The Mega Mutant

Scale lol what's that? When Superfly and his devious mutant-making device fall into the Hudson River, what comes out is something the Turtles could have never predicted! He transforms into Mega Mutant, a combination of the Hudson's many underwater critters and any other animal he encounters! Technically he transforms into "Superduperfly," but "Mega Mutant" was the name for the creature during the movie's production; it just takes so long to get toys made that changes like that can't always be reflected on the merch. There was a mega Mega Mutant as a Walmart exclusive (that's where the bio came from), but it stood 8" tall and this is just on a normal card in the normal line. At one point, the villain of Mutant Mayhem was going to be the Rat King, before being switched to new character Superfly. Well, "new" character, because he was quite plainly a reimagined version of Baxter Stockman, just with the "mutant fly" part separated from the "human scientist" part so that his story could better contrast against the Turtles': consider the difference between "a fellow animal, mutated at roughly the same time as the Turtles, who makes decisions and ends up a certain way" and "a human who has already experienced full life consequences gets mutated into an animal and now after that starts acting a certain way." But an angry fly, no matter how he parallels the heroes, could make for a boring finale, so instead we got something wild and interesting. Basically, Superfly began merging with whatever new animals he touched, eventually forming a Godzilla-sized abomination. TMNT vs Godzilla? Bet we won't see that again! As he emerged from the river, he kept his fly eyes, antennae, and big clawlike right arm, but he now had the body of a whale, "hair" made out of octopuses, and a bale of sea turtles stuck to his chest - like Leonardo said, that's not so bad. Yeah, he's big, but he can barely move, especially on land. ...buuuut then he dragged himself into the zoo and things really went wild. Now he's got a giraffe, elephant, and ostrich forming his face, legs made of horses, and a left arm that's apparently a bunch of chimpanzees with three narwhals as its fingers. What a weirdo! Now obviously the detail on the 8" mega figure was better than the detail on this one that's half the size, but they still did a pretty decent job considering the limitations. It's hard to pick out what some of the animals are if you don't already know, and his wings are just sculpted against his back instead of being separate pieces. And of course, this being Playmates, the paint is minimal, which does identifying his various compnents no favors. But, the underside of the whale's body is a lighter blue than the top, the narwhals are pink to contrast with the monkeys' brown, the horses are a shade somewhere in between the apes and the octopuses, and the giraffe even gets a different paint app than the rest of the face-animals. By Playmates standards, this is pretty high quality. Because Playmates generally sucks. Given his shape and proportions, it's hard to get the Mega Mutant to stand very securely - he could really use a display base to heep him sturdy. If you want him to br properly horizontal, you almost have to put his arms out behind him, because otherwise the center of gravity ends up way in front of the feet, and that's no good. The figure has balljoints for the hips, shoulders, neck, and tail, which we can say with all confidence because this is part of the Mutations Mix 'n Match series, the ones with swappable pieces. All the limbs and such can be removed and traded around among different figures. So you can play even if you only get one toy from the line, this set includes Michelangelo's right arm and Splinter's left arm. Normally we wouldn't car much about this feature, but in Mega Mutant's case, removing the legs and the simian arm will give you a fair approximation of Superduperfly before he fell into the zoo, and that's something the larger toy definitely couldn't do! Still, we can't help but find it ridiculous than an enemy the TMNT had to fight Attack on Titan-style is sold on the same card and at the same final size as Goldfin, a character who is literally the size of a minorly large pet shop goldfish. For a line that's been their bread and butter since 1988, Playmates has never really put as much care into production as their artists put into creation. It was a shock when it was announced they'd be losing the TMNT license after this year, but maybe taking a break will be a good thing for them. But for anyone who couldn't get the large-scale Mega Mutant or just didn't have room for him, it is kind of nice that they found a way to get the character released. -- 01/22/26 Who do you hope gets the TMNT license? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.