NECA’s various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle offerings are some of the most fun toys around. Unfortunately, they’re also some of the most frustrating to try to get your hands on.
Whether it’s comics, cartoons of movies, nowadays there’s something out there for every flavor of Turtle fan. I’m all over all of it, so it’s a damn smorgasbord of nonstoppery happening. Of course, with the large helping of product comes unyielding amounts of stress but NECA has said that they understand the problems and are trying to take paths to correct this in the future.
We’ll see. Meanwhile, with a little extra spendage, I managed to get my hands on these two, saving myself a bunch of pandemic-era searching. Worth it? Worth it.
The 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie is one of those pure gems that comes along every once in a while that does what it does exactly the way it needs to be done. With its practical Turtle costumes and endless quotability, it’s just “right”. It hits the cartoon notes, it hits the comic notes, it entertains and it does it all with style.
We’ve been lucky enough to get the core four turtles, along with Splinter, Shredder and some Foot soldiers before, but Casey Jones was the biggest hole in the collection. Not many of us can be Turtles, but who among us didn’t want to strap a sporting goods store to our backs and go out and pound some bad guys?
It makes sense for the crazy, mask-wearing muggerbeater to be paired up in a two-pack with something that looks like a big turtle in a trenchcoat. Raphael is just a re-release of the standard Raphael figure, but the addition of the trenchcoat turns him into something very cool—even cooler than a mutated turtle already is. Being a fan of that whole film-noir fedora and trenchcoat aesthetic, of damaged anti-heroes that breeze through the night in a fog of booze and cigarette smoke, of dames and smoking pistols and the smell of corruption in the wind, Raphael as a Bogartesque character is immediately evocative. It’s obviously very reminiscent of the Thing, hiding his rocky appearance from the world with an oversized coat and a hat. Raphael and the Thing share a lot of similarities in that they’re outwardly cranky guys with an innate goodness that occasionally need to blow off some steam, so the shared wardrobe makes a lot of sense.
The basic movie Turtle articulation scheme is mostly excellent and the jacket does very little to impede it. His still has a great range of motion in his arms and legs, and can still hit most of the poses his unjacketed counterpart can. There’s slight hampering due to the fact that he is wearing a fabric jacket, but that’s mainly in the upwards motion of his arms, and it can be worked around.
The hat is a softer plastic that kind of squeezes down onto his head and locks into place. There’s a hole in the back that goes over the knot on his mask. It comes down with a slightly tilted brim, Bogie-style. It’s as noirish looking as can be.
He comes with three different mask tails that plug into the hole in the back of his head. Two are action-y and one is a neutral one that lies down underneath his jacket. Once you get it out it is a bit of a pain to stuff back down correctly, but it can be done if you’re patient.
Outside of his sais which can be holstered under his jacket unobtrusively, he comes with a slice of pizza and an assortment of hands. They are two open, two gripping and two pointing. The pointing is very important for the part where he intimidates the muggers, who are scared shitless by a single sai and run away as fast as their little legs can carry them.
Muggers are a superstitiously, cowardly lot.
Overall this Raphael is a fun variant.
But!
If I’m being honest, this pack is really all about Casey Jones, and it doesn’t disappoint.
Casey Jones looks exactly like what you get when a guy puts on some sweatpants and a vest, grabs a hockey mask and goes out into the night to pound on some punks. Some people build ships in bottles, some people do the whole CB radio thing, and Casey goes out and beats on brats with a baseball bat.
Casey’s articulation is NECA standard well-done. It’s not quite up to Marvel Legends standards in places, but it does the job well in others. The knees only get about 90 degrees of motion, and the torso does have some crunch but he shirt gets in the way of a lot of it. The ankles get some bend but not much. His arms, however, have a very large range, utilizing NECA’s own version of the double jointed elbow. There’s some swivel along with a deep bend that works very well. It took some getting used to the first couple of times it was implemented, but I’ve come around to appreciating the range of motion it affords.
The range in the arms makes up for some of the missing range in the torso, because it allows him to hold his various weaponry in a much more naturalistic manner. I think ball-jointed wrists would have gone even further in allowing hm to hold the weapons in a variety of ways, but the wingle jointed in and out wrists do a good enough job.
Overall casey looks great. I don’t intend on removing my mask, but apparently there is an Elias Koteas likeness under there. Lack of likeness rights prevented it from being utilized. I think that issue is clearing up, so there might be another offering down the road with a removable mask, or just mask-free.
I guess if everybody bought a second Casey with removable mask then that would make these with the permanent mask…leftovers.
Casey comes with fists, a pair of smaller grip hands, a set of wider grips hands, and a combo neutral and gesturing hands. I’m glad he got two sizes of grips hands, because the golf club would have been way too loose in the bat-holding hands. Everything grips what it’s supposed to grip nice and tight, and he can two-hand everything he needs to two hand.
Casey comes with two bats, a regular hockey stick, a hockey goalie stick, a cricket bat (nobody understands cricket) and a golf club. That golf club is very thin and makes me a little nervous, so be careful with that one. I’d hate to snap the damned thing.
He comes with a golf bag to hold everything. It stays on nicely, although you might want to tuck it under his hair in order to keep it exactly where it’s supposed to be, and even then it tends to shift around, which means you run the risk of dumping the weapons out of the bag so be carefully there as well.
While there’s plenty here to unleash a bunch of athletic fury on the bad guys, I couldn’t quite get everything to fit in his bag at the same time. That’s fine; he’ll just have to be holding something at all times.
I love the Turtles, I love the Turtle movie and I love this set. While Casey is the star of the set, Raphael is a more-than-welcome addition and gives off a great mood. Hopefully this gets a much wider distribution so everybody can enjoy it. Toys shouldn’t be difficult. Fun shouldn’t be hard.