The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Classic Collection really surprised me when I first heard about it a few months ago. I wasn’t expecting Nickelodeon or Playmates to invest this much in the franchise so soon. An amazing new toy line to support their new cartoon would have been enough, but the companies decided to release another line of action figures, this one designed to look like the characters in the original Fred Wolf cartoon.

In my opinion, these are about as perfect as they possibly could have been.

Even though they were deeply connected, the original cartoon and the original Playmates toy line were always separate in my head. The characters never looked exactly like their animated counterparts with a few exceptions. They were still great toys, but I always wanted action figures that looked like they jumped right out of the cartoon. The TMNT Classic Collection is exactly that. This week I’ll be looking at all four Turtles, starting with Leonardo.

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TMNT Week is officially underway. I’ve got two huge boxes sitting on the floor of my office full of new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys, as well as some older stuff I haven’t reviewed yet, and I’m going to be making my way through it all this week. In case you missed the announcement post, today we’re focusing on the leader of the TMNT, Leonardo.

First up we’re going to look at the new Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles version of Leonardo. The new CG cartoon premieres on September 29th, and so far Nickelodeon has been doing a great job of getting us TMNT fans adequately pumped up. These toys are just starting to hit the shelves, but are much easier to find online right now.

How do these new TMNT action figures hold up to the original toys and all the versions we’ve had since? Will they help bring on a new era of Turtlemania? Why does Splinter look like a badger? I’ll hopefully be answering these questions and more all week.
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What better way to celebrate the release of the final chapter in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy than by reviewing four 12 year old, completely unrelated action figures? I can’t think of one! Yup, it’s time for another Random Toy Review.

Today we’re looking at four action figures that were released as a tie-in to the direct-to-video animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, which is actually pretty damn awesome. I loved Batman Beyond as a kid, but I didn’t discover this movie until a few years ago. It has a huge cult following, partly because the violence nabbed the first PG-13 rating for a Batman animated film. There have been a lot of versions on home video since, some with the violence dumbed-down, but thankfully the uncut version is available on Blu-ray and looks great.

But I digress. Thinking about this movie has made me want to revisit it soon, and I’m sure I’ll write something up on the site about it. For now though, the toys. A friend game me some carded figures from this movie, and since I have no respect for mint-in-the-box-things I promptly ripped them open to get a closer look. How do these 12-year old toys hold up to the Batman action figures of today? Let’s find out.
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When the Internets first got glimpse of the LEGO Minecraft Set on the company’s Kickstarter-esque site Cuusoo, I doubt a lot of people thought it would ever become a real product. It surprised me when LEGO announced on the CUUSOO blog that it passed their approval process and would be a really-for-real set in a few months time. It’s been for sale for a short while and I got my hands on one, dumped all the pieces on my desk, and built it so I could let you know if it’s a great LEGO set or just a decoration for hardcore Minecraft fans.

What You Get

The LEGO Minecraft Set (or Minecraft 21102 officially) is a micro-world set, meaning it’s not minifigure scale. It does, however, include a couple micro-figures in the likeness of Minecraft’s Steve and a Creeper. Since the whole point of Minecraft is shaping and building terrain out of the available blocks in the game, the LEGO Minecraft set works the same way.
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I guess I ran my SDCC LEGO Roundup too soon, because FBTB is reporting on the new LEGO Super Hero minifigures for the upcoming year, and they’re pretty awesome. The photos seem to confirm that there will actually be sets based on The Dark Knight Rises after all! LEGO Gary Oldman!

On the DC side, there is Mr. Freeze, Aquaman, Batman in a white suit (for some reason), Bane, Gordon, Badass Robin with a hood, Scarecrow, The Joker in an orange jumpsuit, Penguin, and a nurse or something.

For Marvel, it looks like we’re getting Spider-Man, Nick Fury, Venom, Nova, J. Jonah Jameson, Dr. Doom, and Beetle. Not bad, but I wonder how they are going to use Dr. Doom without the Fantastic Four? And hopefully Nick Fury means more Avengers sets, but he could be included in a Spider-Man set since that line is based on the new show.

Make sure to check out FBTB for all the large photos, and let the speculation on the sets these are going to come with begin!