After Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became an indie comic phenomenon, but before Playmates licensed them and made the smartest move of all time by giving them individual bandana colors, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird toyed with the idea of not making them dress identically. They eventually decided against the idea, but they did work up a piece of art to show what those costumes would have been like.
For years it just sat in Peter Laird's studio, until Ryan Brown
and Stephen Murphy decided it had historical value and should be seen by more people.
Right after taking over the Archie TMNT Adventures comic, and needing to get it back on schedule, fast, they did an issue where the Turtles get hijacked to an intergalactic wrestling match. You can tell the story was done in a hurry, because there are only like two panels on each page, but it holds a special spot because the wrestling promoter gave them costumes to wear - costumes based on the scrapped Eastman and Laid idea. And now those costumes get toys.
According to Peter Laird himself, the reason
they decided against the costume change was that they didn't want to draw anything that complicated over and over, especially on a book that was already coming out very slowly. You can see that in effect right away, with Leonardo upgrading his bandana to what is essentially samurai armor.
Leo still wears pads on his knees and elbows, matched by new ones on his shoulders. Rather than being just cloth, however, they're layered metal. Do you think they're sharp? Is he taking cues from Shredder now? The circular plate strapped to the center of his chest has a yin yang symbol in the center. It's a bit weird to see a Turtle without a belt, but the harness wrapping over his shoulders disguises the oddity. Nothing covers for the lack of wristbands, though.
Instead of a simple strip of cloth over his eyes, Leonardo is wearing a full helmet. It mostly hugs his scalp, but the eye guard has little wings on the sides like Hawkeye... or, given the things that influenced Eastman and Laird's creation of TMNT, Wolverine. If you didn't know, you wouldn't necessarily see it, but if you do you do.
Continuing on, you can tell these designs pre-date the Playmates colors, because if they'd been made after, surely some effort would have
been made to tie them in with those. Like, here's Donatello, wearing not a stitch of purple, but rather red and yellow. Recognizing that would be too big a change for the kiddies who came to the Archie comics from the cartoon, the cover of the issue at least colored his belt and pads purple (though not inside the book).
The arms and legs are the traditional style, even if his wraps are yellow, but he's wearing a smock over his shell - something that required a new sculpt. It's part of the shell, both front and back, not just something dropped over the existing cartoon-Turtle sculpt. He wears a wide sash tying the flaps of the shirt down, but it's still weird to see a Turtle wearing something adjacent to clothes (other than a trenchcoat, of course).
Donnie's mask is still cloth, but covers everything
above his mouth instead of just wrapping over his eyes. The bandana has ties trailing off the back, like the boys' traditional masks (just longer), but it has a sunburst pattern on it, like the Japanese rising sun flag, but with yellow in place of white. The red "sun" part is right on the face, with the striped rays going back over the top of the head (though here they're straight, rather than splaying out).
Raphael is easily the most "ninja" of the bunch, and so it's no surprise he kept this suit longer than any of the other boys did.
His suit is skintight and pure black - or at least, pure black with painted blue shadows, but the intention is clear: he is a traditional idea of a ninja, dressed in black because that's what ninjas wear. As you already know, the idea of black "ninja suits" is based on kabuki theatre, where that was the uniform worn by the stage crew, who were meant to be ignored. The equivalent today would be wearing gray and white checks.
This is the mst unique Turtle sculpt of all the ones NECA's yet done: he has no mask, he has no elbow pads, he has no wristbands, he has no belt, he has no kneepads... it is just a bare Turtle body. This could open up some potential "bare" figures or similar in the future. When the boys got back to Earth from outer space, Raph kept wearing this costume for almost a year before going back to his red bandana - often pulled down to his waist so it was basically
just a pair of black pants.
Since all the figures needed new heads, they're all given big, stylized expressions that even the cartoon Turtles didn't. Leonardo is growling, Donatello is slightly dopey, Raphael is about as angry as he always is, and Michaelangelo looks... saucy?
Mikey's got Dreamworks face. Or maybe Deadpool.
One eye bigger than the other, with his mouth open in a crooked smile and sculpted eyebrows raising above the surface of the head. You've gotta give them credit, they certainly took this opportunity to take some big swings with the designs here.
By contrast, this costume is the closest to the traditional look we're all familiar with. No, he doesn't have pads on his knees or elbows, but he does have a simple belt, and wraps around his forearms and shins, which means more new molds were needed. He's even wearing orange, putting him nearer the real look than anyone else! The biggest difference is that he has a full mask over the top of his head, not just around his eyes, with this one being different from Donatello's by lack of long, drooping ties at the back.
The facial sculpts of these figures is based on the art of
Ken Mitchroney, which is odd yet appropriate: he's the one most associated with the TMNT Adventures comic, so anything else wouldn't have the right look. But the single issue where the Turtles were wrestlers wasn't drawn by Mitchroney, but rather by Jim Lawson. Looking at the state of the art in that issue, he must've had no more than a few days to get the book done, and it is rough; toys based on that appearance would not be popular on the shelf.
Because the Turtles' weapons were taken away
when they were brought to the wrestling ring, this set doesn't include any. It does, however, have several things appropriate to the venue: a folding chair (folded), a sledgehammer, and a fire extinguisher; a soda can, an ice cream cone, and a cup with a straw; and a timekeeper's ring bell, with a Flintstones-like pterodactyl perched at the side, ready to ring it when needed. The set also includes four alternate hands that can be used for Raphael, and a total of eight for the other three; so which brother got left out?
The cardboard backdrop behind the tray is the crowd at the Stump Arena, there to watch the show. Yes, the Stump Arena, on the Stump Asteroid, with the intergalactic wrestling airing on the Stump Network. And presumably interrupted by ads for Stump Tower, Stump University, Stump Casino, and Stump Steaks, before they all went out of business? Yeah, making fun of that loser has been a staple since the '80s. This isn't a direct copy of the audience in the issue, but it keeps the spirit alive. Plus, it's fun to look for all the cameos, like a Triceraton, Scul and Bean, Cudley the Cowlick, R2-D2, and a cameo from what I'm pretty sure is Mirage Comics editor Dan Berger. As he appeared back in the day. The central part of the image is copied from the comic, and the sides are new. You can definitely see the difference in quality.
Speaking of "back in the day," when the Archie comics were running, Ryan Brown and Stephen Murphy were always trying to get Playmates to do something - anything - from the books for the toyline. And yes, they even pushed for the wrestling costumes, because they knew how much Playmates loved doing every weird variation of the Turtles it could think of. Playmates turned them down, of course, just like every other time, and so we missed out on what would have been some perfectly '90s representation of these suits. Lucky for us, NECA recognized the value inherent in this appearance, and has given this little slice of "what if" history its due.
-- 10/31/24
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