Turtle (girl) power

You may or may not know this, but the first run of Playmates TMNT was very diverse in terms of animal species but didn't have a lot of gender diversity, for some reason the mutated guys were always... well, guys.

Probably if I ask you to name a girl from the Ninja Turtles world you will instantly think of April. That's because it turns out it was all in her head...


(I got that image from Cal's blog... And yes... I did it because of the cleavage)

Other girls from the top of your head may include Irma (if you used to watch the cartoon) and Venus de Milo if you're young enough to have seen the horrible live action show, and old enough to remember it.

But the original toy line had a grand total of... five female characters. Man, talk about the Smurfette syndrome!



These are two of those five. Kala, the Neutrino (or is it Neutrina) and She-Dragon.



You may (not) remember a post a did sometime ago about Zak the Neutrino, there, I called him and an angry elf rocker from space. Well, Kala is his friend from Dimension X. She was released in 1992 and does look a little different than the rest, because she's part of the sub-line called Toon Turtles that were directly inspired in the cartoon (Irma and other characters are from this line). I wasn't planning on getting any toon figures until I noticed that the Zak they used was the same as in the regular line. So, I decided to get the other two neutrinos.



Some of you may recognize She-Dragon as a character in Eric Larsen's Image comic The Savage Dragon. Those of you may think I finally snapped and that I'm linking two figures that have nothing to do with each other. But the truth is that in 1995 Playmates released a series of turtles re-imagined by Jim Lee. Then they made a crossover of these turtles and three Savage Dragon characters why? you can ask, I don't know... Maybe because Savage Dragon was green? These figures were packed with a divided mini comic, this is the one that came with She-Dragon:



As you may notice she has long blond beautiful hair in the comic, and also a mohawk. Two variation of the figure were released. Why did I choose the one with the mohawk. Two things: 1) These are figures from the 90s and in the 90s the mohawks were hot! 2) In the comic she gets her haircut when she pisses off Leonardo, so he cuts it... With his katanas! Can you say "awesome"? I know you can.

Back to Kala for a second. In the blister and, as the rest of this sub-line, it said that she has "real toon texture feel" this just means she's made of a more rubbery plastic than the rest. I wanted to point it out, because it's extremely silly.


(And also because if I didn't this comic doesn't make any sense)

I also got these:



I got them from a friend and TMNT collector from Argentina. He's a real hardcore collector that owns not only the figures but a ton of merchandise. His collection is a real pleasure to see. And I'm lucky enough that when he gets extra figures, I can call dibs on them.



Our last turtle lady of the day is Mona Lisa. Also released in 1992. I was really surprised with this figure, especially because of her name. TMNT names are usually as punny and lame as MOTU names. But Mona Lisa's name is actually pretty good and kinda subtle. She's a girl lizard of course, so I was expecting Mona Lizard... or at least Mona Liza... But no, nothing like that. The figure is pretty simple, but she's the only mutant girl in the whole damn line. So you better like her!



This is Dask, the last neutrino, I know this was a post about girls in the TMNT line, but I also got him in this haul and he was always kinda of a sissy character so, I'll talk about him too. He was also released in 1992, also in the toon line and also with "toon texture" I like his design way better than Kala's. she's actually pretty weak and not very well painted. Dask, on the other hand, looks sharp. If you can forget about the cartoony look for a second he does have something going on, with the hair, and the pants and the shoes... I just can't put my finger on...


(What's that you say? Brain Setzer? No, I don't know who that is...)

Still, I think they are going to get along nicely with regular-line-Zak...



I think...

But wait, there's more. I mentioned my friend for a reason, after I sent the money for the turtles he had some troubles with his local post office so the figures came and go for more than a month! After all of that he was so ashamed that he sent me a present:



This guy is Major Disaster from the Toxic Crusaders line, also from Playmates, released in 1991. Look at how awesome this guy is! he has ton of sculpted details like little vines and bark and spikes (he's supposed to be a nature based mutated, like Swamp Thing) and his arms have cool and unique textures. I just love this guy and the people of Playmates for doing this!

Actually I've been checking out the Toxic Crusaders line for quite some time. They are also made by Playmates and there were only nine figures produced so it's a cool line to start now that I'm finishing up with the classic TMNT (only three figures left)... But no, no I mustn't, not another line!

Until next time.

(Evil voice in my head) "But hey, guy, now you have one, so you just need eight". (Don't worry, I have a great answer to that evil statement)"... Uhm, yeah... I only need eight, right?"

Oh, damn!