How mutant can you get?

Last week I could get my retro freak on thanks to the addition of four new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures to my (slowly but surely) growing collection.



They are Monty Moose, Tokka, Rahzar and Tattoo. The design from the late 80s and early 90s from Playmates is amazing as always (or almost always) and I can't help to think that I would have love to have some of this figures when I was a kid.



Monty Moose is my absolute favorite of the bunch, he looks particularly angry for a Canadian and quite cliché too. He's a Monty of course, and he's a Moose too. (I guess there were not a lot of options to choose from, like that song from the Band Arrogant Worms say all Canada does have is rocks and trees and water). Nevertheless, there's probably one Moose or two that can get mutated with a local police enforcer.


"I'm sorry if this mutation has upset you in any way, also I'm sorry if I seemed a little obvious"

As most of the mutated figures in this line Monty Moose has a dynamic sculpt, one of his feet has transformed while the other one is still human and inside a boot (this happens a lot, see Dirtbag or Doctor El as other examples). To illustrate, think about that time when your mom walked in while you were trying to get lucky with the family dog, just like that, this is like capturing the exact awkward moment when a human is mutating into an animal-like creature. Probably not the best example... But that's an image you'll remember for a while right?

Then we have Tokka and Rahzar:



These are nice, because they were part of the second movie (Secret of the Ooze) and although the movie was quite bad, I didn't really cared about that in those days.



I think they nailed Tokka (it was fairly easy, since they used a previous evil turtle body they had -he was called Slash- but they did add a different armor, hands and a new right-on-the-spot head).


"Are you Bizarro Slash?"

And I actually think they did a better job with the Rahzar action figure than the movie puppet, in the movie he looks like he's a bald werewolf. In the action figure he looks more menacing, with long claws and a full set of hair.


"I also must have some chameleon DNA, 'cause my eyes don't know where the hell they are going"

Also, the Tokka I got is the (according to ebay scalpers) VERY RARE ULTRA SUPER MEGA BROWN STRIPES VARIANT. Cool huh? (if you believe them of course). It's true that it is a variant, the original one had a darker shell, darker skin and he didn't have the (you've guessed it) brown stripes. Here's a pic of the two figures.


"- Are you Bizarro Tokka?
- Shut the fuck up, this is getting old!"

And last but certainly least is Tattoo. One of the normal, non mutated, non robotic, non psychotic and non interesting TMNT figures.



Here's the deal with Tatoo: He was released in 1991 (same year as Tokka and Rahzar by the way, Monty Moose was release in '92), the thing about the figure is that he came with (you guessed again) decals to put in his body as tattoos, of course the kids needed a nice big smooth surface to put the tattoos on and the best they could come up with was a sumo wrestler in diapers. Giving us the lamest figure in ninja turtle history.


"Without my ink, I'm just a fat guy in soiled underwear... Come to think of it, with my ink, I'm that too"

Of course if you're buying the figures loose, there's a good chance Tattoo has no tattoos. The other weird thing is that this character that can easily be mistaken by an enemy, is in fact one of the good guys. Same mistake can be made with Wingnut (he was even bad in the cartoon). But the really weird part is the character's bio in the back of the card that said that the turtles really liked this guy, because of his tattoos. "Well, yeah, they were TEEN turtles" you may say, but it was not because of that, it was because the tats reminded them of pizza toppings... Creepy.

I can almost hear a theme song...

Teenage Mutant Man-eating Turtles, heroes eating fat guys, turtle power...

Call Nickelodeon! I have another idea to sell!