Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Toys Provide Character Clues

By Rudie Obias | Published 10 years ago

With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles scheduled to hit theaters this summer, expect to hear more and more about the Michael Bay-produced reboot. It may only be the beginning of 2014, but toy companies are already planning for the next holiday season and upcoming summer movie tie ins. We’ve picked up new information about a few movies through their toy lines tie-ins, namely Guardians of the Galaxy and Transformers: Age of Extinction. Not to be left out, TMNT is the latest movie to get the toy line breakdown.

According to Idle Hands, a new line of movie-based toys may feature what the Heroes In A Half-Shell might look like when the film opens this August. Even with all we’ve already heard, we expect a lot of information about upcoming movies with the New York Toy Fair coming up this February. As for the Turtles, they don’t appear to look like space aliens, as many feared, but rather more comparable to their animated series counterparts.

Idle Hands writes:

• Each turtle has the weapons they should have. (YAY!) 2 swords for Leo, a staff for Don, 2 sais for Raph, a pair of nunchucks and a three sectioned staff for Mikey.
• Each turtle looks LIKE A TURTLE and not alien…at all. (BIGGER YAY!) In fact the designs are quite traditional and unremarkable, and feature far less texture than the 90’s movie turtles. Eyes are fairly normal and not cartoonishly large. No beak along the nose area like some speculated. Three fingers and two toes.
• The sort of hunched over posture present in the actors in those leaked set pictures is present here.
• Amazingly, each character appeared to have a different physique with some (like Raphael and Leonardo) having super heroey muscle tone (though Raph appears more pumped up than Leo) and Donatello appearing slimmer..leaner. Michelangelo could possibly be slightly shorter than the rest.
• Each turtle’s mask matches the color from the cartoons.

Styles of dress are different as well with…

• Leonardo in a sort of pseudo samurai gear get up including shoulder armor, some leg bits, arm bracer and foot wear up to the calf with bindings showing. He might have some armor (non metal) along his chest as well.
• Donatello’s gear is a mix of techy, modern and a dash of samurai with more normal footwear (for a 2 toed giant turtle), some gadget on his head and gadgetry coming off of his shell. The ends of his mask are far longer than the rest, draping down to his waist.
• Raphael has adopted an urban warrior look with white, bandage-like wrappings on his feet, right leg, and right arm. He wears this very conan-esque loin cloth..thing..with leather straps draping down as if he were more suited for gladiatorial battle.
• Michelangelo’s outfit seems the simplest with a hoodie wrapped around his waist, pants and sneakers with the toes cut out, wrappings on his hands and forearms, a necklace (could be puka shell beads?) and his mask ends drape down to his chest. He looks frighteningly ready to spit out some modern catch phrases.

Master Splinter also has a more traditional look, while the concept artists for his arch nemesis, The Shredder, might have gone a wee bit overboard with the villain’s appearance. Shredder has so many blades covering his entire costume that it almost resembles a parody. Idle Hands continues:

For Master Splinter:
• Again, a very traditional design.
• Hair pulled up in a samurai..nub? Fu Manchu facial hair going on.
• His eyes seemed a little odd but I couldn’t make out what was going on there.
  Slightly tattered samurai outfit with a blue upper half with gold accents, tan lower belted robes and blocky sandals.
• Comes with a samurai sword.

For The Shredder:

• This guy looks like he owns stock in the Ronco knife company! Pointy edges coming off of absolutely anything. He’ll be the stuff of ridicule for some time. Very overcomplicated outfit.
• Helmet is pseudo-traditional, adopting elements of the classic look (mostly the shape and key elements) with the top coming down over the eyes to the nose. Mouth area is recessed.
• Describing the rest of this armor is a nightmare. Suffice to say, even though he’s covered head to toe in metal armor or blades, his arms are still mostly bare. It’s a bit comical. He’s got the shoulder pieces with the blades coming off them, the shin armor with the blades coming off them, black armor areas to offset the steel parts and a cape that looks metal with blades coming down the side. I’d expect we’ll see him whip that around in battle.
• His only weapons (beyond his whole body) seem to be the bladey thingies coming off his forearm armor. The one on his right arm seems incredibly complicated..maybe a spinning blade?

Of course, these are just descriptions of the TMNT toys, not necessarily what they willl look like in the finished film. Sometimes the toys line are just for children and collectors, and are not indicative of what we’ll end up seeing on screen. Toys can have variations of one character, while the movie would just have the one version.

There are no official plot details available for TMNT at this point, but it seems likely that it will feature the Turtles, Splinter, and the Shredder’s origin stories. It was recently revealed that fan-favorite Casey Jones might not be featured in the new movie, and that April O’Neil (Megan Fox) may not have a love interest.

Everything from the film’s casting to the absence of badass fan-favorites point to the new TMNT reboot being a poor, watered-down incarnation of the Heroes in a Half-Shell. The reboot stars Fox, Danny Woodburn, Alan Ritchson, Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, Noel Fisher, Will Arnett, Whoopi Goldberg, and William Fichtner as the whitewashed Shredder. Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) wrote the script, while Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles) directed.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits theaters everywhere on August 8, 2014.

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