Revealed at the 2018 New York Toy Fair, the new batch of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys do not make the show look any better by a long shot. There was a lot of outrage at the first promo shot that appeared on the internet about a month ago, and it’s gone downhill since there. All over TMNT fandom, people are arguing about things like the cultural heritage of April O’Neal, and the change in leadership from Leonardo to Raphael, and just about anything possible when it comes to the upcoming Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon… And now come the toys, and they do not make anything look good.
First up are the bothers themselves. Now I have no idea how, but they made them look worse than they do in the promo shot for Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the promo, Raph looked HUGE, like the dude spends 18 hours a day in the gym hitting the weights. In toy form, he looks like he should be played by Danny DeVito. Donatello just looks like he is pissed that you didn’t get your tax return in on time. Leonardo is just all kinds of NOPE. And out of all four of these guys, Mikey actually looks somewhat decent… However, what the hell is with all the glowy shit on their weapons? Why doesn’t Mikey have proper nunchucks? Outside of Leonardo, is anyone allowed to have a bladed weapon? This looks like some overly sensitive child protection by community bullshit right here.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon without Splinter to lead the teens in wisdom… what the fuck is that!? Seriously, I have no idea what to say about Splinter except that the animators must have been on crack when they thought this design up. This looks like a joke Splinter, like something MAD Magazine or something would make up to avoid copyright while making fun of the property. This toy version does the character no favors at all and just looks all around ugly.
Here we go, the newly revamped April O’Neal. Frankly, she got hit with the SJW stick a lot in this redesign. I have no idea what that cat thing with her is either nor why she seems to have a baseball bat that is on fire either. What I can probably tell you is that she is going to end up being sassy, “independent”, and not needing Casey Jones at all. Because that’s what is positive in 2018, taking everything white away and making her not needing no man. $20 says that she ends up being toasted as one of the most inspiring depictions of a female POC in cartoons EVER. Because if it didn’t happen in the last 3 years, then it doesn’t exist.
Now here’s a familiar face, I think this is a Foot Soldier. He looks more like a mystical type of ninja than a robot that we usually see in the cartoons. Maybe this means we are getting people, or spirits as the Foot Soldiers this time. However, I’m surprised that we are getting a look at the Foot Soldiers now without the walking cheese grater that we call The Shredder. Maybe it is possible that Shredder is getting the Foot in favor of Baron Draxum or some other main villain? We won’t know till the show airs.
This one is interesting, it’s one of the new villain characters to debut in the show. A pig mutant going by the name of Meat Sweats “The Tenderizer”. Now to me, this looks like DC’s Professor Pig on the venom juice that Bane uses. He looks big, crazy and very damn strong. Hopefully he isn’t dumb as a brick as cartoons like this seem to do with big brutes like this.
Well this is the big one, the sewer playset, a staple of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line since 1986. Now while most previous sewer playsets would be a wide set that allows you to keep all the action underground, this version is more like recent sets where it is a lot taller than other playsets. The Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer playset is 43″ tall and is comprised of 4 levels, 7 rooms, and 20+ features.
This EPIC deluxe playset is packed with features including: Splinter’s Dojo, Raphael’s Weight Training Room, Leonardo’s Rotating Weapon storage wall, Michelangelo’s arcade, the catapult Basketball hoop, hidden projectile launchers for villain invasions, rotating skateboard ramp, collapsing balcony, and so much more.
What makes this image interesting is that there are two other figures on the playset that we do not have official close up images of. The rumor is that one of these is the new villain Baron Draxum “The Maker of Mutants”, who is voiced by former 16 time WWE Champion John Cena. As to which one of the two, if either, is Baron Draxum we do not know at this time.
Might as well end on another staple in the playsets, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tank, not a Party Wagon of the old days. To be honest, I’m no fan of the Turtles having a tank as their main mode of transport as it just seems too unrealistic in a world where 4 mutated Turtles trained in the ninja arts can be. An old VW wagon turned into a rolling battle machine, that I can buy (And I did thanks to the TMNT Classics line). A tank on the other hand, especially one that raises up over half the vehicle up so that Donatello has a mobile lab is just looking like a waste of space to me, not to mention a waste of money.
I don’t know about you, but after sitting through the awesome 2012 remake that combined everything from the past from comics, to movies, to other cartoon series and more into one really well made and well told story series; I don’t want to see this in any form. The 2012 TMNT show made me want to go out and buy the toys to put alongside my classic TMNT toys from the 1980s, as opposed to this which makes me want to go and burn down every single toy shop that stocks the damn things. Of all the things that could be positive about Toys R Us going bankrupt it;s that they don’t have to worry about these abominations warming the shelves for years to come. As for the show… Ugh, I’ll watch it, but then might just skip it while adding the episodes to the archives… And this comes from someone who actually ENJOYED Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and owns the set on DVD!
