REVIEW: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles MUTATIONS RAPHAEL

[JeffSaylor]

From Turtle to Sai...

If transforming toys are all the rage, Playmates Toys have recently come out with a line of figures that will turn your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, be it Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, or Michelangelo, into their own powerful weapon. Think back to your childhood days and how cool it was to wield the leader of the Decepticons, Megatron, as a toy gun. Now kids today can recreate that same sensation with the new line MUTATIONS. The only caveat are that these aren’t robots: the Turtles themselves turn into giant versions of their featured weapon. Better not think too hard on this one, grown ups.

Playmates was kind enough to send us one to share with our readers, and lucky for you, it’s Raphael! The hot-headed Turtle in red transforms into his powerful twin Sai. The transformation itself isn’t too complicated. The figure splits in half and each leg becomes the handle while the upper half flips around and becomes the telescoping blade (think plastic lightsabers but smaller). The truly half of the half shell becomes the lower blades. After a few steps, your kid (or yourself) will be ready to pretend-fight with a powerful Sai.

Taking a step back, the packaging for these are attractive and pop off the shelf. The box shows a kid with the transformed version of the weapon while the window prominently shows you the main Turtle. There’s a flip up section on the front that exposes the easy steps that’s needed to transform your Turtle. While the box itself is attractive and works, it really does take up a lot more shelf space than is needed. When you remove the tray out of the box, you’ll see that there’s nearly 60% negative space where the figure occupies about 40%.

The figure itself is rather stiff, with only the arms having any sort of articulation in the shoulder and elbows. Even though Raphael comes with his own pair of Sai to handle, this won’t be a figure that replaces the turtles already in your collection, but rather supplemental.

Raphael stands roughly seven inches tall so it’s a lot larger than the standard TMNT figures, so keep that in mind.

In the end, if you have kids who love the Turtles and love to role play, this is a fun 2-in-1 toy to get them and will run you about $15 each.

Check out more photos of thre TMNT Mutations Raphael in the gallery below! For more TMNT news, follow the official TMNT Play facebook page. Turtle Power!


Review & Photography by David Yeh
T-Machines Courtesy Playmates Toys

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