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Bellybomb

TMNT Adventures
by yo go re

Okay, somebody tell Dr. Copper not to use the defibrilator on this one!

Bellybomb is a very dangerous intergalactic criminal alien who has raised havoc on planets both in and out of Dimension X.

"Bellybomb, alias Smiley, alias Brack Curmudgeon, you have been found guilty of crims against the universe: extortion, armed robbery, hijacking, kidnapping, torture, murder, man-eating, brain-poaching, soul-thievery, and impersonating a primitive deity named 'Bob.' Any last words before your 17 concurrent life setences begin?"

(They neglected to mention his unpaid parking tickets.)

Since the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics weren't beholden to either the cartoon or the toyline, you never knew what was going to happen in them. Like the multi-issue arc where Krang and a bayou swamp witch feud over a cosmic cube, culminating in everybody's favorite disembodied brain being banished to a toxic waste dumpworld that doubled as a prison planet, where he eventually met Bellybomb.

Bellybomb is a pretty wild design. He's vaguely human, in that he has two arms and two legs, but there's a giant, fanged mouth in his stomach, and his "head" is one basketball-sized eyeball on a fleshy stalk. Gross! He wears a short sleeved collared shirt, open to expose his mouth, purple pants, and blue boots that raise over his knees. The white bands on his wrists are not bracelets - remember, he was on a prison planet, so those are the remnants of his broken handcuffs.

Most of the figure's articulation is the usual NECA assortment: swivel/hinge ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a waist (just a swivel this time, not a balljoint), swivel/hinge wrists, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljointed neck and head. He ends up with more articulation than average, though, because not only is the mouth articulated, able to hinge open and shut, bu the tongue inside it is on a balljoint, too! Wild! And then his eyeball can be moved, as well - not controlled by a knob, like the Mogwais, just a full orb that can be moved around inside the head however you want. Which, in full honesty, disappointed me a little.

In order to keep the eye from moving about before you buy the toy and open it, there's a thin, clear sicker that runs from cheek to cheek across the eye and holds it in place. When I found Bellybomb(s) at Target, the sticker had been mis-applied on one of them, and the eye had rolled all the way back in the head, leaving nothing but pure white. I didn't know any of this at the time, of course, I just thought it would be funny to buy the one that had missed such a major paint app (also figuring no one else would want that little misfit). Thus, when the jostling experienced driving home from the store moved the eye around a little and revealed the pupil was there afterall, I confess to being slightly let down.

In addition to the big eye between those horns on his head, Bellybomb also has an additional eye in the palm of each hand - the Pale Man is such a rip-off! The figure includes a pair of fists, a pair of open hands, a pair of gripping hands, and a single right hand with the trigger finger extended to use his gun. You'd think having an eye in the middle of your hand would make holding things painful (or at least a problem), but apparently not. The gun is a fairly simple thing, based on the one he carried in issue #24 of TMNT Adventures. In the good half of it, anyway.

Despite how much I loved the Archie comics, enough to be excited when Bellybomb appeared on the 2012 TMNT cartoon, I still wouldn't have cared about this release if not for the final accessory: Krang! Yes, this is a two-pack, featuring the first comicbook version of Krang. (Remember: all the little brain guys that appeared in the Mirage comics were Utroms, and that's different.)

Krang is a cute little lump, sculpted with an appropriately-"Archie"-ish sneer and bulging eyes. A ridge runs over the top of his body, and teh sides are covered in the little bumps and such that make him look like a brain to humans. His only articulation are balljoints for his wee arms, but between those and his curved underside, you can have him perch on other characters' arm or head, like an obstreperous parrot. It's too bad they didn't make him hollow, like a headcrab, so he could sit on Shredder's head. [After this review was written but before it was posted, NECA announced a Shredder/Krang set that can do just that --ed.]

The arc that introduced Bellybomb (and Slash!) to the comics was the point where they really started going their own way. Issue #25 was the final appearance of Krang, and would have been the final appearance of Bebop and Rocksteady if they hadn't gotten a special one-shot story a full 23 years later! Bellybomb never came back after that three-issue arc, which is why it's so surprising NECA made him into a toy. But pairing him with Krang was a smart choice and really makes this set more appealing.

-- 01/09/25


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