Interesting Turtle Find!
 

I was out shopping with my wife (Also a big TMNT fan) today at... Winner's (The last place you expect to find TMNT stuff).

We found this book there:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ADSeUCH5L.jpg

Yeah, it's a kids' book. Whatever. Has anyone seen this before?
It's a simple, 6-page story (With some decent quality pictures for drawing references) but the thing that sold us the most was the fact that it includes twelve mini figurines and a playmat board-game thing
(The figures are the four turtles, April, Splinter, Shredder, two Foot soldiers, a Kraangdroid, a mutagen canister used as dice, and a... giant Kraang with a mohawk..?)

Well anyway, for $8 we figured we couldn't go wrong. Just tried out the board game now, not bad but too short (Figured we'll use the figuirines on other games for fun). I couldn't find any pictures of the inside, figurines or playmat (could take a photo later if anyone wants to see it).

I demand pics of the "giant Kraang with a mohawk."

Well, ok....I'll ask nicely. Can you please post pics of the giant Kraang with a mohawk?

Yeah please take pics of any of the interesting stuff!

Sounds cool, pics please!

Yes! I already bought that at Barnes and Noble!:tgrin:

I'd like to see what the figurines look like too, if you don't mind. :D

Sure thing. Actually, I'll try to get photos of all the figurines tonight.

YEA!!!

I knew being a demanding jerk would pay off. :)

I mean....thanks Retro-Specs. (Cool name BTW.)

Awesome. Can't wait to see those pics. Sounds like an interesting find.

OK, so I snapped some photos of the figurines from the Busy Book set.

Here's the four guys:
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...cs-d6dcu0f.jpg
Raphael has a hard time standing up due to the pose. And yes, Leo has a massive head compared to the others.

Here we have the others, April, Splinter, Shredder, two Foot Soldiers, and the mutagen canister dice:
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...cs-d6dcu0p.jpg
Oddly, April is very tall. Like as tall as Splinter and Shredder. And those two Foot have a hard time standing up, so they're leaning on each other.

Here's the playmat, for the board game:
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...cs-d6dcu0n.jpg
Neat little game, except there is this looping section in the middle unless you can roll two "3"s in a row.

And lastly, everyone's favourite character, Giant Kraang With a Mohawk:
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...cs-d6dcu0x.jpg
I put the Kraang Droid in this photo to show the size difference, which is why I call him "giant".

Groovy. I wonder if that's an intentional mohawk, or just a bit of sprew.
EDIT: I wonder how well he'd do with an actual Kraang by Playmates.

That's actually a neat little thing you found. That's creative. Seems an ok bargain at $8.

That really is a neat little find, nice score Retro. Some of the figures look a little iffy like you said, but they're made well enough. Hell, they look better than the McDonalds toys did.

Yes, it was a bargain. The sticker said it was originally $19.99, but reduced to $7.99. And it was the last copy on their shelf. Something like that just screams "BUY THIS NOW!"

Speaking of the McDonald's toys, we found the Raphael at Goodwill yesterday. They had no price, so the cashier let me take it for $0.99. I plan to repaint it for more accuracy.

I ended up grabbing one on Barnes & Noble's website but with shipping and sh*t it ended up costing $14.99 :| At least it's cheaper than Amazon's got it, though.

This is awesome. My daughter loves busy books. We have a Monsters University, Strawberry Shortcake, Thomas The Tank, Brave, Cars, Princess, and Mickey Mouse.

I am definitely going to get this.

Thanks!

-ms

Maybe the Kraang with the mohawk is supposed to be Kraang Prime!

Oh absolutely. I've picked up toys and DVDs for the same reason, something odd that convinces me there was a sequence of cosmic events that conspired to bring me and this particular item to meet at just the right moment and time, and that I was meant to buy it. :lol:

There used to be a little toy/craft/hobby store in a strip mall not far from where I grew up called Meyer's that would often have random cool stuff like that. Just little toys or books and stuff based on cartoons or movies or comics or whatever, but that you really wouldn't find in chain stores. Also, tons of really awesome bootleg toys, too. Those great, cheap knock-off action figures from China and/or Mexico based on wrestlers or super-heroes, like "Totally Not Spider-Man Because He's Purple". I miss that place.

Oh yeah. There was a drug store in the town I grew up in that had this toy section, and it was full of bootleg Transformers, Masters of the Universe, and TMNT toys. I remember having this horribly moulded turtle figure from there.
This monstrosity, I believe.

He ended up being the "rejected evil twin turtle" when I played TMNT as a kid.

:o:lol: That's amaaaaaaazing! :lol: I LOVE sh*t like that. I also love that the "ironic" market of people who actually buy these f*cking ridiculous things BECAUSE of how sh*tty they are far out-numbers the amount of gullible, near-sighted kids and parents who are the target audience.

As a kid I had almost as many of the bootleg guys as the legit ones. Even had a few random, generic playsets for some of them, like "Dollar Store Kinda-Sorta Castle Grayskull" and a few generic wrestling rings. Awesome stuff. My all-time favorite bootleg was a really high-quality Hulk Hogan knock-off from 1985 or so. It was in the style of the He-Man and AWA figures from back then, exact same body type. These things were EVERYWHERE back in the 80s and early 90s, usually in two-packs, always "Not Hulk Hogan At All" and some other guy. Sometimes it was "Randy Savage With Gray Or Blonde Hair", but sometimes you'd get lucky and it'd be some totally random, crazy masked guy. I even had one who, for some reason, had an actual werewolf head. Never questioned it. Sometimes the figures would come with different little title belts of various colors. Anyway, a lot of the Hogans were the same, almost identical, despite all the bootlegs being made by different companies all over the world. Usually the paint jobs and colors were the same, but somehow, I ended up with one of higher quality than most. Instead of regular plain canary-yellow and making his hair the exact same color as his trunks, they took the effort to use gold paint on his hair and mustache, and the added texture actually makes the head look great. The skin color was more tan and realistic by far, as most of the bootlegs had skin that was either too pale or too pink. And his title belt was made of some kind of felt with a gold sticker saying "World Champion" on it; it actually looked almost exactly like the WWF Title Hogan won in 1984. It looks so good for a bootleg I always proudly displayed it along with all my other Hogan figures, as it doesn't look second-rate at all. The only thing that gives it away as not a real Hogan is that he has royal blue wristbands. I have no idea where it came from or how I ended up with it, but I would love to find out what line it was from. It would be almost impossible to find out, I'm sure. :ohwell:

Man, I miss being a kid. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I still actively played with my action figures until I was in high school. As I started displaying them more intricately, it just became more of a hassle to take them down to play with them and then have to set everything back up again. But I'd be lying if I said my TNA Hogan figure never, ever dropped the leg on Jeff Jarrett from time to time still... ;)

Edit: I decided to search for bootleg wrestling figures and this was the first thing that came up for me. I totally had this guy! http://www.etsy.com/listing/11543389...FUmk4Aodeh4AfQ

...oh how I wish the basic assortment foot soldiers could pose like that. smh

Nonetheless, this is an awesome find! The mutagen canister dice is a cool idea...!

The swords on the Foot Soldiers and Leonardo look removable and Mikey's left arm looks posable? Any truth to that?
...and do you have a Basic Assortment Kraang? If so, does that "giant" Kraang fit in it?

I will buy this just for the Mohawk Kraang... if I can find it for msrp :)

Whoa. Awesome pics, Retro. Thanks for sharing those. That Kraang with a mohawk looks pretty damn sweet.

This is freaking awesome, dude!

Oh yeah, I totally relate to this. See, I actually didn't have any WWF stuff as a kid - mother saw it as too violent (So of course, get the ninja turtles with weapons instead), even though my grandfather, whom we lived with, watched WWF every chance he got.

But, my best friend had a pretty substantial collection, and I remember those knock-off Hogans and Savage (More often than not, I'd play with toys they way they weren't intended. Came up with a way to use the WWF ring as a sling-shot to fling a guy at some other figurines on a shelf).

I think I had a large number of bootleg Transformers, and I can see they're still being sold at the dollar stores here. I will admit, I've been tempted more than once. ;)

I really know what you mean about missing being a kid. I get myself obsessed with "retro" stuff just because it feels like a better time, makes you want to keep it alive.

Actually no, nothing moves or detaches on this figurines. Much too bad, eh?

I don't have any of the Nick figurines (yet) so I couldn't tell you if this Kraang would fit or not.

Cool find! Love the figures for the game, but as a long-time tabletop RPG gamer, I especially LOVE the mutagen canister die!! I've played D&D using some of those CrystalCaste hexagonal dice on occasion, and this reminds me of those, but it's so cute!! And did I mention that my hubby and I also collect unusual dice to use in our games? One of our favorites is a pair of six-sided standard dice- with a twist: one is all sixes, the other is all twos and fives. It's a "fixed" set of craps dice- always a seven or eleven with those babies, LOL!! But seriously, awesome buy, and I'm intrigued by the giant Kraang!

We have neighbours below us that collect some unique die as well, though the guy is into WoW, not tabletop. Nontheless, I've got to show him the mutagen canister dice. He's the one who is responsible for us getting back into TMNT (And for my wife getting into TMNT at all, for getting us to watch the OT's season 1 during a visit). Unfortunately this dice only has 1, 2 and 3.

Anyway, my wife and I tried out tabletop gaming once, with the Lord of the Rings set, in a mall (She's a big LotR fan). We almost bought the Mines of Moria set that day, and the store send us home with free figures of Gimli and Legolas that we got to paint.

Now with that in mind, after getting these figurines of TMNT in this book set, one thing comes to mind: invent a TMNT tabletop game! We were already considering drawing some new board games to go with the figures, since the playmat that came with it is relatively simple.

Awesome! I'm going to see if I could find this just for Mohawk Kraang