#63: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Leonardo (Classic Collection)

In recent years, we've had various action figure lines hearkening back to the original golden age of action figure collecting, the 80s. GI Joe had its 25th anniversary collection, Transformers has had various throwback sub-lines, there have been many direct remakes of Super Powers figures in DCUC, and perhaps the most notorious has been Masters of the Universe Classics. Now in conjunction with the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Playmates is getting in on the classics action with a subline of figures based on the original animated turtles. I never got around to buying any TMNT figures from the early 2000s cartoon series, or the later animated movie, but these just looked way too cool to pass up. These have apparently been showing up at Toys R Us stores, but I haven't seen them in the wild yet. I pre-ordered mine online and they recently arrived.

Basically they have taken the old cartoon designs, upsized them, and thrown in all the articulation they could think of, and come up with awesomeness. These are ostensibly six inch figures, but they don't exactly fit in with other six inch scale figures.

See? Here's Leo standing toe to toe with Mattel's Catman figure, and he's almost the same height. But because he's got proportions more suiting a cartoon character, he doesn't look to be in the same scale. I think they would be a better fit with 7 or 8 inch scale figures. I'm not complaining about the size, I dig that they are a good size. And about the articulation? They have gone all out and come up with Toy Biz Marvel Legends style super articulation. Each finger is articulated, and so is each toe! Granted, the turtles only have two toes on each foot, but I think that a figure having all its toes articulated is a pretty unusual thing. Let's run it down: a ball shoulder for the head, a swivel/hinge for the shoulders, a bicep swivel, double hinged elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, hinges for each finger, a torso joint, ball hips, a thigh swivel, double hinged knees, swivel/hinge ankles, and hinges for each toe. The package advertises 34 points of articulation. There's not a whole lot of paint, but what there is looks good on mine.

For accessories, there's not a whole lot, but the turtles come with what's necessary. Leo has his twin katana blades with a detachable scabbard on his back. Unlike the original figures which had weapons made of brown plastic, the new figures have weapons that are more appropriately colored. The other accessory is a display stand that looks like a manhole cover.

I think these classics style ninja turtles are some of the coolest figures to come out in a while. Since they're all basically the same figure, you might not feel the need to collect all four, but I think it would be a good idea to get at least one of them. These are really cool looking figures, and fun to play with.