Posts tagged with "raphael" - 1
Posted August 9, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Raphael is my favorite Ninja Turtle.  Sort of.  Raphael was my favorite Ninja Turtle from the cartoon of my youth, but that rendition of Raphael is an aberration.  In the original comics (and thus everything else besides the original cartoon) Raphael was the dark angsty rebellious one.  (Basically Wolverine.)  And so I'm generally SOL on new Turtles stuff since the part I liked the best isn't ever repeated.

The part I liked second best?  Krang.  Whoops.

Look, the nine-year-old in me just wants the red guy to be the cheerful dumb-wordplay spouter.  His job is to be funny and not in a "he's kind of touched in the head" sort of way Mikey is.  His job is to be Yakko Warner, but as a fork-carrying anthropomorphic turtle.

(Apparently being Yakko is Donatello's new job.)

And so I picked up the "Classics" Raphael from Laughing Ogre yesterday.  He's kind of massive.  See, he's a six-inch toy, but not six-inch scale, where one inch generally represents one foot.   This is too bad, because this means he can't hang out with anybody but his brothers, who I sure hope I don't end up buying.   He sees eye-to-eye with Batman, and that's just wrong.  But I understand.  At proper six-inch scale, you couldn't get nearly all the joints they've packed into this guy.  (He'd basically be the size of a G.I. Joe, and I don't think those have individually-articulated toes and universal-joint thumbs.)

Yeah, all his digits are articulated, and his thumbs additionally so.  He's got some wrist articulation,  his elbows and knees are double-jointed so they can bend more realistically, and he's got balljointed mid-torso joint as well.  Not many Ninja Turtle toys can turn at the waist.  The only thing I really found lacking was how shallow his neck articulation is.  With all of this limb range, it would really help if his head could look up.  It kind of makes the whole exercise a little futile.

He comes with a sewer grate with his name tampographed on it and a few footpegs.  This is nice because he's a little backheavy FOR SOME REASON, and his many many joints don't always support him well, and so the stand aids stability a bit.  His hands grip his sais well despite his finger articulation, plus the sais can store in his belt.  I do kind of wish he had a swappable head or a different expression.  The classic Ninja Turtle 8-shaped grimace isn't really how I picture happy-snarky 80s toon Raphael.  But I understand it.

Of course, if Playmates ever wants to expand their Classics toys to other characters, due to the 6-inch thing, Shredder would be a pretty damn huge toy.  I would buy it, but it would be huge.

I would also buy any Krang.
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