Toy Review: Raphael Is Cool But Rude In ‘Turtles Of Grayskull’

Mattel’s ultimate Masters of the Universe crossover, Turtles of Greyskull, is continuing to hit shelves, and we’ve gotten our hands on figures from wave 2 AND 3. So we’re going to start with the hard-headed sai specialist, Raphael!

Raph has never been my favorite Turtle. When I’m faced with considering buying new figures of all four brothers (which happens surprisingly often), he is always the last I choose. It probably has something to do with my resistance towards the more edgy/anti-hero style characters in the late 80’s and 90’s. However, I’ve really come to enjoy Raph a lot more recently, as I’ve seen him written in some interesting ways.

I have to say, the design choices here are absolutely fantastic. There’s only one Masters of the Universe character that might fit a Raphael mash-up better than Ram-Man (that’s Fisto). The armor looks incredibly cool. Raph is often the Turtles’ tank, and giving him this heavy armor reinforces that. The massive sai gauntlet ups that a ton too. On design alone, this is a hero you don’t want to mess with.

Unfortunately, that big heavy armor does come with some downsides. With the armor on, it’s harder to pose the figure. I was able to get some decent “put up your dukes” style poses. If I wanted to get a little more agile though- which the figure is capable of- I would have needed to to remove his armor, which would have then removed his shell with it. That does take down the cool factor, just a little bit.

Also, a bit more minor quibble is with the sai gauntlet. While it looks great, it’s molded on the inside to prevent it from being ambidextrous. It can fit on his left hand okay, but it’s literally molded to be the right hand. I get that it was because a mechanical hand was sculpted at the base of the sai, but a couple quick tweaks could have made it interchangeable. The other minor quibble is that this again is another figure that couple have used another accessory or two- a second regular sai and/or a shield that wasn’t his actual shell would have been welcome.

Overall though, this figure looks fantastic, even with those downsides. Maybe shifting to using Fisto’s design as inspiration instead of Ram-Man’s could have resolved it?

But hey, this line continues to be a win. For this 80’s kid, I couldn’t be happier.