JENNY GABS ON: Krang's Android Body (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Playmates, 1994)

One of the reasons I started this blog is not just to share my opinions of the latest and greatest, but also to archive the stuff in my collection that doesn't have a whole lot in the way of text and pictures online, and to share the stories that come with them. At my heart I'm an archivist, which I suppose is a nicer way of saying "packrat," but I kind of see us all as custodians of knowledge that the masses have deemed disposable. Toy collectors have known the value of physical media all our lives. And while it's great to throw YouTube on after a hard day at work, I've always preferred text, and writing is one of my strengths. The Internet keeps getting increasingly unusable and populated by bots and AI-generated text, but I'm going to gamely continue on making human-generated content until the robots drag me away.

Speaking of robots, Krang's Android Body! Playmates first made a giant version in 1991 to fit the original Krang figure, but the landscape of the kid world was wildly different three years later. TMNT's third movie failed to make the splash of the first two and color coded dinosaur themed karate teens filled the void in our little elementary school brains. Turtles was on the back burner for me as well, but when I saw this figure hanging on the pegs at Target I begged my mom to get him for me. I loved villains, I loved Krang, and I had missed out on the giant one. This was the last new Turtles figure I acquired during the original run--I had one of the Mini-Mutant playsets, and the Raph version of the Muta Force mech suit, but as far as regular 5" figures, Krang was the end of the line. Until Next Mutation, because there was a *girl Turtle*! (And it was bad, but that's a story for another day.)

Krang's Android Body stands right at 5" tall thanks to his antenna, which makes him taller than most other Turtles figures, but a lot of them are hunched over or squatting, so he tends to look a little undersized. He fits great with ReAction figures though! He's largely a downscaled version of his 11" counterpart, with the jagged mouth and more colorful palette Playmates cooked up for that figure. Personally I like this fiercer look better than the bored bald guy from the cartoon. Why do some people prefer "toy" looks? I think it's because we spent more time with our action figures than the animated characters, who were only on for a half hour a day. The child mind isn't focused on details but on vibes. All the little gaps and greeblies on the body are painted, which was kind of rare for Playmates. The android body has swivel wrists, shoulders, hips, and neck, and an opening door on the belly to remove the tiny Krang.

The little alien overlord is less than half the size of his 1989 figure, and is just one solid blob of pink-painted plastic. He's got a jagged smile on his face and his tentacles raised in triumph. The figure includes one accessory specifically for Krang, that being a downscaled version of the walker from his original figure cast in cerulean plastic. It's pretty simple--each side has a leg and an arm molded together and glued to the platform, no articulation, and no way to hold Krang in place, but it's still a nice inclusion. The legs on mine are kind of warped but he can remain standing. Due to the lack of articulation he's going to be stuck wildly gesticulating but that's pretty on brand for him. It also kind of looks like he's doing the Johnny Bravo dance. Whoa mama!

The other three accessories are all meant to represent the android body's ability to morph its hands into various tools and weapons. We've got a cool sci-fi blaster hand, a claw hand that looks a bit like the head of a Mouser, and what I always used as a communicator but may be some kind of remote control. On a modern figure these would probably be swappable hands (and not cerulean), but here they merely slip over the figure's hands. The claw is articulated for chompy action, but you'll have to pretend you can't see his hand peeking out. I'm astounded I managed not to lose any of these pieces over the years. But I always took fairly good care of my toys, especially an A-list villain like Krang. He's got some minor paint wear and scuffs on the belly window but he's not too bad.

As a late addition to the line the standard sized android body is kind of rare. Nowhere near the likes of Scratch or Shogun Shoate, of course, but expect to pay right around $100 for a loose and complete one. Playmates never reissued this figure, although in a bizarre turn the mini Krang was packed in with a 2009 reissue of the original Shredder, before that concept had been utterly run into the ground. Today there are a number of options for your Krang's Android Body needs--more cartoon accurate, more articulated, etc. You probably don't need this one. But for me, he'll always be special.

Today, September 29, was my mom's birthday. This is the first year I'm spending it without her. Mom was responsible for fostering my childhood understanding of geek stuff. I could see characters like Spider-Man or C-3PO on TV and she could give me at least a rough rundown of what their deal was. She was a spoiler, and she gifted me many toys over the years. Hell, as recently as last Christmas she gave me some Ninja Turtles figures. I remember where I was when I received most of my childhood collection--I guess it's just how I form memories, I connect them to some object, and that's usually a toy. She didn't even question that I needed Krang. Obviously I needed Krang--this was the woman who pounded the pavement and enlisted coworkers to help secure me a Technodrome for Christmas a few years before. She knew enough about the things I was into, and she knew that Krang was more essential than Beach Bum Michelangelo or some third-string X-Man. 

She wouldn't have classified herself as a collector, but her Barbies and 100+ nail powder dips, neatly arranged in acrylic drawers with swatch sticks hanging on the wall above them, would beg to differ. I'm so much like my mom, and I'm so grateful for the moments and memories she gave me. I look at this goofy bald guy in red shorts and I'm back in 1994 looking up at her smiling face, her surprise that they made a normal-sized Krang, and her genuine excitement to make her kid's day. That's what really makes these things special, the people and the moments they connect you to. I love you Mom.

The Story So Far

Hi, I'm Jenn, or Jenny since we're friends. I've been a toy collector for as long as I can remember.

(Hi Jenny!)

My story begins with Playmates Toys, although whether it began with the seminal classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or the flash-in-the-pan Dick Tracy tie-in is a matter of historical debate. Regardless, I was hooked. Mutants and gangsters were soon joined by superheroes, monsters, soldiers, wrestlers, Ghostbusters, and assorted other little plastic people and creatures.

I was born in the neighties, that period of the late 80s and the early 90s where the past was dying and the future was struggling to be born and popular culture was all over the place and everything was neon. My dad was a shrewd deal lover, so a lot of my early childhood collection was made of the dregs of the 80s that were still lingering at closeout chains. This might have been the origin of my preference for things from just before I was born--because I could still get Fearsome Flush, but the Slimer and Mr. Stay-Puft figures on the back were long gone. I guess it speaks to the core American millennial experience of having seen the tail end of the peak before the long, slow slide into mediocrity and imperial decline. 

I adopted the collector mentality fairly early, and by age 10 I was hanging out at the flea market having conversations about Star Wars with people three times my age, spending my allowance money on Harley Quinns and Grand Moff Tarkins, reading White's Guide and Tomart's (before the much hipper ToyFare came along), and making myself an inscrutable pariah to my contemporaries. I have a distinct memory of hiding a BeetleBorgs figure behind my back when I unexpectedly ran into a friend from school at Kay Bee. He was probably there to buy the latest Sega release, and I was there to buy Roland the Titanium Silver BeetleBorg, and somehow I knew this was to be kept a secret. I played video games, sure, but they never really captured my interest the way action figures did. Toys are tactile, physical objects; there's sculpting, engineering, and paint work to consider, then there's the intricacies of manufacturing. They represent a collaborative creative effort to see an idea through to three-dimensional reality. 

I'm romanticizing things a bit, yeah. But that's how it is with something you're really passionate about.

I also like writing. Not to brag, but I did win a statewide journalism award while on my high school newspaper. Unfortunately all those toy magazines are long out of business and the online world has pivoted to video. Well, not me. Reading and writing about toys is part of my enjoyment of them. As we outsource more and more of our daily lives to robots and algorithms, connecting with actual humans through written language is a welcome reprieve. You will never see generative AI content on Toys Don't Cry, that's a promise. If you think something was written with AI, that's probably just my neurodivergence always looking for two dollar words when a fifty cent word will do just fine.

Mainly you'll find reviews of figures both contemporary and classic. Probably very few superarticulated 6" figures, because everybody writes about those, and they don't really interest me anymore. My focus is on classic form factors and neo-retro stuff these days, although in my time I've dabbled in just about everything. I'd also like to write longer-form pieces about the history of specific lines and franchises, and maybe some of the people behind them. ToyFare in its early days ran features like that and I learned a lot from them. I just want to share my love of toys and the knowledge I've accumulated about them over my four decades on Earth. 

If that sounds good to you, stick around! I've backfilled some older content written for other venues over the past couple weeks as a sample of what to expect. The next few months of my life are going to be pretty busy but I'm going to try to update at least twice a week. Thanks for spending part of your day with me!