Heroes in a Half Shell
The toy industry was taken by storm when NECA announced they would be producing figures from the TMNT license, which seemed impossible as Playmates had literally monopolised it forever and it is still their flagship line. Apparently NECA exploited a loophole in the TMNT license which allowed them to produce the original appearance of the turtles (Playmates has since covered up this loophole, leading to NECA cancelling their second wave of figures which had Shredder and his Foot Soldiers included – sad, as I was really looking forward to them). So these guys are NOT based on the more famous different coloured bandanas and an initialised belt avatars of themselves. These guys are Eastman and Laird’s original creations, when they didn’t crack jokes while fighting and were not averse to killing (They killed Shredder in the very first issue). So here we have the original badass, one of the most gratuitously violent creations ever seen in an Indie Comic.
Packaging [4/10]
The packaging is simple cardboard with the graphics from the comics containing two vac trays sandwiching the figures between them and a lot of twisty ties. However being only cardboard dents and scratches can’t really be avoided unless stored and handled really carefully. I was hoping it would be more like their ‘The Crow – Reflections Box Set’ which was way sturdier and displayed the figures and accessories in a novel way. And yes I absolutely HATE twisty ties, and I had to contend with a lot of them. Oh how I wish every vac tray bearing toy could be packaged like the Hot Toys accessories.
Sculpt [10/10]
Ten, yes ten points for this! Generally I’m hard to please when it comes to the sculpt category but I don’t think anyone can improve on what The Four Horsemen Studios did with these figures; the sculpts really have personality. Although the body sculpts of all the four turtles are the same (except Leo – whose shell has scabbards to store his katana) the headsculpts are different and perfectly portray the general personality of each turtle. Leonardo is psyched and ready, Donatello is focused, Raphael is plain pissed off, and Michelangelo is his usual goofy self. The height of each figure is approximately 5.5 inches and they won’t really fit with any of the NECA scaled figures nor the Playmates turtles. They aren’t meant to… These guys are built to stand apart from other lines.