TMNT Casey Jones :: Another custom LEGO minifigure

Hot on the heels of my custom LEGO Metalhead and Panda Khan minifigure comes my custom LEGO minifigure of the one and only Casey Jones!

I used an old slightly play-worn 'Evil Skeleton' headpiece, and it works pretty well as a LEGO version of Casey Jones' goalie mask. I may someday get creative and just draw a more comicbook accurate face onto a clean white LEGO headpiece, but this works for now.

I used a random black hairpiece and a torso piece that has what appears to be sports padding of some sort. I know Casey didn't generally run around with any padding, but it works with the theme. To finish, I gave Casey grey 'sweatpants', flesh toned arms and ddark grey hands (to emulate gloves.)

For his 'golf bag' I used one of these ubiquitous LEGO bits, and jammed a hammer of some sort in the end which looks a bit like a putter. I also gave him LEGO Nelson Muntz's baseball bat and a hockey stick form an earlier blind bagged hockey player minifigure.

LEGO Metalhead :: TMNT Custom Minifigure Build

After slapping together a custom Panda Khan LEGO minifigure,  I started thinking of what other Ninja Turtle characters I could possibly cobble together. It struck me that the robotic turtle Metalhead (Classic Metalhead action figure, Modern Metalhead action figure) was do-able and would be a fun character to have in minifigure form. So I set out to make a Metalhead minifigure!

In making Metalhead, I didn't use any actual minifigure components. Instead, I built him entirely from standard LEGO bricks and bits. I based him predominantly on his modern look, but took a lot of liberties and just let my creativity lead me down a long path to this final result.

I gave him a blow torch hand, which can be switched out with other weapon types like a chainsaw or a claw or whathaveyou. I had the notion of making a rotating 'stick' ala the classic action figure's spinning nunchucku weapon, but I haven't put that one together yet.

Metalhead is a little larger than a standard minifigure. His legs don't move, but his arms can be rotated at the shoulders. After putting him together I looked around online and discovered a few other Metalhead customs, but they are generally pretty small. Essentially they are little more than micro-builds. My Metalhead has a bit more heft to him, and his weapon customizeability gives him more personality too.

Young Justice LEGO Bootleg Minifgures by ShengYuan

While perusing eBay to see what those crazy awesome Chinese LEGO bootleggers have to offer I came across a full series of Young Justice minifigures by ShengYuan (the same company that made the bootleg Batgirl I blogged about a few weeks ago.) Having seen the quality of their Batgirl, I knew it was worth the less-than-a-dollar-each risk to order this set of eight minifigures, especially because LEGO will never make a series of minifigures for a long cancelled cartoon!

The set includes:
Aqualad
Artemis
Robin
Nightwing
Superboy
Clone Containment Suit Superboy
Miss Martian
Kid Flash

Each minifigure includes accessories and a weird minibuild to accompany them on their base. A ton of toy for less than a buck!

Aqualad comes with two hard-water swords. Awesome!

Artemis is one of my favorites from this set. She comes with a compound bow and a quiver, and a perfectly passable piece of Kryptonite!

Kid Flash comes with a couple red sticks to emulate speedlines I suppose.

The wild red hair is just perfect!

Miss Martian. What can I say? Did you ever think in a million years you would see a LEGO(esque) Miss Martian minifigure? She also has a lasso(?) and a green thingy that I suppose could be put on her hand and emulate some mid-form shape-shifting.

I would have preferred her hair a bit more on the ginger side, but come on! Miss Martian! This is definitely my favorite minifgure from the set, and well worth the price of admission!

Nightwing. You may be surprised to learn that this is the first Nightwing minifgure in my collection!

LEGO always gives Nightwing an idiot hairdo. It's nice to see a well coiffed Nightwing for a change.

Robin. A nice Young Justice variant on the ubiquitous Robin minifigure. With dynamite.

None of the figures from this series have multiple facial expressions, but they are all printed on their backs, and many (like Robin here) have printing on their legs - attention to detail that the bootleggers could have easily skipped (they ARE bootleggers after all!)

Clone Containment Suit Superboy. With...windmill(?) and a sweet piece of blue Kryptonite. Isn't blue Kryptonite the one that is effective against Bizarro? Did it have a role in Young Justice? I don't remember.

And finally, regular t-shirt and jeans Superboy. He came with an all white head piece - I have no idea why. It may also be relevant to the cartoon but I clearly missed that episode.

The quality of these ShengYuan bootleg minifigures is top notch. Not as top notch as LEGO but on par with Kre-O and Mega Bloks for sure. And did I mention how cheap these things are? Good lord, you're losing money by NOT buying these things!

My only quibble is that the upper arms of the minifigures aren't painted, so instead of short sleeves, you get wife-beater shirts on a few of them. But that's a MINOR issue for a bunch of non-licensed minifigures you will never see made in any official capacity. Go buy some and see if you don't agree. What do you have to lose?

Panda Khan Custom LEGO Minifigure

My intern has been really into Pandas lately. In addition to a few stuffed Pandas, I had given her the Panda Suit Guy LEGO minifigure when the LEGO movie minfigures were on store shelves, and I also have let her play with my TMNT Panda Khan.

Then it hit me - I could make Panda Suit Guy into a custom Panda Khan minifigure!

I don't seem to have any LEGO Samurai minifigure bits (has a LEGO Samurai minifigure been made yet?) so I did as best I could combining old Knight and Sherwood Forest character bits to get close to the original action figure colors. Which are of course not very accurate to the original Panda Khan comic book look, but whatyagonnado?

I also added a pony-tail rubber band for his head band. Unfortunately I couldn't find red, so pink will have to suffice for now.

After taking the pictures for this blog I also noticed that Panda Khan's eyes are red, so I replaced the head under the Panda 'mask' with one with red eyes. I also found a katana for him to wield.

I'm probably the only guy in the world with a Panda Khan LEGO minifigure!