Teenage mutant HERO turtles
 

Hey guys, recently found this guy

The odd thing is, instead of NINJA the card says HERO. this is definitely a vintage piece, but i can't seem to find any info on these cards, can anyone shed some light?

https://i.imgur.com/YRMZA8Hh.jpg

also notice the bottom part of the card has a yellow sticker running across
https://i.imgur.com/vrmq33oh.jpg

cheers!
Bruno

"Ninja" wasn't allowed in the UK back in the day, therefor they were "Hero" instead. :) Nice find!

thank you!

Hmm interesting! I actually found these in Portugal, i assume these are rarer than the usual since i couldn't not find a price reference on ebay, any clue on the value of these ?

Worth about the same as a US release.

Not all that rare. Most European countries that didn't translate the cardbacks got the Hero cards

nice find and with the price tag of 2000$00 I'm noticing it wasn't cheap at the time, that would be 10€ nowadays

2000$ (portuguese currency before euro) would be nearly 10€ today

For me, the "hero" branded toys aren't ic interest. I don't buy bootlegs or imports, despite their rarity, as I only want authentic US backed releases. Maybe that's just me though.

It's not just you. They're not really worth much because collectors who buy MOC figures largely do so because each character has their own card art, whereas these don't.

Why is there a Bandai logo on the right corner?

They where the distributor, there's other companies as well that distributed TMNT figures outside of US

Agree with you here. I've got some Ninja and some Hero MOC and much prefer the Ninja ones due to the individual character art, as opposed to the more generic Hero ones. Bit annoying, as it was the Hero ones I had as a kid and grew up with.

isnt this part of the reason they took away Michelangelo's nunchucks and replaced with a grappling hook to air the cartoon in European countries? they deemed nunchucks too violent?

wow prudence back in the day.

Nunchaku was illegal in several countries in Europe, still are.

So...is anyone else bothered by the huge round buck teeth in the little icon at the bottom back of the package??? It just looks wrong...

Ohh I didn't know they were illegal thought they just seemed violent
How were they allowed to show him with them on back package?

What is unauthentic about this? It's still a Playmates toy, and to the European market it was all they had. It's all they knew. Maybe they feel the same about toys that say "Ninja" on them. It's a matter of perspective, and not to be snubbed.

Think he's just saying his only interest is in official America-only runs.

I have a Casey Jones from Japan. He's a TMNT, not TMHT.

Not that I know of. Nunchucks were regularely included for all Mikey Playmates figures, starting with the first 80ies Mikey.
Edit: In the first Turtles movie many scenes did not make it into the EU/UK release, especially ones with nunchucks.
Haha :D The statement about non-us releases not being authentic got me too, shook it off quickly though as I got to understand what "they" mean. If card art is individual for each figure in the non-HERO releases alone, I can actually relate why some people prefer to use the word authentic which is definately a better option than "genuine" ^^



And yes, HERO entitled cards were released in the EU market (UK included) while figures and vehicles under that title featured different languages depending on their region. There were also multi-language cards, eg english, german and french. Or the character portrait areas covered with a white sticker from the distributor with the portrait text translated (total no-go by the way!).

Bandai is/was one of the biggest toy companies in the european region way before Playmates was known. When I got to know Playmates through Turtles figures the first time you had Bandai branded toys almost everyhwere for a long while already.