Playmates losing TMNT license December 31, 2026
 

Press release from Playmates:

https://doc.irasia.com/listco/hk/pla...nouncement.pdf

Just heard about this. Kinda shocking, to be honest. At the end of next year, they’ll be at 38 years with the license.

Whatever you think of the more recent output, that’s still one hell of an incredible run.

Curious to see who gets the license next.

Was Super7 purposely holding out information for this moment...?

Further grim tidings for Mutant Mayhem sequels. Now no toy lines for them?

Yes...TMNT ultimate Classics continues.....stay tuned :lol:

Man end of an era to be sure. That’s great for adult collector companies

Or they sadly may cancel the movie altogether, Paramount wanted to Sonic-ify the license, so they announced a new movie and cancelled Tales. Had MM2 stuck to its original release date, it absolutely would’ve been covered by this license.

You have to applaud Playmates for keeping their lines affordable. I hope they pump out whatever they can especially for the retro line before it’s over.

Wow. I’m not even sure how to process this…

I think that’s unlikely. Surely Paramount will have a DEAL in place with someone else ready to take effect on January 2nd 2027. So even if MM2 keeps that September release date, that’s 9 whole months to crap something out.

That is huge news....

Well everyone and their mother has a license to make the figures, so in a way it doesn't really matter. I think between the dozens and dozens of lines surely one that fits the needs of every TMNT fan already exists.
On the other hand, playmates figures had a certain style that I'll miss. Not to mention they are one of the few toy companies that can make decent fun toys to play with and accessories/playsets to go along with them at an affordable price. It's a bit sad, same that we now won't see re-releases of the original turtles anymore, sure it's been done to death by now but the fact that it'll never happen again is a bit sad.

I haven't bought any toys in like 15 years, but even then this news hit me pretty hard. I grew up with the Playmates toys in the 80's and 90's, had all the mutants and all the bad guys. Still love the old figures. Also bought every major character in their 2k3 line. I stopped after the first wave of Nick 2012 figures.

This really is a big deal given Playmates had been with TMNT for almost 40 years. Feels like the end of an era.

Welp now I *really* wish I'd bought Turbo-Cammy and Crabapult!

But yeah this is big news. Playmates literally invented TMNT toys. And at this point Playmates is very nearly the only TMNT I'm still collecting. I can definitively state that this means that I will finally retire from it. I will not be following to a new line.

Crazy. Thank goodness we got the retro blitzkrieg that we did over these last few years and I really do hope we get some good classic reissues in the final stretch. Scratch, Hotspot, come home to daddy and be our final loyalty reward!

However I'm not personally optimistic they'll deliver much now that the writing is on the wall. In the past Playmates seems to either be all in, or phoning it in, and this feels like it might swing them back to the phone...

Yeah, I hope that we get some good figures from playmates in 2026. What are your realistic wishlists?

-One Final re-release of the original turtles, make them gold, transparent, black light figures I don't know something interesting to make it worth getting.
-One more original take not based on anything basic turtles + shredder figure

I guess that's about it, first one is somewhat realistic, second one I don't see them doing it but it'd be the most interesting one. But knowing playmates they won't treat 2026 any different we'll just see the re-issues line continued and some repaints of the MM toyline. I guess they could do a "history of the TMNT" like they've done in the past with Leo or whatever from the different toylines they've made which they've done in the past.

Insane end of an era. But all things considered, it may have been more of a blow, too, if so many other companies weren't already doing so much with the license now ... NECA, Mondo, McFarlane, Super7 (kinda, they seem to be slowing down).

Moreso, it's like the history with the franchise since they were there at the beginning, and I just wonder who is going to fill that void for smaller kid figures at the smaller price point. Playmates never really found a way to nail the collector market, but seemed to be doing well ... "okay" for themselves with Mutant Mayhem stuff.

Going back to re-release old figures using old molds from the 80's and 90's is cash-grab creative bankruptcy.

It is huge news given how long Playmates has been associated with the I.P., but quite frankly they deserve to lose the license. The last semi-decent toys they pumped out were from the 2007 movie. The 2012 stuff has a certain degree of charm, but they were more akin to hollow-plastic rotocast statues that you'd pull out of a gumball machine.

Same. I thought they were for-sure going to lose the license after the Viacom buyout.

My favorite TMNT releases lately have been the original line re-releases. Seeing Scaletail on store shelves in original packaging was unreal.

I hope Playmates CRAMS their final year with original run re-releases. I really wanted to see the Mini Mutants come back out.

And, once this year is over, hopefully Viacom will be able to have access to the molds to reproduce the original figures themselves. To lose those forever would be a tragedy.

Next year would be perfect for a Mini Mutant Tokka Technodrome Playset re-issue.

I, for one, cannot wait to see the new Tokka and Rahzar on the TotTMNT cards. Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go!

I remember the last time I got a new Playmates TMNT figure... when I was like 7 years-old.

Aside from the Godzilla x TMNT, Playmates has lost much of its appeal.

The origins-style line has potential, but the rate is slow, much slower than even Super7.

Not releasing the two remaining brothers from the high school Mutant Mayhem line was in bad taste, yet they release everything else.

Great that they re-released Technodrome, Party Wagon, Blimp and Module (my fave from back in the day) for those that care. But the Channel 6 News Van is where it is at.

I don't collect vintage, but I do collect vintage-upscale, so I am hoping for some news from Super7, but it is unclear to me who has the rights to the toy designs, Playmates, Varner or Viacom.

Yup. See, had they embraced that more? They'd have a minor, ongoing "win" on their hands.

I mean to be fair NECA has been smoking playmates in everything turtle related.

Losing those molds entirely is what I’m afraid of.

The original TMNT toys are absolute all-time classics but I see no reason to weep now. They only stepped up when forced to and by then it was absolutely too late. I would like to buy one of the original turtles for nostalgia sake if they’re not already too rare and expensive.

The thing is, Playmates is the only reason the original TMNT cartoon exists, and then the cartoon paved the way to the original live-action movies, Archie TMNT, etc. Without Playmates, none of this would exist, and it was just be the Mirage comics.

Watch the documentaries on the Turtle doc and others where the only reason the cartoon deal went through was because of Playmates. They are the reason modern TMNT exists.

Playmates is everything I love about TMNT basically, but at the same time it was Playmates from the 90s that I love.

I read the Press Release, to me it sounds like they were negotiating but once Skydance came into the picture they likely raised the price and messed negotiations up for Playmates and are asking for much more.

Let's take a look at the recent Playmates and TMNT toylines:
Mutant Mayhem didn't seem to sell too well, Tales is likely doing worse
Rise was an absolute bomb
Before that the 2012 series started well but didn't do as well towards the end
Out of the Shadows Toyline was another bomb

The re-issues seem to have been doing well and/or decent enough
any special/limited editions they did also seemed to do well
The Classics line which includes their odd crossovers with stuff like strangerthings/street fighter also seemd to do fine

Unsure how Remastered seemed to do but it seems they were leaning more towards gimmicky stuff since its what sold like say Godzilla x TMNT.

So yeah I doubt they were making money hand over fist. Unsure how the whole sublicensing to other companies was working for them, if they got any money for it or if other companies had difficulty working with Playmates or perhaps they had nothing to do with it.

But counting how many bombs they've had I'm sure they weren't willing to pay premium price for the license which Skydance might think they have now that they are the new owners.

I haven't bought a Playmates figure since Usagi. :lol:

Wait... Does that mean that Super7 could release their Ultimates version in 2027? Wasn't it rumoured that Playmates were somehow preventing that?

It’s why Remastered exists.

Yeah... pass.

I was excited to see what Super7 (specifically the Four Horsemen) were going to do with the figure. It would've been more than just a remake with updated articulation.

Seth Rogan killed Playmates....and April

Paramount Killed The Last Ronin.

:lol::lol:
Oh my God that is terrific....

OMG, :lol: I didn't even consider that framing at all....

I wasn’t shocked when I saw this...not that I expected it. I was just a little surprised. Someone else will definitely keep TMNT going though. I mean outside of the more expensive collector brands.

I’ve been wanting to get the First Sketch Turtles (the round colored ones). They were only $25 for all of them on Amazon Prime day last year. Insanely cheap but I couldn’t get them at the time.

Last Playmates Turtle I got must be Classics Mikey. The line that was modeled to be more cartoon accurate. I still have him on display too. It’s quite nice imo. I had planned to get the rest but never got around to it.

I know some people are saddened by this, and I certainly have warm memories of the original and the 2k3 line, but Playmates can honestly suck my dick. Good riddance.

They’re the reason for a lot of the dumber aspect of the cartoons. They didn’t really stick out in the FW show as bad, but there’s plenty of facepalm moments of product placement in 4kids and 2012 that dragged them down.

They also sh*t all over the 1990 movie when they saw the first cut and caused a lot of drama behind the scenes, didn’t really help out financially. I wish they would have really stuck it to Playmates and just went with red masks lol.

I also think Playmates had a hand in making the PD turtles being big, disgusting and busy as possible, design-wise. They wanted them to starkly contrast the clean/small 2012 turtles on the toy shelves.

And yeah, don’t get me started on MM/“Tales”.


https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...ZUB9uzAUs&s=10

Presumably SURGE would have continued to play hardball with every other toy company and eventually they still would have struck a deal with SOMEBODY. Maybe not as great of a deal or maybe an even better one but who knows.

Pixel Dan just proposed a terrible thought, what if one of the big two outbid Playmates for the line?

Mattel basically shut down my interest in MotU once they skittled Super7's Classics to bring out Origins and later Masterverse.

If NECA were to stop their Mirage and Archie lines I can't see I'd pick up any other Turtles figures. And I can't imagine Hasbro or Mattel doing comparable work on either of those comics lines (though it might give NECA a reason to lean into an Usagi Yojimbo line).

I don’t collect toys at all outside of TMNT, so I’m talking out of my ass here, but I do own the entire TMNT/MMPR crossover line and they’re pretty nice figures for a reasonable enough price.

Frankly I'm disappointed by literally every toy company right now. Perhaps for slightly different reasons when it comes to each. I think that my mid-adulthood return to early-childhood has all but played out. The fact that this partnership is dying as it reached roughly the same age I have reached, when I too am taking stock and saying "it is time for this to end", is maybe not all that surprising.

This development seems to be bringing many folks out of the woodwork with opinions that fascinate me. I have always felt there is room for all tiers of TMNT toys/collectibles, especially since the companies realized this themselves over the past couple decades. The undeniable things that were nice about Playmates - the price, of course, but also they have always been "good old fashioned hunting". Frustratingly fun, you had to put in leg work to catch 'em all - right up until today. Other toy companies artificially limit their pipelines/quantities to give that same experience but Playmates just did it naturally, the old fashioned way.

Playmates has at times been: great; meh; total crap - in cycles. The 2012 line went on long enough to span the full gamut. I dunno if those hating on MM/Tales are hating the whole incarnation, or the toys, or what...but either way that hate feels misguided because I would say Playmates is back to "great" right now and the movie/show are darn good too.

Kinda funny now to think that among the last thing they produced were hilarious bootlegs, parody of parody of themselves. TMNT has gone postmodern, so we cannot be surprised that the foundations are beginning to crumble!

I hope Playmates continues to pump out reissues collectors want in 2026. Antrax, Wyrm, and Usagi are a start, but we need blue stripe April, no stripe April, orange and blue April (w [for those that missed out] and w/o PRESS sign), Ace Duck, Metalhead, Scratch, Mona Lisa, and a Metallic Foot Soldier. Time to get serious, Playmates!

Wow... I always associated Playmates toys with the turtles. From the FW, the 2K3, 2012, that CGI movie and now Mutant Mayhem.

I wonder if they're still doing 2026 to release a few more waves of Mutant Mayhem whenever they release the second movie? It would be weird if some other company took over for Mutant Mayhem figures for the sequel.