Toy Review: Kraang (Out of the Shadows) // Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Playmates)

When we went into Walmart and I found the new toys for "Out of the Shadows" I wasn't that surprised because I had heard that they were starting to show up in stores.   At one point I was hoping for a box set of the four Turtles themselves- like Target did with the last movie- but at the same time, if that box set was to come without Mikey's skateboard I might have to pass.    No, I'd much rather wait for some sort of sale where you buy one and get one free or half price or whatever.    It seems like whenever a store (like Target) has such a sale on TMNT toys we can never find anything we need, or worse we can find one but not two things we need to fulfill the sale quota.

I've seen these pictures online for a while now and I actually like the look of the new Turtles enough to want to get them.   Originally, I had thought that they'd be either the same or just too similar to justify buying them again and so we'd just go for "everybody else", though I will say that Shredder and Splinter will likely be passed on in this series since we didn't get them during the last movie and don't really need them based on this movie either.   I suppose I just felt like if I didn't find all the Turtles at once last time the movie came out I never would and now I still see those Turtles in stores.  

My plan- before seeing prototypes and even knowing Kraang was in the movie- was to at least get Bebop and Rocksteady but I was in no hurry.   When I saw the pictures for Kraang and Casey Jones I put them on my list to pick up eventually as well.   So, back to Walmart where this all started, they had this special cube out for this new series.   They also had one side of another cube with lightly stocked pegs and, yes, even some figures from this new movie in the aisle.   I knew the supply was plenty, but I still picked them up to see how they had turned out.

We looked around at the other toys they had at Walmart and I remembered something.   Kraang is in this series, but I didn't see him.  I saw Bebop and Rocksteady right away, then all four Turtles and then on a peg in the not-all-Turtles-cube I saw Casey Jones, but I didn't see Kraang live and in person yet.    My wife decided she wanted to go look at shoes so Quentin and I were on a mission to dig through all of these toys in search of Kraang.    Oddly, for all of the figures they had there (and I don't really want to think about how many there were exactly in total) this was the only Kraang that they had.

I thought, "Well, then.  Kraang is going to be the hard to find one".    I didn't want to spend time driving around to multiple stores looking for a figure I now had in hand, so we bought Kraang first.   Quentin was actually cool about not buying any of the new toys right away and waiting for the sale, but he also really enjoyed that we got the Kraang because, I mean, who doesn't love the Kraang?  It's just so fun to say even.

Compared to the TMNT12 and first version of Kraang, this Kraang I would have to say falls somewhere in between, as some sweet mixture.   One thing I do need to note about finding this Kraang and choosing to buy him as well is that there are many Kraangs out there.  So if I wanted to buy the Technodrome, for example, and it came with a Kraang then having two wouldn't be as big of a deal if I decided to buy Rocksteady single-carded and with a motorcycle if it's essentially the same figure both times (which is something I need to work out before buying those guys)

Even though I like the TMNT12 version of Kraang, he was always so skinny and has trouble standing.   This Kraang is bigger, thicker and, well, sadly he still has a little bit of trouble standing.   But he more closely resembles the original version of Kraang- from when I was a kid- simply because he has a human looking head and doesn't look like a complete robot.    It's just nice that he has some sort of flesh colors on him and just isn't all metal, you know?

In the packaging the Kraang itself does not come already inside the human looking robot, though in the TMNT12 version the alien was already in its host body.   This means you have to put the Kraang in the body yourself, as he looks kind of like a cross between a brain and bubble gum.   As he is slightly bigger, like the host body, so are his tentacles and so this is a bit nicer when it comes to putting him in and taking him out because it seems like it will make it less tempting for Quentin to rip a tentacle off.

It's kind of funny but the only figures we got from the first movie were the Turtles themselves (I don't really care about April O'Neil in her Megan Fox persona, though I do want a figure for Will Arnett's character, Vern) and that kind of started my writing about these TMNT toys and here we are, on the verge of getting all four of the Turtles again, perhaps their other costumes as well (Though Donnie is absent and even Quentin pointed that out), Bebop, Rocksteady, probably Casey Jones (it'd be fun to get that DC figure of Arrow and see how they look together or just throw him into the ring anyway despite him likely being much smaller than real life compared to Mattel's WWE wrestlers) and a Technodrome.    Crazy times indeed, but I can see why this would be the hardest figure to find in this series.   It is that good.