Hi there,
I tried,
Back in 1990…
Four terrapins rocked South African theatres.
Everyone watched it, and eager to get in on the action, my brother and I went to the local supermarket where they had figurines. I don’t quite know about the rest of the world, but over here the figurines were marketed for fans of the film at most outlets.
We left empty handed and confused, because there were only the baddies and several other characters that weren’t even in the movie. We saw an abundance of secondary characters such as Bebop and Rocksteady and no sign of the turtles. Not to mention the familiar characters on the back of the card, totally different from their movie counterparts. I settled for some character called Metalhead and my brother for Ace Duck.
Now that I only figured out (almost a decade later), that these were in fact characters that should have been marketed alongside the animated show. But even with that in mind, I remember looking at the turtles and especially Splinter and wondered why they had those dead, scary-ass white eyes. Not to mention the snarls. Now this would have been okay if we had the context of the comics, but back in those days a small number of fans knew about the comic or the tv show.
Fast forward to 2014.
Four terrapins rocked up on the shelves of South African toy outlets.
It was deja vu, in a bad way. These ninja turtles were different. They kinda looked like South African President, Jacob Zuma. In no way even close to the characters we came to loved in the 90’s. I felt myself being pedantic and negative. These mutant creeps had tacky designs and I wondered two things; would this bold direction slide, is this but a concept series with the movie turtles looking much different?
Are they the bastard children of Yoda and Jar Jar’s sister?
Watching the trailer, the more pragmatic, Nolanised turtles won me over. Even the white eyed figurines had me excited to go and watch the film. I don’t care what the critics said, the movie owned. It was almost like going back in time to a much cooler 1990 with it’s outrageous action. The figurines rocked on a unique level with the above average sculps and paint applications. They certainly upped the standard for movie figurines in general.
So what I figured out…
It’s exciting times we live in. Not only are action figures in general much better, but we also get a solid context to understand them with the help of the world wide web.