Review – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ooze Launchin’ Leo

Playmates did an incredible job launching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line (Amazon.com search*) last year, and now the newest wave of action figures is on the pegs and waiting to be discovered. I found this new Leonardo action figure, Ooze Launchin’ Leo, part of the Mutagen Ooze series, in an Austin Walmart and decided to get it onto the site right away for everyone to enjoy.

Is it the Nineties?

One thing that really jumped out at me about the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys (Amazon.com search*) is just how much it feels like Playmates has gone back to the nineties and really studied what made the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures such great toys for kids. And this is pretty much a great thing as long as the toys keep selling and I keep seeing kids in the stores excited about the releases.

And what makes me think so much of the nineties with Ooze Launchin’ Leo is that Playmates immediately jumped on variants and gimmicks, with the Mutagen Ooze toys using slimy ooze (sold separately) to give kids something fun to mix in with their toys. And Leonardo here has a backpack to store the ooze and can then, when you depress the plunger on his back, load the ooze into a manually-operated catapult. It’s a pretty simple gimmick, but ooze is disgusting stuff so I fully expect that kids are gonna love this.

A New Sculpt

Ooze Launchin’ Leo is completely different from the first Leonardo action figure released in the line (review here), and it’s a nice sculpt with the backpack/plunger section a separate piece that you snap in place once you get the toy opened. Even the head is new, which just again shows how much faith Playmates has in this line.

UPDATE! FOUR Points of Articulation

UPDATE: I opened another one of the figures in this subline and the waist swivels! My Leo was fused and once I found out there is a waist swivel it took a few minutes and I broke the paint or gunk or whatever free and now Leo’s waist swivels nicely.

I’m sure it was about the money, but one of the weak spots on the new figure is that it only has three points of articulation — swivels at the shoulders and a ball-jointed neck — which is way fewer than we saw with the first Leonardo action figure released in the line (review here). I pretty much am not too bothered by this since I know the toy’s all about the ooze gimmick, but it will be interesting to watch and see if kids are at all upset that this Leo doesn’t move as much as the last one.

An Ugly Seam

If you look at Ooze Launchin’ Leo’s waist in the photos you’ll see that the lower half of the body is a separate piece from the upper half. And that’s not a swivel waist, it’s just where two different pieces — made of completely different plastics in slightly different shades of yellow — connect together (likely glued in place). Most of the torso is a hard plastic while the legs, arms, and head are the softer, more toy-like plastic we got with the original turtles in the line.

Now I suspect this is because the backpack needs a tougher plastic to snap into neatly, but the seam is in a really ugly spot and the two different shades of yellow don’t look all that great. It doesn’t ruin the toy, but it is a bit of a blemish on what has been a pretty remarkable toy series.

Closing Thoughts

Ooze Launchin’ Leo is a decent addition to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line (Amazon.com search*), but it’s slightly lower quality than the earlier figures and I think that all of the flaws — the strange yellow shades and the reduced articulation — stem from the gimmick.

And not including any ooze with the figure makes the entire gimmick not nearly as much fun as it should be. Playmates included three blue “ooze globs” with the toy so that kids could fling something right out of the pack, but the backpack/plunger system sits there worthless until parents go buy some ooze. And that just kinda sucks for kids (and sucked for me since I didn’t see any ooze when I bought the toy).

It’s by no means the end of the line — Playmates has a lot of neat stuff coming out — but it does feel like a small speed bump and I hope that other gimmick toys in the line are executed a little better than this one. If that seam had been hidden by the belt, and the yellows closer to each other, I think I’d be way more excited about this toy than I am.

And I do want some ooze so I can try the backpack out!