While his sculpt is detailed, his paint job isn’t. But I’m ok with that because ninjas aren’t supposed to be techno colored. His body is mostly molded in black, but they did give him a nice dark gray for his forearms and shins. The compound eyes also have a neat speckled effect.
I was definitely glad to see that the new Foot had decent articulation. His head, elbows, wrists, and waist are all swivel joints. His shoulders and hips are swivel/hinges. Like with Shredder, I’m really disappointed they didn’t give his head a ball joint. But the swivel elbows work out great because they’re at an angle, so you can still get some really interesting dynamic poses. He really could have used knee joints, but their lack doesn’t hinder the figure too much.
The Foot Soldier comes with a nice little supply of accessories. First up are his sword and dagger set. While these pieces look miniscule in Shredder’s hands, they fit the Foot Soldiers really well. The Soldiers also come with two shuriken, which I’m pretty sure is the most popular accessory of the line. The throwing stars have a more traditional design than Shredders and lack that techno element. The Foot’s last accessory is his sword sheaths. This is a single molded piece that easily holds both the sword and dagger at the same time. The sheaths are attached to his back with a peg and can be easily removed. This was a really nice touch that will help diversify this army builder.
I’d definitely recommend the Foot Soldier. He’s not a perfect figure, but he’s definitely on the better end of this line. His most hindering feature is the articulation, but he still has enough to pull off some good action scene poses. He’s a great army builder, and I really do enjoy taking pictures of my turtles beating them up.
If you’re looking for more Ninja Turtles goodness, check out TMNT Week at TheDaytimeNinja.com. There are some articles up, two of which are mine and Noisy’s. (Thanks for letting me guest review, Gavin!)
-Vault
Great review, excellent pictures. Still not enough to make me want a cartoony figure that could’ve benefitted from more articulation, though.
On a semi-related note, I wonder if toy companies truly get the concept of “enemy” and/or “army builder” figures. They produce one mould, and can knock out hundred os thousands of the same character, and people will snap them all up and still ask for more. Make a basic grunt, I’ll buy a whole platoon. Change colours or bits of the uniform to make a new rank or specialist, and people like us will buy a squad of them.
So what do we get? A bazillion Optimus Primes and Bumblebees, Butterscotch Shell Batmen, Day-Glo Toxic Sludge Fighter Snake-Eyeses, and Rambo Wannabe He-Men clogging the shelves, while Vehicons, Killer Crocs, The Generals (Millennial Rattlors), and the various Cobra Vipers sell out at ridiculous mark-ups online because the’re one-per-case.
Has nobody told these people about “Supply and Demand”? We’re demanding stuff, they’re not supplying it. At least Hasbro has glommed onto this concept with their clones, troopers, and droids, even though it took them several years to make enough realistic-style 501st Legion Clone Troopers for most people to get a squad.
Also, I think you mean “technicolor” when referring to the video game Foot Soldiers. };D
Great review!
Funny that you mention the different colored foot soldiers from the arcade game..I am writing a little something up for daytimeninja and I mentioned the same thing…great minds vault
Nice. I pondered picking up one to see how he would fit in with the ML as more Hand, as I only grabbed a few and most of those are White Hand, having passed up the Red Hand because I still had my TB-ML5 fury. D’OH!
btw, you do know that the Foot are a parody of the Hand, right? just throwing that out there for those who weren’t aware of the satirical origins of TMNT.
Like how splinter is a parody of stick from DD!
Splinter’s a much cooler name than Stick.
it really is…prob why the dropped Stick from DD altogether