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A girl?! Can turtles get cooties?
Once a deadly Foot Assassin, a life-saving blood transfusuion
from Leonardo transformers her into a no-nonsense, razor-sharp femme fatale. Now Jennika fights alongside the Turtles, bringing her own unique brand of justice to the mean streets of New York.
As far as collectors go, NECA is making the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, but they do suffer from the necessity of everything they make needing to be "old": the original comics, the original cartoons, the original movies... if we look past The Last Ronin, their license doesn't seem to cover anything new or interesting unless they make it up themselves, so the popular IDW TMNT comics are out of their range. Loyal Subjects to the rescue, I guess!
Jennika was introduced in 2015's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #51,
and was mutated four years later in #95. You can't accuse them of rushing things! Her mutant form was designed by Sophie Campbell, who'd previously created an original TMNT fan-character named Artemisia who happened to have yellow as her signature color - not something writer Tom Walz knew when he requested that color for Jennika (she'd been blonde as a human, and this was a carryover of that).
The figure's sculpt looks just like the IDW art. Say what you will about BST AXN, they certainly know how to re-create an artstyle in 3D: their cartoon figures look like whatever cartoon they're
from, and their comicbook figures look like the comics. Since Jennika is new to being a Turtle, she's still self-conscious about clothing and doesn't run around as nearly-nude as the boys do, opting instead to wear pants, a tunic, a cape, and even fishnet sleeves in addition to the belt and the wraps around her hands and feet - lots of remnants from her Foot uniform. The shirt is one of those magic garments that somehow manages to go under a turtle's shell (the comics make it clear this is just something that covers her front, coming up from the waist, looping around the neck, and coming back down, but this toy sculpts the cloth going all the way around the sides), but everything is sculpted with nice, simple wrinkles that add a sense of movement and realism to the toy.
If there's one issue with Jenika, it's the colors - not on the toy, because the paint here matches the comics, but on that source material itself. Even in the books, the colors are very muted, which means
you've got a light, lemon yellow bandana trying to stand out from light, tea green skin, all wrapped up in various shades of grey clothing, so it barely has any contrast outside the parts that are black or silver. She needs a vibrant yellow mask, and a much stronger skintone. Loyal Subjects designed the colors accurately, it's just IDW that needs to do better. Something that works fine when it's fully outlined in black, as in a comicbook, doesn't necessarily work as well when it's not.
Every Turtle needs their signature weapon, and part of designing Jennika was deciding what that would be. Artemisia had used a bow and arrow, but eventually it was decided to give her claws liek Shredder wears, just with four blades insdtead of two. Someone once pointed out that all
the TMNT use weapons that are the opposite of their base personality: Raphael is the most violent, so he gets the one that's primarily defensive; Leonardo would love to solve everything passively, so he gets the one that's only designed for taking lives; Donatello is into technology, so he gets the simplest, most basic weapon there is; Michelangelo is flighty, so he gets the one that requires the most discipline to use. By that logic, Jennika's tekko-kagi would mean... she needs to learn to be careful with the people she's closest to, so she doesn't hurt them? That works! The figure also gets a short sword that fits into the scabbard tucked into her belt.
The articulation is better on Jennika than it was
on Bebop - for one thing, nothing broke when I tried to move it. The toy has swivel/hinge ankles, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a balljoint torso (the shell moves with the upper body, so make sure you're not holding it wrong when you try to twist her), swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, and a balljointed head. The ties to her mask are separate in the tray, so those have a swivel where they plug in, as well. Several of the joints were stiff, but nothing broke while trying to get them going. The hand pop out easily, but that's because they're swappable.
We get a pair of fists wearing her claws, a similar pair that's more open so she can use her sword, and finally a relaxed pair without the claws on at all. There's a second head, with her mask pushed up to her forehead instead of covering her eyes, and a pair of "slash" effects that can fit onto the claws for action scenes.
Jennika didn't seem to get the pushback a lot of new female characters do (or at least, if she did, the TMNT fandom at large did a better job of not giving those complaints any air, not letting "family business" get out into public view), possibly because planning to Turtlize her began two years before it happened, so everybody had time to acclimate to her. Because of that, it's wild that this is the only toy anyone's made of her. You'd think companies would be rushing for the chance to make something besides the same four they've always made, but so far only the BST AXN line has delivered. Luckily, this figure is better than the other BST AXNs we've reviewed. It doesn't make me want to buy their other IDW Turtles, but I'm glad Jennika exists. If we're lucky, they'll do a re-release in brighter "cartoon colors" or something, whatever excuse they need to make one that doesn't look like it's been left in the sun for decades.
-- 12/12/24
What fifth Turtle did you make up as a kid? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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