Misfit
Got somethin' to say
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2025
- Messages
- 1,050
My 2003 turtles came this weekend and I have some thoughts. First of all, they do look better in person than basically any photograph or video I've seen online. I'm not sure why that it is, but it may be due to most of the body being a very soft plastic. In natural light these are quite matte and not really at all shiny. Even the shell seems to have a matte spray applied to it so it's not as bad as I was expecting. They look fine so if your standards are simply to have a set of turtles from the 2003 show then I think there's a good chance they'll satisfy that.
These are still Super7 figures so they're not worth $55 a piece. Just flat out, no how, no way, worth the asking price. The elbows and knees aren't as mechanical looking as I thought they would be based on the renders. They're using the NECA double joint which is a hinge ball peg above and below the elbow and knee. The wave 2 figures look to make use of more traditional double joints so I think Super7 opted for this style here because they thought it would work better with the elbow and kneepads. Jury is out there. They'll bend past 90, but not much further. Considering their other turtles can't even achieve a 90 degree bend, I suppose this is better. The added swivel this joint affords above and below the joint is more annoying than useful. Especially with the knees as I find myself constantly straightening them. It does help for lower poses, I will concede, though such poses aren't the most natural looking.
Paint is minimal, and it's not very clean. The bandanas on Mikey and Raph are a little sloppy and my Donatello has a big blob of green paint on the side of his face. I guess it's from the shading? It's otherwise a color not even present on Donnie so how it got there is puzzling. I'm going to email Super7 a pic and see if they're willing to send me a new head. The shading is subtle and works best with Leonardo's fleshtone. I don't know that it adds anything to Mikey and Raph who are darker in complexion. It looks fine on Donatello. The belts are colored plastic and look as gummy as they feel. Leonardo's swords look about as cheap as they do in pictures. The blades are a very light gray with no paint. There's also some rough spots on the edges from where they came out of the mold. Raph's sais though, by far, look the worst. They're undersized and the blades are the same plastic as Leo's swords, but they almost look slightly translucent. They're worse than the unpainted, gray, plastic sais that came with the first Super7 Raph. Mikey's whirling effects are well done, it's just too bad he's the only turtle who gets such. Donatello gets some goggles. They're useless. The shell cell also feels like a worthless accessory.
By far though, the worst thing about these figures is that they're just not fun to handle. The shoulders and hips are crazy tight to the point where they feel like ratcheted joints. I guess Super7 heard us all complaining about their floppy hips and took it personal. The plastic in those joints is really hard, likely ABS or something similar (Super7 traditionally uses palm), and the overly soft plastic surrounding them gets abused. I even knew this was a problem going in and still haven't been able to avoid it. The outer plastic is so soft that you're bound to have some cuts and little slivers hanging off in places before you even take it out of the absurdly tight bubble packaging (I couldn't get most of them out without the hands popping off). There isn't an ounce of smoothness to these joints (even the elbows and knees have that ratcheted feel) so you have to really fight with them to achieve the desired pose. And if you actually get the figure into the pose you want, it's probably not going to be able to stand because these bulbous shells add a lot of weight to the rear of the figure.
Once again, these are figures that plainly demonstrate that Super7's approach to quality control and testing is probably to look at it once and assume the factory is just going to get it all right after that. Or, they don't even go that far and just get packaged samples and say "Looks good!" This is all stuff that shouldn't be hard. We get figures all of the time that have functional hip and shoulder joints, but Super7, for whatever reason makes them seem like freakin' miracles. These figures are not fun, they're overpriced, and they don't come with enough accessories. They still look fine though so if you don't care about how much they cost and don't intend to mess around with them a whole lot then they'll look fine on your shelf (provided you can overlook Raph's puny sais) and may even delight you. As far as Super7 products go, they're firmly in the middle or upper middle. I don't hate owning them as I wanted this era represented in my collection, but I also know they're not worth what I paid.
These are still Super7 figures so they're not worth $55 a piece. Just flat out, no how, no way, worth the asking price. The elbows and knees aren't as mechanical looking as I thought they would be based on the renders. They're using the NECA double joint which is a hinge ball peg above and below the elbow and knee. The wave 2 figures look to make use of more traditional double joints so I think Super7 opted for this style here because they thought it would work better with the elbow and kneepads. Jury is out there. They'll bend past 90, but not much further. Considering their other turtles can't even achieve a 90 degree bend, I suppose this is better. The added swivel this joint affords above and below the joint is more annoying than useful. Especially with the knees as I find myself constantly straightening them. It does help for lower poses, I will concede, though such poses aren't the most natural looking.
Paint is minimal, and it's not very clean. The bandanas on Mikey and Raph are a little sloppy and my Donatello has a big blob of green paint on the side of his face. I guess it's from the shading? It's otherwise a color not even present on Donnie so how it got there is puzzling. I'm going to email Super7 a pic and see if they're willing to send me a new head. The shading is subtle and works best with Leonardo's fleshtone. I don't know that it adds anything to Mikey and Raph who are darker in complexion. It looks fine on Donatello. The belts are colored plastic and look as gummy as they feel. Leonardo's swords look about as cheap as they do in pictures. The blades are a very light gray with no paint. There's also some rough spots on the edges from where they came out of the mold. Raph's sais though, by far, look the worst. They're undersized and the blades are the same plastic as Leo's swords, but they almost look slightly translucent. They're worse than the unpainted, gray, plastic sais that came with the first Super7 Raph. Mikey's whirling effects are well done, it's just too bad he's the only turtle who gets such. Donatello gets some goggles. They're useless. The shell cell also feels like a worthless accessory.
By far though, the worst thing about these figures is that they're just not fun to handle. The shoulders and hips are crazy tight to the point where they feel like ratcheted joints. I guess Super7 heard us all complaining about their floppy hips and took it personal. The plastic in those joints is really hard, likely ABS or something similar (Super7 traditionally uses palm), and the overly soft plastic surrounding them gets abused. I even knew this was a problem going in and still haven't been able to avoid it. The outer plastic is so soft that you're bound to have some cuts and little slivers hanging off in places before you even take it out of the absurdly tight bubble packaging (I couldn't get most of them out without the hands popping off). There isn't an ounce of smoothness to these joints (even the elbows and knees have that ratcheted feel) so you have to really fight with them to achieve the desired pose. And if you actually get the figure into the pose you want, it's probably not going to be able to stand because these bulbous shells add a lot of weight to the rear of the figure.
Once again, these are figures that plainly demonstrate that Super7's approach to quality control and testing is probably to look at it once and assume the factory is just going to get it all right after that. Or, they don't even go that far and just get packaged samples and say "Looks good!" This is all stuff that shouldn't be hard. We get figures all of the time that have functional hip and shoulder joints, but Super7, for whatever reason makes them seem like freakin' miracles. These figures are not fun, they're overpriced, and they don't come with enough accessories. They still look fine though so if you don't care about how much they cost and don't intend to mess around with them a whole lot then they'll look fine on your shelf (provided you can overlook Raph's puny sais) and may even delight you. As far as Super7 products go, they're firmly in the middle or upper middle. I don't hate owning them as I wanted this era represented in my collection, but I also know they're not worth what I paid.
