TMNT Pizzaface addendum

As mentioned in today's review, here is the sole appearance Pizzaface had in any outside sources:

If the proportions of that drawing look odd to you, it's possible it was based on the similar look of Errol McCarthy's final design for the figure:

Notice the head was more integrated with the torso than it would be on the actual toy. And his accessories would have included a Concrete Pizza and Throwing Saw Pizza, with potential flavours of Anchovie [sic] & Napalm, Tar & Epoxy, or Fragmentation Pizza. You can also see from that drawing that it took a while to settle on "Pizzaface" as a name - the character was alternately called Pizza Man, Pizza Head, or (perhaps as a Spaceballs joke) Pizza the Hut.

However, while that was the final design, the first design leaned more into the "he's mutated to be half-pizza" idea:

It seems Errol McCarthy may have misinterpreted David Arshawsky's note from this drawing to make "head/hat/body one piece" as a directive of design rather than construction. In addition to having dough on his hat and a plunger leg, this concept also confirms our review's suspicion that the toy was originally meant to have an action feature: the "throwing arm" is right there, labelled.

That's far from the only change the figure underwent before release. For instance, in addition to to pizzas, cleaver, and peg leg, Pizzaface was at one point planned to have one of those belts so many of the figures came with back then:

That's not the final color, just the wax it was sculpted in. Accessories were often the first thing cut when the budget began to get too big, but we're not sure how this would have fit around his waist anyway.

More disappointing is the feature we learn about by looking at the original prototype:

Yes, the plan was that Pizzaface's hat would be a removable accessory concealing a weird little parasitic twin growing out of his scalp! How fun would that have been! They even worked up a whole bunch of different ideas for what it could have looked like:

That larger head is an alternate design for Pizzaface, with bigger ears and a smaller hat. One that wouldn't have been able to hide anything.

And finally, here's an example of David Arshawsky's hand-painted version, showing what the ideal full coverage would look like (in case you wanted to customize your own):

A lot of steps go in between "first idea" and "final product" - Pizzaface isn't at all special in that regard. It's just that we rarely get to see so much of the behind-the-scenes work, and are able to track the through-line so clearly.