The ninjas have become samurai in the latest season of Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Playmates is rolling out the figures you need to send the brothers on feudal adventures alongside Usagi Yojimbo. To go along with our Stan Sakai giveaway from earlier in the week, we now have a look at the turtles and rabbits playing samurai in olden times and on a store shelf near you.
If this is indeed the last season for the current Nick TMNT cartoon, they are certainly going out with a bang. Everything is different now, and getting to introduce Usagi to this version of the TMNT continuity has been a lot of fun. Getting new characters into plastic has always been priority for the TMNT line, all the way back to the 1980s, but turtle variations are a fact of life as well. With these new samurai figures, we can close out important looks for all of the brothers, while adding some cool new armor for future battles.
While we have had several turtle variations over the years, these new samurai turtles are based on the new cartoon season, but they also have roots in the original toy line. If you remember, Leonardo got the samurai treatment back in the day, so as a classic fan, I love seeing that carried forward. Joining him are, of course, Don, Mike, and Raph, as well as a full-armored Usagi figure. Usagi is carrying on the brothers’ training in his feudal Japanese time period, and it makes for a great new turn on the show.
Thus, the turtles get some slick new armor and have traded in their ninja weapons for those befitting samurai, and that is all represented here. Most of the fantastically detailed armor and body pieces are borrowed from figure to figure, but they retain their cartoon color schemes, so even fully suited, it is still easy to tell them all apart. Additionally, even when they wear their helmets, their dragon masks and ornamental pieces on the helmet match their individual color schema as well.
Having some recent experience with including samurai style weapons with action figures, it is fun to see some changes with accessories here as well. All of the included weaponry have call backs to the classic ninja implements. Donnie, for example, has the sword breaker, but you can easily see the similarity to his bo staff. It gives the turtles a little more variety in their armory, and helps to push their further development into highly skilled warriors.
Usagi also get the samurai armor treatment, which is a change from his other recently release that we covered earlier in the week. His feudal setting requires that, but is also neat to see him take over a “master” role in the turtle’s training. Putting him in front of the turtles makes for an imposing group to face on the battle field, and as far as variations to main characters go, these are definitely some of the best.
The Usagi Yojimbo story line is a very interesting way to round out the current cartoon, but I am really glad he has been included in this canon. Better still, it got us some pretty sweet toys, so be sure to be on the lookout for these as they are hitting retailers now. Oh, don’t forget to enter our drawing to win an Usagi figure signed by Stan Sakai himself!
