Our friends over at Playmates toys sent us one of their new TMNT/WWE Crossover action figures, and we were very impressed.

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First, starting off with the packaging, the toy comes in a nice window box featuring both Sting and Raphael from the Nickelodeon cartoon on the box. It's nothing special, but it's a nice-looking bold package, much like the previous Wal-Mart exclusives commemorating TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze.

Once the toy was opened, the first thing that struck me was the size of the figure: it's huge. At least it seems that way compared to the standard Playmates TMNT line. It's also a very heavy, sturdy toy, which makes it clear that Playmates was really going above and beyond in the quality of these figures. To me, the size is both a plus and a minus. On one hand, you get a nicer, bigger toy but the downside is that these toys don't really fit in with any other Turtles toys and also seem too big to fit with standard wrestling figures as well. But as a display piece, which these likely would be, the larger scale is certainly nice.

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The sculpt is impressive for this toy. It's clear that Playmates took the original standard TMNT figures for the new toon, blew them up and built off of that, which is a definate plus as those first figures are still the best to date from the Nickelodeon show.  On top of that original sculpt, they added everything needed to make it look like Raphael dressing up as Sting. He has boots, hair, a modified face sculpt which is nicely reminicient of the classic TMNT, and a coat. What's nice about the sculpt is that it's the perfect middle between a turtle and wresler; it looks like Raphael has dressed up, which which is a cool approach that they carried throughout the line. Articulation is also good, with all of the standard ariculation of the basic Turtles line

The paint is really bold and colorful.  It's nicely detailed on the face as well as the scorpion symbol on his shirt. Much of it is solid black, but it works well and even though many parts aren't painted, it doesn't feel like they should be, the solid black works very well given who this is inspired by. The color scheme on the turtles keeps with the current line of toys, so Raph has the deep green his toys have had since 2012. 

As for accessories, there's only a few, which are geared more towards WWE than TMNT, which was smart as every TMNT collector has about 2,000 sais. It comes with a trashcan lid, wooden sword and baseball bat. Other figures comw with folding chairs and other cool wrestling-specific accessories.

The biggest thing I love about this toy though is something intangible: Nostalgia. I personally am not a wrestling fan, but when I saw these toys I was excited because they reminded me of figures Playmates used to make in the original TMNT toyline. Back in the ealy 90's we got many turtles with all kinds of crazy outfits, from Astronaut Raphael to Cowboy Donatello to Civil War Leonardo to Michelanfelop as a wrestler.  All of those classic toys felt like the Turtles were playing dress-up and the same feeling is here. It's a cool toy with great attention to detail that's also quite silly. Incidentally, the classic set of Turltes this most resembles were when Playmates did a Star Trek/TMNT crossover, and to me, this line of toys feels like a return to their roots.

I completely recommend this toy for both Wrstling and TMNT fans, they seem to be a bit hard to find right now, but I'm sure they'll be showing up on Wal-Mart shelves before long.