When Mirage Studios kicked up the promotions, that’s when the Turtles storm started to build — and build, and build.  The rest is a lot of very well documented history, and almost twenty years later Playmates Toys is still making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures.  But that’s not what we, nor Randy Falk, are here to talk about.  Falk is here to talk about what’s next in the Turtle evolution, or mutation, if you will.  Basically what’s next is a major homage to the art of the Turtles’ creators, Eastman and Laird, and a boon to Turtles fans and collectors.  
    “For all this time, nothing really creator-specific has been done with Turtles,” said Falk.  “The only time Playmates did try it was during the boom years of the specialty market, in the mid to late ‘90s, after McFarlane and a few other companies defined this market.  It was around that time when they did the Jim Lee Turtles, and Savage Dragon and that sort of thing.  That stuff was good, but it was the Jim Lee Turtles, not the Eastman and Laird Turtles,” said Falk.   
     According to Falk, a project like this has been in the backs of everyone’s mind at NECA for a long time, but now is the right time to do something for a number of reasons.  One, 2009 marks the 25th Anniversary of the original comic book debut.  Second, nowadays there’s an established marketing milieu that didn’t exist back when Playmates first acquired the license to do Turtles toys, where the licensing pie is more divvied up between mass and specialty, where one manufacturer will do the mass-market kid product, like Zizzle did with Pirates of the Caribbean, and another will do the strictly collector-based line, like NECA did with Pirates.  With a view to building the buzz for the big 25th Anniversay, both 4-Kids Entertainment, the current license holders for Turtles, and NECA, felt that a 2008 tribute to the Eastman and Laird aesthetic would be a great way to give something back to the collectors.  And how!
     The figures and display bases you see here were rendered by the Four Horsemen Design Studio, and if you remember the comic books, or still have some of them, you can tell that this crew positively nailed the look of the original four Turtles characters. When we got the first teaser image, it was a no-brainer — January 2008 issue cover feature.
     The first figures you’ll see at retail this year are Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Leonardo, and yes, they’re all wearing the same red belts and bandanas that they did on the covers of the early comics.  Aside from their expressions, and signature weapons, it’s hard to tell them apart.  Of course, those who really remember the original comic books can tell you that the art work was all printed in black and white; only the covers were done in color.  Which brings us to the figure at the top right of this page.  Leonardo here has been painted to strongly evoke those bygone black and white days, and to wonderful effect!  The image above is a bit of a tease, as NECA is right now “considering” doing the four Turtles in this style, as a limited release to retail later in the year.  More on that later.
     NECA is currently looking at the possibility of offering two POP options to retailers. One version would be aimed directly at collectors and would come with the detailed display bases you see here, and a few other bells and whistles.  A more standard version would be more streamlined, but would still include of all the signature weapons.  These two different SKUs would be offered to retailers at slightly different price points.  “The regular versions will have an SRP of about $10 each, while the collector versions, with all the bells and whistles, will have an SRP of $14 or $15,” said Falk.
     Multi-packs, reprints of original Eastman and Laird art, signed pieces, are all part of the brainstorming currently going on at NECA, according to Falk, but nothing’s written in stone on any of that right now in the early going.  Let it suffice to say the NECA crew has lots, and lots of great ideas cooking.  
    Wave 1 characters will include some other figures besides the four Turtles.  According to Falk, we can also look forward to the Foot Soldier and April in the first assortment.  And speaking of April, Wave 1 should be in stores by then.  By summer we might see a refresh on packaging and the figures, very much along the lines of the teaser B&W figure shown above.  Again, nothing’s written in stone there, but the gears are turning at NECA.  Be sure and stay tuned to www.necaonline.com for up-to-the-minute updates!