of articles and hope to see more like them in the future!

I HAVE RETURNED! Having escaped the asylum, I find myself swamped catching up with Matt’s writing. Good show old boy!

krang was always my favorite tmnt figure to play with, my cousin thought the same, so we fought over it all the time. then my aunt bought another and we had two krangs. two krangs = twice the power. another thing with the krangs was that they had the holes in the bottom so you could put em on your fingers or put them on gi joes, and other action figures with small heads like most that were from movies…like the robin hood, hook, swamp thing guys…those were great times. we had the technodrome, sewer, van, blimp, tons of guys…fun stuff. thats enough of my memories for one day…

so, there was a movie i feel you left off.. Kamodo.. It was made right after anaconda, and was kinda a cross between that and jurassic park. I dunno i actually thought it was good, if anyone else knows what the hell im talking about lemme know.

Looking back on why I had a crush on Shredder as a tomboyish kindergardner (screw playing Barbie, I got be to be the April O’Neil in a sea of TMNT-happy boys), it’s due to the fact that he was one of the only decent looking villians at the time. Sure he wore a mask 99% of the time, but he looked better in a mask than say… Cobra Commander. Heh.

If I had a Bogglin, I would make a Krang music video. Building stuff from scratch just takes too much effort for ME.

That reminds ME, I wish other posters would stop capitalizing the word ME in their posts, or at least give me a nickel for the use. No, I am only fooling?!

I was always quite proud of myself for sharing my middle name with April’s… first name. >.> My brother was a big TMNT guy (like all boys), so I had the yellow whore action figure. Still do, but I unfortunately broke her arm.

I enjoy Krang very much, but I think Elemer’s glue or double-sided tape might have worked a little better? ^^

Hey!!! I really did eat 50 pounds of meat at Bob’s Steakhouse!!! Why do you mock me?!?! WHYYYYYY?????!?!!!!!!!

Theres a fight I’d like to see, Venom and Krang, I’d say Krang gets eaten in the first 10 minutes.
Oh and great article Matt, I’m a huge turtle fan, does anyone remember in the original comic there was an entire species of Krangs and they were fighting those triceratops fools?

So… It was Krang that was behind the attack on the USS Indianapolis. Along with seeing Krang and Venom duke it out, I’d like to see Venom’s green saliva jazz fight with Krang’s brain goop… I’ve got five bucks on the green stuff.

I swear there was another Rock Warrior. He was orange and had some kinda pointy beak thing. I’m still hoping Krang will show up in the new TV show.

Cool article. Krang wsas definitly one of the most fun cartoon villains. Hell, he could open his own comedy club with al his TMNT-jokes. The only bad thing was his Action figure. It didn’t have the body he had in the cartoon and your review, but some lamer mouser-like robot-thingy that absolutely sucked.
By the way, I haven’t seen the new Turtles series yet (I live in Europe), is Krang still there or has he been replaced by some other villain?

Oh my god, that Krang kicked ass. I almost got in trouble here at work, had to nearly bite through my tongue to prevent myself from laughing. At first I was like, this is gonna suck, but when you got done? Well let’s just say I’m making one tonight

"I was always quite proud of myself for sharing my middle name with April’s… first name. >.> My brother was a big TMNT guy (like all boys), so I had the yellow whore action figure. Still do, but I unfortunately broke her arm. :P"

You know, when I was six or seven, one of the pressies I got for Sinterklaas (that which used to be the Dutch equivalent of Christmas, though I believe the latter has become more popular in recent years for gift-giving and -receiving) was the April O’Neil action figure. I was still too young to realise the full potential of my weewee, so all I saw was a girly toy. A girly toy that was given to me. So I cried, until my parents got the hint and let me exchange it (for Leonardo I think) and all was well. The End.

Incidentally, I also had Krang with his chicken leg thingamajig. Great toy that was, although Boglins were still more fun to put on your hands.

Tornado
I remember that in the Eastmen and Laird comic. I have some of the first issues but completely gave up when the cartoon for pre-schoolers came out and the turtles ate pizza instead of drinking pitchers of beer. What the hell happened to comics, that TMNT #2 was selling for over $200.00 before they reached the 10th issue. The last time I looked on ebay, they were like $5.00 - $20.00 with no bids.

This new trend in ads that I can’t close before they completely make the page unreadable is unacceptable. Screw these products. I skipped Hulk in part because of this (also because I don’t like Ang Lee movies). I guess I’ll still go see 28 Days Later, but I’ll be hostile towards it now.

Also, the UGO article is the probably the most I’ve disagreed with Matt. Lake Placid? Anaconda? Noooo.

Any of those beats the holy hell out Bill Pullman and a wise-cracking Betty White.

Matt, I really liked both articles but what about Jurassic Park? Unless you don’t consider dinosaurs animals I understand, but Jurassic Park (not Part II, didn’t see Part III) was a really f’n good movie!

On the movies, I agree with "Night of the Lupas", and add "Food of the Gods" and "Squirm". Before infomercials became the standard time-filler, my local UHF station played thes movies (along with Piranah and that movie where the scientist gets his head sewn on to Rosie Grier’s shoulder) every freaking weekend on its "Sunday Afternoon Creature Feature".

Agreed on the ads, hopefully the bad ones will exit rotation soon. The ones that cause the page to half-load, e-mail me with what type and I’ll send in the info to have them fixed/annihilated. They’re pretty good about that.

And how can you not love Lake Placid! ;) Piranha, I dunno — I consider DBSea more mindlessly entertaining, and I wanted to include Orca because it’s just such an obscure bad flick. Four fishy movies would’ve been overkill.

J-Dog: J-P isn’t on the list because they’re not ‘real’ animals. Okay, they are, but you know what I mean. Same goes for Eight Legged Freaks, though that wouldn’t have been on there regardless.

Matt-
Thanks for being concerned about these ads. I don’t mind the popups in general (even the annoying Microsoft and Powerade ones that insist on loading little movies), but when I have to wait for it to play out before I can read the articles, I get upset. Hulk and 28 Days Later are the only ones I’ve seen so far.

Of course, I am getting all this content for free anyway, so who am I to complain?

And by the way, Orca was definitely good to include. It is kind of slow, but the splatting whale fetus made the whole thing worthwhile.

Also, you might want to check out "Slugs," if you haven’t seen it. I didn’t expect much from it, but it has some great low-budget effects, some amusing deaths, and a charming indie feel throughout. It was much less boring than something about the slowest moving killer animal ever should be.

I’ve read reviews of Slugs, looks like a winner to me. I’ve actually got shitloads of similar movies here waiting to be reviewed, but I don’t like to do more than one of those per week at most.

I appreciate the patience/understanding about the ads. They wouldn’t be here if not necessary. A lot of the current technology being used is sort of new, so hopefully they’ll have better finesse in time. I did suggest that, with the pop-overs, they might want to institute a time laspe so the pages are guaranteed to load before the things pop up.

Orca blew me away, though I haven’t seen it in years. It’s actually a fairly expensive title to get, even on eBay. Oh well.

alright. I’ll let it be.
Matt kicks far too much ass to keep bugging about the Photogs.

God I need to make a Krang now…but I think I’ll use balogna instead of pink paper….that way he’ll become more wise and time….(and develop little minions)

I love this page, which is the only reason I suffer the ads. But when it wants to scream at me or, in some way, cause me to go into cardiac arrest, I am angry and bitter.

I just read the Animal Attack article Matt, and it was good stuff, with the exception of one undenyable fact:

Tim Curry being beaten by reing monkeys, while an immensely intriguing sight, would have been better WITHOUT it being Curry. Timmy can do absolutely anything…well…except bring back a tredemark 60’s family show playing a nanny. Everyone loves murderous Butlers (that are NOT named Didit mind you), and transvestites with class, and the fact that the greatest eyebrows in show biz plays them both are too wonderful to be put on the chopping block..especially in a shameless moviesuch as Congo.

But besides that, I loved the article. Especially the Birds part. My loyalty to Hitchcock will never cease.

Also, have you seen those new BEANS toys? Go get a pack at Toys R Us. Also, I got a neat skull out of a block of chalk, from Target. I forget what it was called, but apparently, if you spend the hour and a half chipping away at the chalk enough times, you will have multiple skulls.. and then you can BATTLE them.

Does anyone else remember the USA television station’s Captain USA? Think early/mid 80’s fat italian guy in a spoofed Captain America costume telling us all about the "creepy horror" in store for us.

screw you all. Matt, you should put MORE ads. This is the greatest and bestest site in the cosmos. No where else can i read about making my own Krang. You take Matt for granted.

Hey, Matt, you forgot to mention the baby Orca Fetus. Ewww. I loved me my Krang. I only got the one with the little chicken helmet thing. I really wanted the big body which came out later. I am actually writing from Dimension X. That’s why I look so red and floating. If you really want to make the mega-sized Krang, use a basketball. Cool.

ohgodtherats, it was commander usa! i only vaguely remember it…i was just a wee lass but my dad loved it and he even had a commander usa shirt. it was sort of a precursor to MST3K

oh and matt, i defend your choice of anaconda. actually, i would have put at number 1 if i wrote the article. its allll about jon voight’s performance. i love the vaguely portugeuse/italian accent and the squinty eyes. the best moment in the whole film is when he surprises jlo and ice cube and hits them on the head with the butt of a rifle. as he comes up behind them, he says "welcome!" except it sounds as though it was dubbed by a german woman. "velcome!" i just rewind that part over and over.

krang came with the little robo-chair with legs thing, but he had another set that was him and his body from the episode. the body didnt do much but hold krang and its arms and legs could move in one direction only where they attached to the torso, so you couldnt bend the legs or arms which kind of sucked since the arms just stuck straight out to the sides.

I always surf with my sound off, and turn it up when necessary, which eases the drama of being accosted by the Hulk. I’ve also noticed that on 56K (at work), the ads are just terrible and glitchy. But on cable(at home), they pop right up and don’t cause any errors or drama, so I just wait until I get home to go into an ad clicking frenzy!!!
Oh man oh man I caught the end of this movie years and years ago and it traumatized me until puberty. Matt, pretty please please please review Night of the Lepas (I always remembered it as Lepahs?). If you can find it, that is. I just looked all over the place and couldn’t find diddley.
*Ren & Stimpy premieres tonight, for those that are interested!*

Dude…seriously….that was amazing. Godly even. Jesus status. Just for that, I’ll send you a Krang action figure if you want.

Betty White rulez! Too bad Lake Placid wasn’t supposed to take place in St. Olaf.

Hey - the KrangKraft works equally well if you use a stryofoam ball and pins to stick the paper on… just in case you don’t want tape all over his brainy-goodness.

I used to think that TMNT was pretty okay, but teh one thing I hated most was…Krang of course.

I didn’t like the villains that did nothing, I didn’t like shredder that much Either.But Cobra Commander was cool cause he was mad, and had a cool silver mask.

Slugs? Is that based off the novel? I actually READ THE BOOK. Was quite good.

At least, it was when I was a kid hehe.

Finally read the Animals Attack article. I agree, except for one thing–Pirhana TWO should have been there. I mean, flying saltwater pirhanas? That kicks butt on some poorly rendered Lou Diamond Phillips movie any day (the bats were bad too).

Where did the second Krang pic come from in that row at the top? That is seriously scary!

Thank you Kiften…I didn’t want to be the only one to admit I’ve actually read the novel Slugs.

To clarify, the correct spelling is Night of the Lepus, and it is awesome. By far the best movie ever made about giant killer bunnies, and utterly hilarious because no matter what you do, no matter how much you shake them or wiggle the camera or shoot them in a forced perspective to make them look huge…BUNNIES ARE NOT SCARY. It was one of the most ridiculous horror movies ever. There’d be a shot of some hammy actor screaming in terror…then cut to a shot of a bunny…then back to the actor, then suddenly a big fake bunny claw would knock the actor down.

I would also nominate Squirm, which was about killer earthworms and which was based on a true story (vaguely). And I have dim remembrances of a movie about killer crabs.

Bunnies aren’t scary? Bullshit. Death awaits you with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

Right on! I miss TMNT. Krang was great indeed. Although too busy with Technodrome repairs to talk about neuron mind transfer theory, he can sometimes be found relaxing by watching soap operas. You have to respect the weirdness ethic of a show that has an extradimensional alien brain watching soap operas. Please continue to review TMNT episodes and talk about Krang on XE!

*Waffle Man*: There were *two* kinds of mineral beings in Krang’s army, the Rock Soldiers (of whom General Tragg was one) and the Stone Warriors. The Rock Soldiers were orange and stocky, with deep voices. The Stone Warriors were thinner, and had pointy faces, and higher, more Peter-Lorre-esque voices. The Stone Warriors only appeared in the first season, IIRC–after that it was Rock Soldiers only.

Bunnies are not scary? Generally, I’d agree, but I saw a giant plush Monty Python bunny wabbit at a comic book store recently, and it was scarier than Betty White spanking Strom Thurmond’s monkey. Scary shit, man.

Good job on the homemade Krang, MArTTha Stewart. I know that my little pink crumply balls would have just fallen off. (And if I was a boy, I’d never have admitted that). ‘Crumple till you can’t crumple no more’ is a great life motto.

I have only one thing to say, That rabbit’s dynamite! He took five, right, three of my men! The only way to defeat it is to run further away. It may become so cross it makes a mistake. Or we could build a wooden badger of some sort. I guess that’s more than one thing, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail is worth it.

One of the convinient things about having a 10-year-old brother is you can be a fan of cartoons and not get too many strange looks. My mom found him a video copy of "The Shredder Is Splintered" at a yard sale, and he’s loved it ever since. I was really happy to see this episode reviewed.

Oh, and yes, Krang is a cool villan (Matt is right - how could a pink, talking brain NOT be a cool villan?), but my favorite character from TMNT will always be Raphael. He cracked me up as a kid. My brother’s favorite character is Micheangelo - he almost named his pet turtle after him.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2003 at 6:40 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.