I still don't like that weird ass texture on the remastered 88 TMNT figures. It's so strange. These newly articulated remakes of the vintage figures should have been an easy, can't miss, slam dunk. But Playmates seems to have found a way to screw it up.
Weird that we're talking about the new Classic Turtles in the Original Sketch Turtles thread but.... yeah, I still hate them. Unrealistically, I was desperately hoping that the backlash from most collectors would have stalled these out and caused Playmates to reconsider and maybe smooth out the tooling or something. But goddamn. If ever there was a company with its head too far up its own ass to even know what customers are saying, it's Playmates.
I think we've just all collectively decided that these remastered turtles do not deserve their own topic, so here's this:
https://twitter.com/Aztoyhunter/status/1810623333098234238
They look awful. What a shame Playmates fumbled this so bad after making an almost great Last Ronin figure. They're hitting Walmart now, if you do happen to like them.
The texture is terrible on all of them but even ignoring that, Raph is the only one that got the face right. Remove the texture and he could pass as a vintage upgrade. The rest have gigantic noses (and of course two of the heads are swapped altogether.
To paraphrase my favorite comment in that tweet: Playmates once again managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The pins in the shoulders, the cut wrists & ankles, the vertical hips.
The hips kill me the most, as the ORIGINAL figures had better constructed hips. 1987 technology was better for this idiotic company than 2024. *sigh*
@tenime both of those things drive me crazy too. Hinged-peg shoulders and ball socket hips are both cheap and easy to tool, but Playmates just won't do it sticking with these awful interpretations for shoulder and hip articulation. These joints presented on these turtles do not appear to be reused from anything so it's just a bizarre, out-dated, design philosophy that they're clinging to.
It's strange that the most egregious thing about these is the swapped heads for Leo and Don. That's just a detail that shouldn't have been overlooked. The sculpts clearly represent the vintage heads, but they just swapped the colors. The skin texture still sucks, as does the cut ankles. Unlike the sketch set, I will not be hunting these down. But damn those sketch Turtles, absolutely no sign of them. Wish they'd just put up an online PO. The Amazon one still hasn't showed them as orderable.
Looks like the black & white sketch Turtles will be sold at Playmates booth at SDCC. And also sold individually. I was expecting them to be online via Walmart. Maybe they'll be available both ways. Were the SDCC Playmates Turtles from last year available at the show as well as WM?
I believe so? The Mutant Mayhem "premium paint" you mean? I'm pretty sure you could get them on WM.com proper...
If I recall, not only were they available on WM.com, they messed up the pricing and a bunch of people got them for free or next to nothing. Let's do that again!
Watching YouTube reviews of the remastered TMNT's (TMNT Origins if you will), the texture doesn't look bad at all too me. It's there, but it doesn't come off bad looking to me like it did in so many promo images.
The fact they screwed up Leo and Dons heads though is insane. 40 years. They should know those vintage Turtle heads by heart at this point.
But their size, articulation, accessories, and the roof dio they come with all for $13 each isn't bad at all. I think I will pick them up just to see what I think.
I kind of want the diorama parts more than anything. The undersized nature of it might work really well with the Joy Toy turtles.
Found a fresh stock of the sketch turtles at a local Target that I hadn't seen them at yet, and was able to grab Raph to complete my set. So for those looking at Target in store, they're apparently getting restocked, or at the very least put out now.
Target has online listings for the standard versions now. Not yet in stock, but worth keeping an eye on if you're having trouble tracking these down in-store:
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