is this 10-back legit?
 

Hey there, sorry for the potentially amateur question, but... is this Mikey a legit '88 10-back? I've been collecting TMNT since I was a kid in the 90s but never went after MOC. I came across a seemingly good deal for this guy though (as well as Leo and Donatello) and figured I might give it a go. What's giving me pause though is the nunchucks - I thought the original runs were all the super slim wire of plastic that broke if you sneezed? This looks to be the thicker style I'm used to seeing in the later runs. His belt is also strange, the "clasp" seems to be way off to the side, like the recess for the buckle isn't aligned correctly with the peg that goes through the buckle. That's hard to explain (and photograph) but hopefully that makes sense.

Anyway yeah, I'm realizing I don't really know what I'm looking at. There aren't any obvious tells like a Nickelodeon logo and the date and legal etc look right on the card. There's also an old Target price tag on each of them for $4.49 which seems right. But what do you turtle scholars think?

Well at a glance it seems like your concern is born of the plastic thickness of the weapon as measured against an "original run". I can't speak to that per se, but I can say that 10-back isn't entirely an "original run" given that there is no Turtle Club insert packed behind the figure in the bubble.

I can't scrutinize the fine print very well because of the photo resolution, but there's nothing that stands out to me as "fake".

I can say that there are tells of true counterfeiting. A buddy of mine and I were at a Disc Replay store about two years back. They had a bunch of boxed G2 Transformers for sale there and I asked if they were authentic or if they were the modern re-issues. The employee was a little dodgy and gave me the "we don't know but they came in on a collection and that's all we can go by". So I looked at a few of them at found some overlapped printing on the box art - presumably from a **** scanning and pasting job for whoever actually printed the faux boxes. You should have seen the employee clutch up when I pointed it out - I honestly couldn't tell if it was because he knew and I caught it, or if it was because he didn't know and I caught it. :lol:

My point? Re-releases and re-cards are so common now that often all you can do is look for obvious or semi-obvious tells, otherwise it is what it is. I hate to say that but it is what it is.

On another note - maybe you can check the glue lines on the bubble. A lot of the original Playmates stuff gets re-sealed because they lose integrity from the card to the bubble. Everything is authentic, but you can always look at the glue lines for "old" glue, versus "re-sealed" glue, versus a "crisp and new glue job" that might help a bit.

It’s a late 1989 to early ‘91 hard head Michelangelo. I don’t know why Playmates never changed the dates on the back of the card for these. Unfortunately, it is not from 1988. Only the soft heads with the fan forms are. The hard heads were released after a boy swallowed a soft head turtle (not sure which one).

Ok good to know, thanks guys! I knew these weren't soft heads (or at least was pretty positive) but didn't realize they kept the 10-backs going past 1988. So I guess this one is on me since nothing is pointing to these being fake at all. Oh well, the price was low enough to take a gamble on.

This is real. The era of TMNT this is from, you'd be hard pressed not to notice a bootleg. The quality of the KOs of these fugures is laughable. Also, Nickelodeon didn't own TMNT when these were released. So you wont find their branding anywhere on the package. This is a later release Michelangelo 10 back

Also that figure is unpunched, it never made it to a peg in the store which is probably why theres no price sticker too