By now most of you know that I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You probably also know that I love the Ghostbusters even more. As we near the end of the first annual We Just Ghoul Here, I thought I would tell the story about one of the times my two loves came together with epic results.
It’s no secret that as a toy line nears the end of its run, designers get creative and that can produce some of the best figures of the entire series. Just look at some of the figures from the end of the original TMNT toyline from Playmates. They had TMNT Turtle Trolls, Dinosaur figures, and Super Mutant figures that took character designs to a whole new level of awesome. They even had Pizza Tossin’ Turtles that shot pizzas out of their chest like the old school Pizza Shooter vehicle. Then there were the Metal Mutants which gave the Turtles (and Shredder) total radical armor and allowed them to transform into “Legendary Animals.” I love how creative some toy designers get when their told it’s the end of the road for a particular series and sometimes in the middle of the run they get bored and go decide people will buy whatever they decide to throw together. This is just a small selection of the craziness this line endured. Check out more at this online TMNT museum which is where I found these fantastic photos.
I think it’s this idea that people will buy anything that gave us some of the coolest TMNT figures of the entire line, everyone’s favorite Universal Monsters got the TMNT treatment with two separate series releases and eight figures total! These are some of the most sought after Turtles figures by TMNT fans and fans of the Universal Monsters. Series one had Donnie as Dracula, Mikey as Frankenstein’s Monster, Leo as the Wolfman and Raph as the Mummy. I know that I at least have Donnie and Raph somewhere in the garage but I know that I don’t have any of series two which included Mikey as the Invisible Man, April as the Bride of Frankenstein, Leo as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Raph as a crazy mutant with pulsating brain and lobster claws. I would have loved to see Shredder as the Phantom of the Opera and Splinter as Dr. Jekyll.
Sadly, I can’t afford to pay eBay prices for these figures (unless you can get 50 of your closest friends to join our Nerd Crew on Patreon?) but luckily last fall they released another line of Monster figures for the TMNT series that aired on Nickelodeon until earlier this year. I was able to pick up those six figures which include Mikey as Teen Wolf, Donnie as Frankenstein’s Monster, Leo as a Mummy and Raph as a Vampire. The series also included two more figures that saw Raph and Leo as monster hunters! Since I missed out on the original Playmates figures from the 90s, I didn’t hesitate to grab these while they were on store shelves. They were well worth searching for and can still be gotten on eBay for a reasonable price if you’re looking. Last month, Montotees.com even released a print from Ciro Nieli featuring the brothers in their monster guises.
As fun as that end of the line series of monster figures was to find on store shelves, they still aren’t anywhere near as awesome as the series’ last hoorah. Announced at San Diego Comic Con 2017, Playmates had one last ace up their sleeves. As part of the 6” line of TMNT figures they produced mashup figures of everyone’s favorite heroes in a half shell and the Ghostbusters calling them simply “Ninja Ghostbusters.” You can imagine when I found out about these, my face melted and my wife took my wallet away to make sure I didn’t give them ALL of our money.
Announced as Target exclusives, the four figures included Leo as Ray, Mikey as Peter, Donnie as Egon and Raph as Winston (complete with mustache.) Each figure came with a PKE meter, Proton Pack with wand, Ghost Trap and translucent ghost figure. All of them still wore their signature eye masks in the appropriate colors, but in case you weren’t sure which turtle was which, the proton streams on their packs each featured the corresponding color at their cores.
To say I was excited was an understatement. I had just finished reading the first run of IDW’s TMNT/ Ghostbusters crossover series and then I found out my two favorite fandoms were having a baby! I was going to get these guys come hell or high eBay prices. I knew that the series was nearing the end of its run on Nickelodeon at the end of 2017 and since there was no release window given for these figures I thought they would show up sometime around Halloween. There was no way I was going to miss these guys. I looked for news online, I’d check Target’s website twice a week, I would make excuses to go to Target just to check the toy isle to see if those damn WWE TMNT figures had finally been replaced by the Ninja Ghostbusters. I was a man possessed.
Months of searching and Halloween came and went and still there was no sign of the figures. I thought, maybe they’re waiting for the Christmas shopping season to start so I told myself the weeks leading up to Black Friday would see them released but they still didn’t show up. I was starting to get worried. The series had wrapped up in November and here I was still waiting for these damn toys to show up! Had I missed them? Nothing was showing up on eBay so I didn’t think that was very likely. Then I began to worry they had been canceled and I would never get the chance to hold them in my arms. After all, there are plenty of toy lines that get canceled before announced toys get their release (I’m looking at you Food Fighters!) I was losing hope, fast.
Christmas shopping season came around and I was still making tons of Target runs and I was still going down the TMNT isle every time I went but I wasn’t expecting to find much. Then finally after months of searching and scouring and almost giving up hope, I walked into a Target on December 17th, 2017 and there they were. Bottom shelf, lined up front to back, Leo, Mikey, Donnie, Raph, my Ninja Ghostbusters. I didn’t even hesitate, I grabbed all four, tears of happiness and excitement welling in my eyes. Not only did they have them, but they had all four of them and they were on sale for 50% off! The toy gods were smiling on me. As I approached my then pregnant wife with an armful of Teenage Mutant Ninja Ghostbusting Turtles she rolled her eyes at me. Then she noticed I was teary eyed and asked what was wrong. Breathlessly all I could say in a teeny tiny voice was “They have them.” Then I put them in the cart and proceeded to try and explain my month’s long obsession with the Turtle isle at Target and why I had to drop all that money on toys a week before Christmas.
I was certainly lucky to find the Turtles that day. I never again saw them in any store and a few days later there were scattered eBay listings for complete sets going for double what they cost at retail. I don’t know what it was about the mashup that made me want them so bad. Believe it or not, I don’t buy that many action figures. Aside from a couple of the Ghostbusters action figures that came out with the 2016 film, I hadn’t purchased a figure like that in ten years or more. Whether it was because it was Ghostbusters or TMNT I’ll never know. I may never own all of the original Universal Monsters/ TMNT mashup figures but at least I have these, and thanks to artists like The Junk Ship and Jumbo Nuggatron I can own some fantastic pins featuring mashups of figures I’d otherwise never be able to afford.
So why am I writing about action figures I bought in December during our Halloween event and not Christmas or even Comic Con? I honestly don’t know. Probably because figures like that are a good reminder of what Halloween is to me. Other holidays have their representatives that we associate with the season like Christmas with Santa and Easter is the Bunny, but for Halloween everything is on the table from a Ninja Turtle, Iron Man or a classic ghost and skeleton. Every year when we do our makeup and put on a spooky costume we become living mashups (not to be confused with juicy contradictions) and pretend to be something else. We get to join ourselves with the things we love and create something entirely unique. Whether it’s a homemade Ninja Turtle costume when you’re five years old or a sequined dress and a wig when you’re twenty-five, every costume is as unique as the body inside it.
I think Lou Rawls sums up this crazy holiday best, at least for me, sums up Halloween in the most delightful way possible. “This is the night. I was created for. I’m gonna put on my best disguise and go knockin’ on everybody’s door. This is the night I’m gonna hit the street, ‘cause this is the night folks are givin’ away so many good things to eat. You know life could be so sweet if every night was a night to go trick or treat.”
Thank you all for joining us for the first We Just Ghoul Here Halloween event. The past six weeks have been stressful, but so much damn fun. I started planning this way back in June and everyone thought I was crazy. I can’t wait to do it again next year! I’ll be back with the rest of the Nerd Crew next Tuesday as we bring you this year’s final episode of We Just Ghoul Here. There may still be one more surprise left for Halloween day, but we’ll see if I’m still alive by then. Until next time, we just ghoul here and now you do BOOO!
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