teenage mutant ninja turtles

Cowabunga!

Standard

I have wanted these for so long.

IMG_20190306_191532

The Turtles, not the cats.

With licensing problems still preventing NECA releasing its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures in the UK, sourcing them here remains a nightmare – especially when the last few sets have been Comicon exclusives that have sold out online in minutes.

So when NECA announced a re-release for the movie set at GameStop in the US I was super stoked. Annoyingly…

… GameStop.com is blocked in the UK…
… and when using a VPN PayPal would for some reason not work…
… and when trying to use a reshipping service, GameStop would not deliver to the address…
… and when trying to get the reshipper to buy on my behalf, they took 3 days to make the order by which time GameStop had sold out…

So when I got a pay rise, I just ordered the things off eBay. Turtle Power indeed!

Heroes in a Half Shell

Standard

My next piece for Collector’s Gazette is about the history of Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles toys. So of course the inevitable has happened. I have the Revoltech set on the way as well. SIGH. Still, they look absolutely awesome. I have now entered what will be a protracted phase of resisting the undoubtedly amazing but also very, very expensive NECA 1990 1/4 Scale Movie Turtle replicas.

IMG_20170705_114409IMG_20170705_114437

And you thought No Man’s Sky didn’t deliver?

Standard

When I was a wee nipper I loved the Turtles. The Hero Turtles, that is. Ninjas were deemed inappropriate by British censors back then, so what we now know as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were in my time called the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. They edited out all of the nunchuck bits, too. They even cut those out of the film. I once even bought an unedited version of Game of Death from an under-the-table seller at a Bruce Lee convention in Bradford just to see the nunchuck scene. Technically speaking this was breaking the law, so I shan’t admit to it if you ask me.

One of my favourite Turtles things was the arcade game. They had one down at the bowling alley in Basingstoke and I must have pumped literally dozens of my parents’ monies (20p a go, was it?) into it with my mates. So when I saw a picture of a handheld Turtles game in the Argos catalogue I just knew I NEEDED to own this portable version of the arcade game.

Continue reading