The four new Nickelodeon turtles are great toys, but I kept having this nagging suspicion that something was missing (you know, besides the Shellraiser and awesome new sewer playset that I can’t afford). Then I realized that the turtles are infinitely more fun when they have baddies to kick around.
So hot on the heels of my Shredder guest review over at TheDaytimeNinja.com, I thought I’d do the loveable cannon fodder that is the Foot Soldier.
One of my biggest Ninja Turtles influences as a kid was the TMNT Arcade game. This was an amazingly fun game that really ended influencing how I played with my turtle toys. My figures now fought in similar ways to the game by clearing an area of baddies and moving on to the next obstacle.
But even more influential was how the Foot Soldiers were portrayed. Making the original characters robots allowed the turtle to be more violent against them, while at the same time giving me my first inspiration to army build using a single figure. It also showed me that Foot Soldiers came in many colors and were specially programmed for specific attacks and weapons. This also led me to a disappointing discovery that I’d never get the army of rainbow colored robots that my turtles deserved.
Nick’s new Foot Soldier definitely has its differences with the 80’s Playmates version. The biggest is that the modern Foot Clan is made up of humans instead of robots. I don’t really know how this plays out in the cartoon when it comes to violence, but I somehow doubt they explode when they get knocked unconscious. These new soldiers do have one advantage over the originals. Playmates has already made a red version of the figure that comes with the Dragon Chopper!
The Foot Soldier has an entirely new body with a nice amount of detail to the sculpt. I wouldn’t say it’s more complicated than the turtles, but it definitely looks better than the ultra plain design to Shredder’s body. I’m particularly happy with his compound eyes, more than likely due to Kamen Rider. I also like that his suit is a bit puffy, but his arms and legs are wrapped tight for battle. Continue to page 2…
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