Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Hogs and Turtle Tank Review
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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy line has always had a fair number of vehicles as a part of the line. As a product of the 80's, that shouldn't be
surprising. But while most toy lines have long since moved on. The Ninja Turtles still maintain the old traditions which means that each new incarnation
has also brought with it new vehicles. And Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is no exception. The Turtles have a new version of the Turtle Van
of course. And it is joined by some monsterous motorcycles called the Shell Hogs with one available for each Turtle. The Shell Hogs are being released in
two series with Leonardo and Michelanglo's Shell Hogs making up the first series and Raphael and Donatello's Shell Hogs just starting to ship as the
second series. And the Turtle Tank is a stand alone vehicle second in size only to the lair playset. And since all the toys link up together, it only
seemed appropriate to review them all together.
Packaging - Shell Hogs 5/10, Turtle Tank 6/10The packaging for both the Shell Hogs and the Turtle Tank is pretty simple. The two Shell Hogs come packaged in window boxes with the included figures riding them. That is a nice touch. Though in truth, the Shell Hogs are simply so large that they really had no other place for the figures unless they had made the boxes significantly larger than they were through the 2012 line. But while the vehicle and figure are shown off well in the box and in the few photos on the back of the box, they certainly don't look very exciting. Hopefully the show does a better job of making kids want them. But for toys based on a show with such an energic, bordering on chaotic style of animation, the artwork and photos on the toy packaging is pretty bland. All of the photos on the back are dedicated to showing the ability to link the Shell Hogs together. Perhaps it's just me not finding the feature that interesting, so wasting so much space on it on the back just highlights the fact that your buying almost the same vehicle four times. The Turtle Tank is large enough that a window box wouldn't be feasible. So instead of a window, the front of the box just has a single large photo of the Turtle Tank along with the four Turtles in and on it. The back of the box shows off a few of the features of the toy which at least makes it more interesting than the back of the Shell Hogs boxes. But there's still very little personality here.
Sculpting - Shell Hogs 3/10, Turtle Tank 6/10I guess I should preface my opinions about these vehicles with the fact that I am not up to date on watching the new Rise of the TMNT show. So other than their brief appearance at the beginning of the show opening, I have not seen any of them on the show. And that's rather important because judged solely on their own appearance, the Shell Hogs are pretty silly looking. Most of that seems like it comes down to their design in the show being so simplistic. They're basically just two big tires with a minimal frame connecting them. But with the toys, you have the connector mechanism to hook them to the Turtle Tank permanantly hanging off of one side and a projectile launcher stuck to the other side. I could overlook those two issues, if the rest of the Shell Hogs looked cool. But the large plastic tires look more like over-inflated birthday balloons than the intimidating monster truck tires that they should be. And the choice to use translucent colored plastic for most of the tires just makes them look cheap in my opinion. The Turtle Tank is considerably better. The design and sculpted details for the exterior is great. But when you open things up a bit, you can see that they didn't put anywhere near the same effort into the interior. The front cab has a pair of seats and a sculpted dashboard. But when you raise up the lab section on the back, it reveals basically nothing inside. The same is true inside the central part of the lab. The only part in the back with a sculpted interior is the small "work station" along the back side of the lab section. But it is sculpted in such a small scale that the controls only come up to just above Leonardo's knees. While the Turtle Tank falls short in its expanded form, in its more traditional truck form it actually looks pretty cool. In this form my only complaint is that the connectors for the Shell Hogs on either side stick out even in their retracted position.
Paint - Leo & Raph Shell Hogs & Turtle Tank 4/10, Don & Mikey Shell Hogs 3/10Paint work isn't a strong point for Playmates. And that shows here with the Shell Hogs and the Turtle Tank. The Turtle Tank actually turned out resonably well. It has a mix of both paint applications and user applied decals. When they are all applied, the final result looks decent. The problem comes if you start looking at any of the details. There's a lot of details sculpted on the Turtle Tank, most of them untouched by paint or decals. I'd love to see a fully painted version. By contrast, there really isn't that much on the Shell Hogs to paint. There are a few small painted accents and some nice decals for the control panels. But they spoiled things a bit on Donatello and Michelangelo's Shell Hogs by trying to add graphetti tags. But they were added with decals that aren't really designed to fit properly on the curved surface where they are placed. So they tend to crease and wrinkle along all of the edges which gives them a really cheap look.
Figures - 6/10Each of the Shell Hogs comes with an exclusive version of the respective Turtle. They all use the same bodies as the series one Turtles. But each one gets a new, unique head sculpt with a different type of helmet for each Turtle. The head sculpts are nice, and three of the four have working visors. But all four are still missing the same paint applications as the series one figures. And these figures don't come with their weapons. So you aren't likely to accept these as a substitute for the regular figure. So I suspect that for most fans, these will just be tossed aside.
Play Value - Shell Hogs 2/10 alone, 4/10 if buying at least 2, Turtle Tank 9/10The Shell Hogs on their own are not very impressive. They are just stylized motorcycles with an adjustable ride height and a projectile launcher mounted on the side on their own. The adjustable height is unique, but ultimately not really useful. Their biggest selling point is their ability to connect. You can connect any two Shell Hog vehicles together, connect all four together to form on huge vehicle and even attach a Shell Hog to either side of the Turtle Tank. That is a fairly cool feature, but they already did that with the Patrol Buggies from the 2012 series and those were much better individual vehicles. Things get much better with the Turtle Tank. First of all, it fits multiple figures easily. The flip open cab in particular makes it very easy to load two figures in the cab. The lab on the back allows the Turtle Tank to work both as a vehicle and a small base. And of course it also has the ability to connect to two Shell Hogs and launch them from either side. So all in all, the Turtle Tank is packed features. But it also has a couple of shortcomings. The first is that connecting two Shell Hogs results in a really large, clunky looking vehicle. And even when the Shell Hogs aren't attached, the launchers don't fully retract into the sides as they should. The lab section is also designed to be removable so that it can operate separate from the rest of the Turtle Tank. But the instructions don't really spell this out well and the feature isn't shown anywhere on the packaging.
Value - Shell Hogs 4/10*, Turtle Tank 8/10*score is for the first Shell Hog purchased. Reduce the score by one for each additional one)The Shell Hogs are being sold in the same deluxe vehicle configuration as Playmates used throughout the 2012 line with each vehicle being packaged with an exclusive figure. So if you consider the figure as about $9 of the $20 price tag for the set, these should be a pretty good value. But the design of the Shell Hogs just seems far too simple and cheap. I think that swapping out the plastic tires for solid ones might have made a big difference in this regard. And the figures aren't that different from the regular figures and lack weapons. And if all of that didn't do enough to reduce the value, you are then faced with the prospect of buying almost the same vehicle three more times. That's disappointing. But thankfully as much as the Shell Hogs are a let down, the Turtle Tank has proven to be outstanding. And at just $30-$35, its price tag is pretty reasonable considering how many features it packs.
Happy Hunting:The first two deluxe vehicle sets (Leonardo and Michelangelo) and the Turtle Tank were all released at the launch of the Rise of the TMNT line back in the fall of 2018. Most of the usual toy retailers that carry the TMNT toy line stock both the deluxe vehicle sets and the Turtle Tank. The Raphael and Donatello Shell Hog sets are just starting to show up at retailers now in the spring of 2019. I found both the Raphael and Donatello sets at Target stores here in Wisconsin.
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