Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows has been in movie theaters for just under three weeks now. I was able to finally see the movie this past weekend, and I really enjoyed it. Being a hard-core fan of the original TV series and action figures growing up, this movie brought in a lot of the great secondary characters from that series, and they were portrayed quite well. Special props to the casting and animation of Bebop and Rocksteady, as they were spot on, imho.
Along with the movie, our friends over at Playmates released a wide variety of action figures, vehicles, play sets, and role play to coincide with the movie, all of which is in stores nationwide right now. Last week, they sent over one of their vehicles, the Street Speeder w/ Leonardo, for me to take a closer look at… which I did for you today, along with the regular assortment Michelangelo figure I got back at the TTPM event back in April.
First up is Michelangelo, which comes packed with his nun-chucks and skateboard, all which are movie accurate. Now, I haven’t been a big collector of the new movie series figures, but I do appreciate that they paid attention to the differences in each of the turtles (in this movie series each are distinctly different in appearance and color) and recreated that in the figures. Michelangelo has some very nice articulation so you can pose him quite easily. If there was a con with this figure it would be with the skateboard. I would have loved for it to actually have decent wheels so it could roll around with a figure on it.
Next up is the Street Speeder, which comes with an exclusive Leonardo figure, with Leo wearing a bike helmet. Now, while this is not movie accurate, motorcycles do play a part in a few scenes of the movie, so I could see where this line of thinking came into play. I also think that Leo was added to round out the group of bikes to four, the other three being Bebop, Rocksteady, and Raphael… all of which have a tie in to the movie.
The Leonardo figure itself is nice. He comes with his two katana blades, and is well articulated like Michelangelo was. The helmet he is wearing is molded on, and does limit his head articulation a bit. Still, I appreciate it when they don’t include the regular version of a character in with the vehicle or play set… I feel it adds a bit more value to the package.
Now, this bike comes with a “Ninja-Flip” action. Perhaps it was Leonardo’s katana holder on the back of the shell… but I could not get the action to work properly. It is cumbersome, at best. It’s a fun feature, especially for kids who like those action type aspects. For displaying purposes, however, the mount for the action does not come off the bike, so positions where the mount cannot be seen are few. Still, Leo sits on the bike (sans-mount) very nicely, and it’s a sharp looking combination for the display shelf.
Overall, Playmates has been putting out some really great TMNT figures in recent years, both with the TV show reboot on Nickelodeon and with the new movie series. If you have any fans in the movie in your life, or you yourself are a TMNT fan, look into picking these figures up. Great quality to recreate fun scenes from the movie.
Cowabunga!