Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Monsters + Mutants (Playmates Toys)

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Monsters + Mutants
Playmates Toys
2017

These days things seem to have shifted drastically for the Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line. What was once an abundance of merchandise hitting store shelves on regular intervals has turned into a re-occurrence of peg warmers, scarce new figures, or worse, empty shelves all together. With the announcement the animated series would be coming to an end in 2017, this is honestly not shocking to see happening at all. It seems the line may have run its course, and these days Playmates Toys is more so keen on offloading old stock (or repainting it) as opposed to packing enough supply of new figures to meet demand.

A perfect example of this is Muckman. For over a year he was one of the most highly anticipated figures in the line. Upon his release, many collectors didn't even know he was out until it was too late. As one of only three new figures packed in with wave 19, and at only one per case, he was gone before most people even knew to look for him. The end result is the only figure in the new TMNT series to garner a stable secondary value of over one hundred dollars.


With scarce product to be found, I was actually quite surprised to see Walmart (of all places) had stocked the all new Monsters + Mutants series. Granted there was only one set to be found in the entire store, and this too was among a bunch of peg warmers.

Most of these are definitely among some of my personal favorites from the series as a whole. They're unique, colorful, and most importantly, they're fun. They have unique accessories (though admittedly I have no clue why a vampire Raphael would come with a stake), and the look and feel takes you back to those classic monster movie pics from the black and white era of film. What's not to love here?

 
Okay, fine...The actual monster hunters aren't all that inspiring. Leonardo and Raphael in trench coats? Yawn. On any given day these could easily be passed off as the classic cartoon turtles in disguise. Simply add a mock human face mask.

Furthermore, why another (half) set of the turtles? Couldn't these two have been better served as other characters? Perhaps Casey Jones or April O'Neil? This would have at least fleshed the (sub)line out a little more.

Sigh...Fanboys...We're never happy.

Though they're difficult to find in stores right now, eBay shows they are a little more readily available than the aforementioned Muckman. Perhaps as the holiday season ramps up we'll not only see more of these on store shelves, but perhaps, or should I say hopefully, more Muckman's for everyone to get their hands on.

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