Happy SNT. I’m going to spend it trying to dust off the ancient X-E Summer Jukebox. This could take days, but maybe we’ll get lucky? I mean, how am I going to bring the site back to its former glory without an assist from pirated Lionel Ritchie songs?
I don’t know how I missed this, but Playmates has re-released several classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures in what’s gotta be the best retro revival I’ve ever seen. If you’re gonna bring back old toys and cater exclusively to nostalgists, this is the correct way to go about it. No lame upgrades, no new molds, no fancy celebratory packaging — just give ‘em to us the way they were.
I won’t say that they’re 100% identical to the figures we played with in the late ’80s/early ’90s, but they’re 99.9% identical. What’s more, Playmates only indulged in very slight packaging modification. Unless you look really close, they almost appear to be old store stock, yanked from the bowels of TRU’s storage warehouse.
When toy companies do these retro revivals, they often hedge their bets. The toys are usually based on the classics we grew up with, but upgraded so that young kids without any rosy memories might still be interested. That strategy sucks. It pisses off old-schoolers who distinctly remember less points-of-articulation on their Nien Nunbs, and besides, it’s not like kids are going to pick slightly-remodeled toys that made their mark 20 years ago over the advanced playthings made for today.
I don’t know if Playmates is smart or just cheap, but like Solid Base almost said, this is how you do it.
I picked Bebop, Rocksteady and April. Partly because they justify my preference for perverted and obscene action figure adventures, but mainly because they were the only three figures Toys “R” Us had in stock.
Of the three, Bebop has long been my favorite, both as a toy and as a cartoon character. He had a certain…what can we say…relaxed approach? I’ve always admired his ability to be a raging mutant warthog who crept out of dimensional portals to shoot comically oversized guns, all while being pretty laid back about the whole thing.
Rocksteady was Rocksteady. I seem to remember it being slightly difficult to find his action figure during my youth. April was even tougher to find, but I’m guessing that had more to do with a more limited production run than anything else. (There’s no way Playmates could do a TMNT collection and exclude April, but I doubt they made as many Aprils as, say, Donatellos. Though truthfully, I’m only speculating because it’s fun to pluralize character names like that. Try it. “Donatellos.” “Shredders.” “Casey Jonseseses.” Ahhhhh what a fulfilling Saturday night this is.)
Most remarkable is that Playmates kept the original “origin comic” on the card-back completely intact. The Turtles’ have many origin stories depending on the era and medium, but I have a fondness for the card-back comic version’s simplicity. Here, we learn that Shredder poured random green ooze down a sewer hole, hoping it would zap Hamato Yoshi (Splinter, in pre-rat form) dead.
It’s a gem of a visual, really. Shredder, leader of the Foot Clan with fourteen trillion dollars’ worth of alien technology at his beckon, chooses to dispatch of his ancient enemy by kneeling over a sewer hole and pouring a 12 ounce cup full of slime down into it. Something tells me that this idea wasn’t birthed in a twelve-hour meeting of villainy’s greatest minds.
Of course, Shredder has the wrong idea about his death slime. Instead of killing its targets, it mutates them and increases their strength and abilities tenfold. It really makes you wonder who seeded the idea of mutagen being a foolproof killer into Shredder’s head. This was akin to kicking the soccer ball into your own team’s goal, but even more awesome, because it’s Shredder pouring mutagen and not soccer.
Overall Grade: 
and additional happy faces. Aside from the figures shown above, the re-release also includes all four Turtles, Splinter, Casey and at least three additional villains. No Rat King, though. Lack of Rat King is the main reason why I just texted God with “wave 2 turtles reissues plz thx.”
PS, I’m in the market for one of those super-lightweight limited-capacity laptops. You know, the ones that weigh three pounds or less, and can do anything a regular computer does, until you try to do two things a regular computer can do at the same time? One of those. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. (No Macs, though. I love Macs, but not for writing.)
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
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