Mattel x TMNT.

[ChrisLyne]

I think the graphic style being used for World of TMNT and the Mattel announcement is something that's come from Paramount so maybe there's a chance this will remain the line look when Mattel takes over, but I could also see Mattel wanting a clean break and their own look for the line.

For the collector line I really hope they do something closer to Classics than Masterverse. Meaning one homogeneous line rather than sublines and multiple styles under the same line. NECA has basically covered pretty much everything "on model" except for 2003 (which S7 is doing) anyway. So take the designs from all the various comics/shows/films and put them into a singular line style (whatever that ends up being).

 

[NORM]

I get where people are coming from wanting the adult collector line to be something more akin to Marvel Legends. One style more unified, generalized. I don’t know how easy that will be to pull off for every character design. There isn’t always one iconic look for each character that will satisfy everyone. I don’t know how great the designers at Mattel are at making a universal look. They’ve proven that yes, they can redesign well with Masterverse, but with NECA having covered SO MANY of the bases, so many different specific styles, I don’t know what ground hasn’t been covered nor how creative Mattel can be.

 

[Damien]

I don’t know how easy that will be to pull off for every character design.

Probably fairly easy. If you look across every variation of TMNT, most characters, and certainly the important ones, have elements to their design that repeat across all iterations. The changes are stylistic. So it's actually a lot like Marvel Legends where you have to distill those elements down to a non-stylized action figure.
An 'ML-style' TMNT line would just need to choose which parts of which versions of those characters it wants to utilize. The hard part is really just being spoiled for choice.

There isn’t always one iconic look for each character that will satisfy everyone.

That's absolutely true, but it's also true of every other TMNT line ever made.
A good example here is Mezco. They're doing their own version of TMNT, kind of doing what I mentioned above - pulling from the different sources and making a singular version of each character that is very clearly that character but doesn't owe its entire design to one specific version of that character. Those figures have been wildly popular and even people that cannot afford them seem to think they're excellent designs.
No reason Mattel can't do basically the same thing. It'll never satisfy everyone, and that shouldn't be the goal or they fail before they even get started.

I don’t know how great the designers at Mattel are at making a universal look.

It definitely depends on who they put in charge of it. But again, that's true of anything.

but with NECA having covered SO MANY of the bases, so many different specific styles, I don’t know what ground hasn’t been covered nor how creative Mattel can be.

The 'unified line' is literally the ground that hasn't been covered.
When it came out that NECA was going to do stuff in the cartoon line that hadn't actually been in the cartoon at all, but just re-interpreted designs into 'what if this had been in the cartoon?' - people went nuts for it. It was a GREAT idea. I would argue there is a hell of an appetite among collectors for a Turtles line that can bring in everything and do everything, all in a style that fits together. And if those figures can ALSO be displayed with Marvel Legends Daredevil? C'mon. License to print money.

And I guarantee you that Mattel is aware of that possibility, as was Hasbro.

 

[gpmartin414]

I’m not into MOTU, so not exactly sure what the classics and master verse distinctions mean. I will say, though, that I prefer figures that look source accurate vs. some sort of conglomerated look. Marvel Legends has a house style they use on most figures that makes them not quite look like the source material but instead the ML team’s interpretation of that look.


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[Misfit]

At this point it seems the real challenge is doing something unique. Even the companies going their own way (Mety, Mondo, Heat Boys, Fortnite) end up having a very similar look. Everyone seems to like adding pouches, wraps, cross-straps, etc. to the point where I'm personally sick of certain elements. I think if I were in charge at Mattel, I'd be accepting pitches from artists and designers for the turtles and going from there. My guidelines would probably be to keep things simple, but incorporate your own style and hope I find something I like.

 

[NORM]

Probably fairly easy. If you look across every variation of TMNT, most characters, and certainly the important ones, have elements to their design that repeat across all iterations. The changes are stylistic. So it's actually a lot like Marvel Legends where you have to distill those elements down to a non-stylized action figure.
An 'ML-style' TMNT line would just need to choose which parts of which versions of those characters it wants to utilize. The hard part is really just being spoiled for choice.



That's absolutely true, but it's also true of every other TMNT line ever made.
A good example here is Mezco. They're doing their own version of TMNT, kind of doing what I mentioned above - pulling from the different sources and making a singular version of each character that is very clearly that character but doesn't owe its entire design to one specific version of that character. Those figures have been wildly popular and even people that cannot afford them seem to think they're excellent designs.
No reason Mattel can't do basically the same thing. It'll never satisfy everyone, and that shouldn't be the goal or they fail before they even get started.



It definitely depends on who they put in charge of it. But again, that's true of anything.




The 'unified line' is literally the ground that hasn't been covered.
When it came out that NECA was going to do stuff in the cartoon line that hadn't actually been in the cartoon at all, but just re-interpreted designs into 'what if this had been in the cartoon?' - people went nuts for it. It was a GREAT idea. I would argue there is a hell of an appetite among collectors for a Turtles line that can bring in everything and do everything, all in a style that fits together. And if those figures can ALSO be displayed with Marvel Legends Daredevil? C'mon. License to print money.

And I guarantee you that Mattel is aware of that possibility, as was Hasbro.

I think one of the major challenges for anyone doing a unified TMNT line is the variety of bodies they’d need to make. So many characters need an individual, unique sculpt. The Marvel an DC (and WWE and MotU) lines benefit from having a limited number of body types that the majority of their characters fit into. Aside from the turtles themselves, most other characters won’t be reused for others.

 

[Damien]

Marvel Legends has a house style they use on most figures that makes them not quite look like the source material but instead the ML team’s interpretation of that look.

I would say that's true of almost everything, though. Even NECA's 'source accurate' cartoon line was, by definition, an interpretation. They had to take 2D designs and make them 3D. They had to decide if/when to use paint effects to mimic animation (something that even NECA changed how they approached as the line went on).

Cartoons and comic books, in particular, are always going to suffer from needing a unified -and- interpretive style to make them work as action figures. I'd argue that further and say even copying 3D forms like a movie character into a toy requires decisions to be made that still qualify as that figure being an interpretation of a design.
As well, especially with something like ML, the alternative is 'artist specific' looks - so that nothing actually works together on a shelf unless you are specifically looking for 'I want this character, as drawn by THIS artist, during THIS run, within these three issues.'

I think one of the major challenges for anyone doing a unified TMNT line is the variety of bodies they’d need to make. So many characters need an individual, unique sculpt. The Marvel an DC (and WWE and MotU) lines benefit from having a limited number of body types that the majority of their characters fit into. Aside from the turtles themselves, most other characters won’t be reused for others.

Oh, absolutely.
My biggest concern with any TMNT line is whether the company in charge is going to spend the money on a really nice figure that they can only release maybe twice. But, shitty as they are, Super7 did manage to figure out a system for exactly that for quite a long time. And those would easily stand up as some of the best TMNT figures ever made if they'd bothered to QC them at all.

CAN Mattel afford to do something similar? Yes. Will they? Probably not, but time will tell.

 

[Niko (protozoalord)]

Assuming this is a line of almost ENTIRELY unique molds, my methods for keeping down costs would be:

• Make molds in ways that can be reused. You make Casey. Take his arms, that's on a foot soldier now. Take his jeans, replace the Timbs with duck feet. That's Ace Duck now. There's certainly going to be a balancing act here to keep them stylized JUST enough to stay on character and avoid monotony, but there's a middle ground between "Classified" and "Stylized" that is entirely possible, especially with the artistic leniency TMNT founded itself upon.
  
  
  
• Make most figures have multiple colorways. The actual design details between versions can be pretty easily unified, they all have the same DNA and overall details. Only the main cast changes THAT much, and even then it's mostly just Casey & April changing, while the Turtles just get a new art style and belt. Take Triceratons as an example. All of those things are usually just alien triceratops in a sleeveless and skin tight bodysuit, sometimes it's purple, sometimes it's silver, sometimes it's teal.
  
  Even for Turtles, would anyone really complain about Turtles getting different color variants? The only reasons we have in the past (Playmates, Bst Axn, Mezco) is because they were terrible figures (excluding Mezco) of hyperspecific designs, recolored to be something else. So long as their proportions aren't too stocky or too lanky, they can easily swap the heads and belts to change the details to match other versions.