I haven’t reviewed anything in a while, thanks to vacation and illness on top of the stuff I mentioned in my last post. Let’s fix that.
IDW has started a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series. Recently the character of Fugitoid popped up in the comic, and in the reprints of classic TMNT comics they’ve gotten up to his story. (I need to check to see if they’ve reprinted the one-shot used to debut the character.) This inspired me to break out the Fugitoid action figure from the original toyline. Except I goofed and the figure actually is from the 2000’s remake series, which is closer to the original comic premise–mostly.
Long story short: An alien scientist named Honeycutt accidentally has his brain transferred into his helper robot, Sal. The bad guys know this and want to get his scientific secrets and until the Turtles arrive on his planet there are no good guys to turn towards as both sides of a galactic war are pretty much evil. This is the original concept, which was also used in the remade TV series. There’s more but that’s all you really need to know for this toy review.
Just hanging out.
The original toy (see a comparison here) looked nothing like the comic character, and I don’t remember if he showed up in the first cartoon or not. For the 2000’s cartoon appearance, Fugitoid’s character model is based on his comic appearance and this toy is based on that design. It is a spot-on likeness.
Since this is from a Playmate Ninja Turtle line, articulation is kind of lacking (although the ones for the new cartoon seem more articulated–finally). The head turns side to side. The legs go forward and back. The arms go up and down and can go slightly outward. That’s it. That limits posing to the top half, and there isn’t much there.
In hindsight I should have taken a shot of the backpack itself.
In the show, Honeycutt didn’t have any kind of gear. That’s not good enough for the toys, obviously. Fugitoid the toy comes with a snap-on backpack. The pack itself has a gold-painted radar dish and black antenna, which I guess is some kind of communications equipment. Attached are two cables with a huge claw on one side and I’m not sure what on the other. According to my research it’s supposed to be a Gatling-gun type weapon but it doesn’t really look like one and doesn’t feel right for a scientist. I’d rather think of it as a scanner of some kind.
The claw does open and close but does not stay in position, defaulting to closed. Both the claw and “gun” can detach from the cables. I suppose you could switch the two if you want but I didn’t try. They fit just fine onto the three-fingered hands where they are and I don’t want to mess with that.
“Oh, it appears Donatello’s cloning experiment didn’t go so well.”
Fugitoid is a good play toy, as intended, but as a display piece it’s kind of mediocre. Lack of articulation is the big problem, but a few painted highlights besides the eyes might have brought out the toy’s detail a bit more, as it does on his backpack. Hopefully Nickelodeon will include him on the cartoon and hopefully Playmates will improve the toy design as well. Otherwise I may keep him around because he’s kind of grown on me and I like the character in previous media. Beyond that, he may not be worth hunting down unless your a completist or a fan.
And for now I am all out of Ninja Turtles toys.
The Clutter Reports 
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