Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PT. 2

So I'll be doing another post on more of the original turtle figures. This will cover the second wave of figures released.

Ace Duck
I'm not quite sure why Ace Duck was never shown on the cartoon. Every other character in the second wave of toys made an appearance on the show. According to his bio, he was a human pilot that was cross mutated with a duck when Krang was bringing ducks(for food) to Dimension X. He crashed into the turtles lair and the turtles then hired him as their pilot for the turtle blimp. 
He came with removable wings, a pilot's cap, a pistol and egg grenades. This is one of my favorite figures in the entire line. His arms had ball a swivel joints for articulation, a featured that was not used for any other figure in the line.



Baxter Stockman
Shredder's lackey scientist that was turned into a fly accidentally in Dimension X by a malfunctioning disintegrator unit. He came with an anti-turtle swatter and detachable wings. I always wanted to see a human Baxter figure but this was another figure with a good sculpt and paint job for it's time.  


Casey Jones
Another popular figure was this guy. He came with a golf bag, a golf club and two baseball bats. His favorite food is Shake 'n' Break Chicken and he sounded like Clint Eastwood on the TV show.



General Traag
General Traag was the leader of Krang's rock army in Dimension X. He was seen a few times on the show and looked better there. His figure was not a favorite of mine. I did like the look of his weapons though. 



Genghis Frog
Genghis Frog fit into the line well with his overall design. What I was always curious about is 
1)Why did he look so different than his cartoon counterpart?
2) Why did they only release two of the frogs in toy form from the cartoon when there were four in the group?
See what I mean?
     


Krang
Krang was the evil brain from Dimension X and provided The Shredder with technology to help get rid of the turtles. This figure was lame. I remember getting this as a kid and never playing with it. 



Leatherhead
I liked Leatherhead but his playability was limited due to his design. His tail did not allow him to stand up right and he had a tendency to fall over a lot. In the cartoon he was a villain but he also feuded with the Rat King. 
His look is much different now.



Metalhead
Metalhead was created by Krang as a weapon to defeat the turtles but then reprogrammed by Donatello. He came with a Backpack that had a detachable radar and robo-chucks. you could pull his hands off and attach the the robo-chucks. His eyes would glow red when you held his exposed robot brain to light.  I always played with this little guy.



The Rat King
Another one of my favorites. He came with a rat crossbow and a rat hook. He lives in the sewer so his costume design has elements of sewer gunk all over it. The roadkill cat belt is a nice touch.



Wacky Walkin' Mouser
This was part of the Wacky Action sub-line from wave two. The Mouser had a wind up feature that would make it walk and open and close it's mouth. It also came with a punch out card that had different foods for the Mousers to eat. The Mousers were designed by Baxter Stockman before he turned into a fly. They were only about knee high to the turtles in the cartoon, but this toy was only slightly smaller than the turtle figures. The scale was off but it was a cool looking toy. The other figures in this sub-line were three of the four turtles. Those figures were lame and for the most part I am not of fan of all the variant toys so I won't be talking about those(well, maybe in a separate post).



Usagi Yojimbo
As a kid this was my definition of bad ass. This is by far my favorite figure in the entire line and he doesn't even belong to the turtle franchise. Usagi Yojimbo was created by Stan Sakai for his own comic and the popularity of the comic lead him to be put on the Ninja Turtle cartoon. He was accidentally pulled from his dimension and whooped the turtles before becoming their friends. This figure had the cool Samurai style look, a bunch of swords and the articulation was the best of the line. 



14 figures came in the second wave with most of them being very cool looking toys. If the first wave didn't get kids attention then the second wave probably did. The packaging artwork stayed the same so the figures that hit the shelves still had that distinctive turtle look to them. One thing that sticks out to me is how this line used different types of articulation with the characters. Maybe they were trying to figure out what would work best with the characters, or maybe they just did things differently to try to stand out from other action figures. By the time the next wave of toys was released, turtle-mania was in full swing. As far as figures were concerned, there was no end in sight.




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