Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Half Shell Heroes Slash

Slash has long been a favorite TMNT character of mine. When I heard he would be appearing as part of the Half Shell Heroes line I knew I had to track him down!

This is of course the modern Nickelodeon cartoon version of Slash - he's quite a bit different from the original version, but still retains enough of the Bizarro Ninja Turtle vibe to be cool!

Slash comes in a two-figure set with Baxter Fly (more on him later this week). True to Half Shell Heroes form, any figure with a weapon has it permanently molded into the hand. I understand the safety regulations that probably make this a necessity, and not including weapons (at least for the 'big four') is out of the question as each Ninja Turtle is defined by his ninja weapon of choice, but it's a little disappointing in execution. In fact, I have avoided getting my favorite Ninja Turtle (Raphael) in Half Shell Hero form because his sai are molded with plastic between the barbs. Safety shmafety, just give him rounded sai and be done with it! Or make Raph without his sai. I'd rather have him sai-less than with weird webbed sai. Besides, kids have been playing with ninja turtles for years and I have not heard of a single instance of anyone poking their eye out on a plastic sai.

*climbs down from soapbox.

In Slash's instance, to hold the permanent mace his right arm has been sculpted at a weird angle. It limits posing to some extent, but then again he does look pretty brutal with that spiked mace!

Designed to compete with Fisher-Price's Imaginext and Playskool's Marvel Super Hero Adventures lines, Half Shell Heroes are Playmate's entry in the pre-school geared action figure game. Scale-wise he looks just right standing next to Batman and Spider-Man, although he may be a little shorter than he is in the current cartoon. Obviously these guys will all fit just fine into each others' playsets and vehicles, which is pretty awesome when you think about a kid having Batman, Spider-Man and the Ninja Turtles team up to battle Shredder, Joker and Green Goblin. It warms my heart!

The prototype pics showed a little more paint on this guy (par for the Playmates course) but he's painted well enough and basic enough in design to not feel too plain or drab. His shoulders swivel and his legs both rotate up and down together - just like Imaginext figures. I'm not sure if his head is supposed to turn or not but mine doesn't and I don't want to force it and break it.

One final observation - it's hilarious to me that this tiny guy's head is so much larger than the head of the standard pin-headed Nickelodeon Slash action figure. Someone needs to do a head-swap!