Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem Figures and Pizzafire Van Review

Now, if you want to evaluate a new Ninja Turtles toy line, you’ve got to start with the base figures, before all the variants come out. Luckily for us, we have all 4 turtle brothers! The packaging is nice for in-box collectors, but who are we kidding, let’s open them from their plastic shell! These figures are excellent in the looks department. Mutant Mayhem has done an excellent job redesigning the turtles, and Playmates, in turn, has excellently crafted them in figure form. The cartoony look comes through via the varying body shapes, very bright and colorful paint apps, and molded detail. Each turtle has unique details that express their individuality, like Raphael’s scars, Donatello’s fanny pack, and their extremely expressive faces. They each have articulation in the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and feet. Despite no waist articulation, and a 90 degree restriction on knees and elbows, you can make all manner of cool poses with these guys. The most surprising limitation is the ankles, which feature a swivel in lieu of a hinge. This makes balancing slightly harder, but it’s not too bad. Complete the look with their accessories, which include their signature weapons, plus baby turtles and a rack of extra weapons. Also, they have weapon storage!

The Pizzafire Van is up next. This guys is sold separately from the figures, but is very much compatible with them. Out of box, there’s a minor bit of assembly required, and a fair amount of stickers. Most of them are really nice looking, and have straight, uneven edges to adhere to the visual style of Mutant Mayhem. The front, back, and side doors open up to allow easy access to the interior where you can pose your (sold separate) Ninja Turtles figures. They sit in the van well, but can jostle around a little during play. The rails on the top and back of the van offer grip points for the figures, and the back bumper has small platforms to plug their feet into for even more stability and posing play. Press the giant slice on top to deploy the motorized pizza launcher, which will need 3 AA batteries to operate. This pizza van has great synergy with the figures and was clearly designed with them in mind!