5 Reasons to be Excited for Mondo's TMNT

In case my post last week didn't make it obvious - I'm ridiculously excited for Mondo's upcoming 1/6 scale Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line!  I've never bought anything from Mondo before but I've been a Turtles fan nearly as long as I can remember.  I was TMNT crazy as a kid but it was discovering the original Eastman and Laird comics in my teens that hooked me for life and I'm so glad it's that version of the Turtles that's serving as the primary inspiration for Mondo's line.  I literally can't stop thinking about these awesome figures and the massive potential this line has!

If you're a TMNT fan like me there's so many reasons to be excited for this line;

1) They look like they stepped right off the comic book page. Seriously they look absolutely perfect.  And as an added bonus they're based on Eastman and Laird's later work together.  NECA's brilliant but short lived 6" line was based on their first appearance but it was around issue 4 before they really refined the look of the characters, so even if you have the NECA figures there'll be more than just a scale difference as both looks are unique.

2) The selection of accessories is fantastic.  Whilst most companies would likely have been content to give the Turtles their signature weapons and call it a day but Mondo went back to the source material and added plenty of extras from Triceraton blasters to Mikey's Orphan Alien.  And like Turtles themselves the extras look like they just stepped right from the comics.  Just check out the pre-mutated Splinter that comes with Leo - posed perfectly like his comic book counterpart!

3) Mondo's planning for success.  TMNT fans are used to their collector's lines not taking off.  Both NECA's comic based line and Playmates' own Classics line never made it past the Turtles and 2 other characters.  Neither of them even released Shredder despite plans for him to be in both lines before they were cancelled.  At SDCC Mondo revealed they hope to include Shredder, a Foot Soldier and fan favourite Casey Jones in the second wave if the first wave sold well.  Judging by how things went last week I'd say we've a good chance of Mondo going ahead with their plans!  But before that though, Mondo will be releasing a 2-Pack of Mousers sometime after Raphael (maybe as a wave 1.5 to tide us over between the main waves?)

4) They're drawing influence from all sources.  Whilst the main influence for the Turtles is the comics Mondo are also taking inspiration from the cartoons (the alternate heads with the colour masks) and Playmates original toylike (the varied skin tones) to create the ultimate versions of these characters.  Which is good, at these prices you don't want a lot of variants!

5) The sky's the limit.  Whilst the first figures are comic influence Mondo aren't limited to just Mirage comic characters and they're confirmed that characters like Bebop and Rocksteady are available to them even if they aren't planned at the moment, so this really could be the ultimate Ninja Turtles line!

Mondo's TMNT On Sale Today!

Well that title is actually a little misleading as, whilst the regular edition is still on sale, the exclusive edition and the exclusive subscription are already sold out!  In fact the subscription sold out in less than five minutes!

I've been looking forward to these since they were revealed at this year's SDCC so I literally spent an hour when I got in from work today hitting refresh on Mondo's site until they went on sale (and that's on top of the phone battery I completely drained checking throughout the day).  I was fortunate enough to be one of the lucky 200 to snag the exclusive subscription so I don't have to work about the random sale times for Don, Mikey and Raph over the next 3 months.

This is my first purchase from Mondo and I couldn't be happier with the way they look.  The sculpts look like they literally walked off the pages of the original Eastman and Laird comics.  Ok, Raph could be a little less bright, but I get that they were going for the Playmates colour scheme from the original toys and that's kinda cool.  The attention to detail on these looks amazing with accessories, like the pre-mutated Splinter and the exclusive Shredder's gauntlet, taken right out of those early comics.

I'll be honest, given the current state of 1/6 scale pricing, and Mondo's pricing of their limited edition posters/screen prints, I was worried I'd be priced out of this line but happily these came in at a relatively reasonable (for 1/6 scale) $149.99.  The exclusive edition runs $10 more but one of the perks of the subscription is $10 off per figure making the exclusive the same price as the standard edition.  The biggest shocker for me was the price of international postage - $63.60 to the UK.  Given my recent Sideshow orders have all been around the $40 mark this seems a bit high.  I'll definitely be interested to see what Sideshow sells the regular editions of these figures for in the future as cheaper postage and their Flexpay option (instead of Mondo's pay in full at time of order) may tempt me to go with Sideshow if the line continues past the four Turtles.  That said, the $40 saving on the exclusive editions offsets half of the extra postage cost and the additional bonus of an exclusive Mondo print is likely worth well more than the other half and that's before any potential mark up Sideshow may add to the figure so it's not really as bad as it first appears.  I just need to take it a figure at a time and try not to think about the total :o)

I really hope this line does continue past the four Turtles.  I have never gone "all in" on a 1/6 scale line due to cost and space but if the final figures look as good as the images released so far and Mondo can keep up this level of quality and detail going forward then I may just be tempted to do it for this line.  I'd love to see them tackle Shredder, Splinter, April and Casey next, maybe even a Triceraton!  I'd even be up for Mondo's take on non-comic characters further down the line (Bebop and Rocksteady spring to mind but there's plenty more).

Right now I just happy that I was lucky enough to snag one of the subscriptions!  Leo's scheduled to ship Q2 next year and I'm looking forward to it already!!