Kaiju In A Half Shell: Reviewing Playmates’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Godzilla’ — Part 2: Michaelangelo

My toy reviews are not as frequent as I would like them to be. However, with the latest collaboration from Playmates, I had to see how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Godzilla collaboration stacks up. So, welcome to part two!

Just like I said previously, this collaboration continues Toho International’s massive push to recenter Godzilla as the king of pop culture we know him to be, including their ongoing collaborations with Marvel, DC and IDW. In fact, just this week, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Godzilla #1 dropped (check out Anton Kromoff’s review here). But you’re not here to hear about that. You’re here to see how these toys stack up.

So on to part two: Michelangelo as King Ghidorah!

As a side note before getting into the review- combining the most laid back brother with one of Godzilla’s greatest villains seems a little weird, right? Maybe the comic will explain it, I don’t know.

So I said in the review of Leonardo that the design was one of the highlights of the figure. Far and away, that goes double here. This figure’s design is stunning. At first I thought that the lower part of the head was just a recolored version of Leonardo’s with a different cap before I realized that it was completely unique. All around, this combines the iconic King Ghidorah design with Michaelangelo and in an advantage over Leonardo, the scale of his limbs are consistent, giving him a ton of posability.

My favorite touch though? The shoulder pauldrons that are Ghidorah’s other two heads. They don’t just give Mikey a three-headed look, but they’re removable and fit on his hands to turn him into a three headed dragon-turtle-monster.

The accessories here are limited to a pair of nunchucks. That’s easily forgivable though, because the clear yellow plastic and lightning bolt design of the chain make these the coolest chucks Mikey has ever chucked.

Also, I’m not going to repeat verbatim what I said about the box art from my previous review, but yes, the packaging rules. And same point about pricing — at $15 each, these are great (though they are Target exclusives and may become hard to find).

So my biggest complaint with the figure is when you put on Ghidorah’s iconic wings. These things are massive and look cool. However, they are made of soft plastic and they’re heavy. The soft plastic means that you can’t use them as a makeshift stand, which unfortunately you need once the wings are on to allow him to stand. So in short, if you’re buying this figure for display and not play, you need a stand.

Additionally, the wings and the pauldron-heads rub up against each other in an awkward way. That makes posing him with the wings and heads on his shoulders a little more difficult, but not impossible.

And just like Leonardo, the figure includes some assembly — in Mikey’s case, it’s a two-piece tail. That alone isn’t a drawback, especially since it’s only one piece. Where it is a drawback is in the display and storage. If you’re the sort of collector who rotates their displays, sometimes putting figures away back in their boxes, or keep the boxes for general storage or moving later, the moment this figure is assembled, it’s extremely difficult to remove the tail, then separate it into its two pieces. It’s a minor thing, but worth noting without a doubt.

Once again though, this is a fantastic figure. I’m really glad I grabbed it, and am strongly considering returning to Target to grab Raphael as Rodan (Donatello as Jet Jaguar hasn’t officially been announced, which I’m guessing means a full wave two, maybe with Bebop and Rocksteady or Shredder and a Foot Soldier as Kaiju). They’re currently available at Target, but as I said before, they’re going fast.