Toy Review: Human Karai / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Playmates)

When we walked into Walmart recently we saw these new Turtles- Mikey and Leo- with action features.   I looked on the back of the package and saw Human Karai and then dug through the pegs until I found her.    Digging through the pegs also found me Armaggon, which felt like sheer luck, as with both of these figures I felt like I was seeing prototypes of them since last year some time and am now finally finding them, seemingly out of nowhere, at mass retail.   It'd be like if I could walk into Walmart again in another month and find Muck Man.

Human Karai is one of those wanted figures in the TMNT line because she had only been made before as half-serpent.   I've seen people who have taken the head off of the serpent version and put it on an April O'Neil body to make this Human Karai figure it seemed like we might never get, but now it is here and it is fantastic in its simplicity.    There aren't a lot of details, sure, but for Playmates there also aren't a lot of missed painted spots and I'm happy about that.    But it might also just be that her color scheme in general seems simple.

Her accessories are a sword- which can be stored on her back when not being used, which is a much better alternative to losing it- and a small half face mask which looks like it has pegs to fit into holes on her face, but there are no holes on her face and it just somehow seems to fit in perfectly anyway.   I can't explain how it works, but it just does kind of fit and not fall off like I would expect.
It is funny to me that they decided for whatever reason to put this product code on her butt- which you can see in the photos- but otherwise this is a figure which is just a lot of fun.    Even if you didn't watch TMNT... Even if you didn't follow the franchise which has been around almost as long as I have... I could imagine someone finding this figure one day, out of the package in a grab bag at Savers perhaps, and creating their own story for this Samurai woman.    I like to think of it as "Kill Bill" for kids and that alone gives this figure an everlasting amount of value.