5 Truly Terrible TMNT Knock Off’s from the 80’s

If you were a kid in the 80’s, undoubtedly you know how popular the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys were – and probably wanted them too. Parents would scramble to find all four turtles for their children and it was no easy feat because toy store shelves were often wiped out. This was long before the boom of e-commerce on the internet, so these figures became exceptionally hard to find.

Because of the TMNT franchise’s wild popularity, a number of knock off toys surfaced in discount stores and Chinatown shops across the United States. Even though we wouldn’t be caught dead playing with these toys as kids, TMNT collectors now seek them to add to their collections not only for their nostalgia value, but their comedic value as well.

Courageous Righteous Turtles

One thing we can give this bootlegger credit for is they certainly got the adjectives right. However, the actual toy design left much to be desired. In this example in particular, it looks as though you get two Leonardo’s in two different outfits. The toys are held together by visible screws in the back. What is kind of cool, though, is that they have belt buckles that actually light up. They are also surprisingly articulate: their heads, arms, legs, hands and ankles are all articulated. Despite being far from the real thing, overall they really aren’t too shabby of toys for a knock offs.

New Style Ninja Tortoise

Well one thing is for certain, this was definitely a ‘new style’ of turtle – or in this case, we’re going the classy route and calling them ‘tortoises.’ While their outfits actually look pretty accurate, the Turtle’s bodies resemble potbellied, beer drinking, middle aged men. Most of the details of the toy are actually stickers, including the proclamation of ‘Tortoise’ across their chests (in case perhaps you had some doubt about what kind of animal this was). There is a capital ‘S’ on their belts that seems a little non sequitur – maybe it stands for ‘style?’ Nonetheless, this toy delivers on some features but most certainly lacks on others.

Karate Turtle Warriors

The Splinter figure in the example above is actually a pretty decent replica of the true toy. The Turtles themselves also look pretty good; even though they don’t typically wear kimonos, it’s kind of a nice touch and not that unbelievable that the turtles might wear these. They were released on two styles of cards, the one shown above and another that looks like the back of a turtle shell. There are other versions that look truer to the originals that do not sport kimonos and were packaged in boxes. There are even talking versions – while we are not sure specifically what they say, the packaging leads us to believe their vernacular includes “Pizza Time” and “Cowabunga” at the very least.

Turly Gang

One can only assume that ‘Turly’ is short for ‘turtles’ because if you Google the word, you get interesting results such as a type of stone and people like John Turley, of which there is no connection to these toys. There are an impressive 12 figures in this toy line and while the turtles themselves look pretty awful, there are some bad guys, called the Troubles, who are actually look kind of cool. They all have MOTU style bodies and different heads, including a dragon guy (Dragenius), a snake guy (Snaker) and an orc named Ork.

Heroes of the World Fighters

This version of Turtles has a Dungeons and Dragons feel to it, as evidenced by the crude fantasy interpretation of the Turtles characters on the card backer. The drawing of what appears to be Splinter is Splinter’s head on Melf the Elf’s body. This bootlegger even went as far as to use actual Dungeons and Dragons molds to create accessories (the one pictured above has Warduke’s shield) and even some bad guys, such as a dwarf mold toy marketed as BeBop.

This is just a select few of the TMNT bootlegs that exist! Have you seen other ones? Let us know in the comments below!