The greatest thing about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure line from the early 1990s was that the toymakers just went nuts designing a whole slew of brand new characters. And they weren’t just turtles. They were lions and dragons and ducks and gorillas, oh my! These mutants almost never appeared in the actual cartoon, and rarely in the comics. They existed only to enrich the lives of the toy-buying public who didn’t just want to buy variations of the main four Ninja Turtles – though there were a lot of those as well.

These were wholly original characters sprung forth from very creative minds – and you can bet I owned a whole bunch!

This takes me back…

These unique TMNT characters fit right into my love of fan fiction. Characters that exist on the fringes of the world, but still part of the world, are exactly what I like to write when it comes to fan fiction. That’s why I love these additional TMNT characters so much. Toymakers did the same thing with G.I.Joes and Transformers, adding new characters just for the fun of it. I wish more toylines did this. They have all these superhero movie tie-in action figures, why not make a few more characters who exist in the comics but didn’t make it into the movies? Like a Dark Knight Rises version of Robin or the Riddler. Or Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch from The Avengers. I think it would be awesome.

What else is awesome? These 6 unique TMNT action figure characters! And anyone interested in checking out all of the TMNT toys, visit this glorious website, which I used to make this list.

Read the rest of this entry →