Comic Reviews by Walt

Right about a year ago, back in early February 2018, I had decided that I was going to “give in” and actually spend the money to get one of the NECA 1/4 scale TMNT figures based on the 1990 film.

Then the company I was working for decided that due to “lack of business” I was “expendable” and laid me off, so I put the big, singular purchasing on hold.

Reemployed for some time now, I decided to give it another shot, and managed to successfully order the Raphael figure, as my favorite of the turtles in that movie!

The box is huge…I remembered these being large, having seen the Leonardo in a store in late 2017, and the Trenchcoat Raph at a convention last spring. But after so much time, I’d forgotten just how large it was…despite knowing the figure itself is quite a size!

The sides of the box both show a closeup of Raph’s face as well as a full-body shot.

The back shows several images of Raph, as well as a group shot of all four turtles, and a brief blurb about the figure.

Here’s the figure out of its packaging. As I opened it, I caught myself thinking about how some figures anymore, I may hesitate to take out of the packaging; whereas this one, I opened the mailing box and basically kept right on going to get the figure itself out–no hesitation or thought of leaving it in the box for display or such! My intent for getting the figure was/is to have it “loose” and displayable!

And here’s the figure from the back. I don’t know WHAT it is about it, but I absolutely love the detail in the shell! I’ve always dug the shells for the movie turtles, and at this size, the detail is incredible!

Though the box and marketing suggests the figure as 16.5″ he seems to be closer to the 17″ mark. Some of that may be the angles–as you can do some amazing stuff with size and angles. But while the technical specification might be 16.5″ I’m comfortable considering this a 17″ figure!

The figure arrived on Friday the 8th; and with virtually any given day of the year being some sort of made-up “holiday” or such, Saturday the 9th was some sort of “PIzza Day.” We had some work being done on the house, and took advantage of a “Pizza Day” sale from Hungry Howie’s for everyone. I couldn’t resist taking a photo like this, as the figure was already standing on the table the pizza was on!

And for immediate scale, here’s the Raphael in a temporary spot near my “regular figures” display shelves…you could put a figure on Krang’s Android Body‘s shoulders and it still would not be quite as tall!

While the size of this figure is getting a bit “normalized” to me after seeing it as I have now…initially getting and opening it really impressed me!

And speaking of being impressed…I’m really extremely impressed with the detail of this thing. Compared to other figures purportedly based on the film, this seems like something out of Last Action Hero like someone reached into a screen and pulled the actual character out, frozen in a fraction of a moment of time!

Against bare wall backgrounds or mailing boxes or shelves with other figures, this is obviously “just” a large figure. But the detailing/style is such that with a darker background, by itself and nothing particularly distinguishing in the background for its actual scale…one could really take this and create/recreate lifelike images to rival the original 1990 film!

In fact, nowadays, it seems to me that it’s hard to simply “google” the film and not have to guess at thumbnails–is it a promotional image from nearly 30 years ago, or a well-staged photo of one of these figures?

I honestly cannot even imagine a better figure, short of some sort of just-as-sturdy rubbery texture and a malleability to the material it’s built from! And the figure itself is heavy–the packaging was thin tagboard for the box, just enough plastic inside to hold the figure and accessories; but my shipping notice suggested the entire package was around 8 pounds!

I told myself that if I was just getting one, I was going to get Raphael. I’m very interested in the others, and there’s a Shredder coming later this year, I believe!

A lot of what I tend to buy–toys, comics, whatever–tend to be fairly “immediate-gratification” and “impulse” buys. A lot that I consider getting, if I don’t get it right away tends to go “out of sight, out of mind” overall. This one, though, has been at least in the back of my mind for over a year, and certainly one of my most-anticipated “frivolous” purchases ever. AND despite having that year-plus to build up expectations and such..I can honestly say that I REALLY like the figure and am NOT disappointed in my purchase nor the figure itself!

My only real reservation regarding the figure is stories I’ve read online about the figures (eventually) keeling over and doing damaging shelf-dives; and have confirmed for myself that once a decent bit of pressure is applied to pushe the figure forward, it will pretty easily tip. So I’m going to be looking for some sort of stand or such to hopefully shore up the figure’s long-term stability without sacrificing it’s amazing appearance.

Filed under: 2019 Non-Review posts, 2019 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT, The Toy Chronicles | Tagged: 1/4 scale, 16", 17", 1990, Movie, Neca, Ninja Turtles, quarter scale, Raphael, TMNT, TMNT 1990 |