Quote:
Originally Posted by mikey0
It goes without saying that many children of the early ‘90s who were on the hunt for the original wave 1 turtles dreaded seeing the Head Droppin’ turtles, Storage Shell turtles, and Wacky Action turtles at different retailers. I’m sure a good number of adult collectors of the original 1988 toyline wanted
I’m sure you can tell, I’m in the camp of people who were not in favor of variants like Mike, the Sewer Surfer, Raph, the Space Cadet, and Storage Shell Donatello. Playmates should have kept the head molds simple like they were for the first wave turtles. I, also, do not like the solid head molds for the first wave turtles reissues. The soft rubber heads were better.
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Were there many adult collectors in the late 80s early 90s? I'm guessing it was a very small niche that didn't grow until the 70s/80s kids grew up and were nostalgic for their toys.
I personally loved Mike the Sewer Surfer and Raph the space cadet as a kid, I would not buy them now but they were cool to me as a kid, I had tons of variants of Raphael for god knows what reason. As I said, I think they're dumb now and didn't like them in other toylines even as a kid but since we're adults now instead of bashing them we can try to analyze why companies make them, it's mostly because people buy them, they have the sales data not us and are just speculating
I did find the super gimmicky ones unappealing like strage shell donatello that you provide but some gimmicks were somewhat appealing like the mutating turtles or event he backflipping ones event though in reality they had little play potential. They did release a ton of gimmicky figures that I cared nothing for like the troll ones but those seem more like desperate attempts of TMNT trying to keep their relevancy when competing with other toylines that were beating them in sales so they would just mimic that instead of doing say more mutants that didn't sell. They did re-release the basic figures a few more times even in the late 90s on KB toys so they did try to get some more sales.
I think it has to do more with kids growing out of the things they liked and sales dwindling down and these moves the companies make to save the toyline are then seen by fans in the future as the moves that killed the line but it was already happening, it's sort of a last attempt to save it and when it backfired it just made it happen quicker but it was happening sooner rather than later. I get this feeling after watching many episodes of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix, He-Man and the like were old for new generations and there was no saving them, yes some decisions helped the line do badly but it was because they were trying to recuperate their sales. The internet is always full of analysts and i see plenty of youtube videos where the creator gets praised but Hindsight is 20/20.