Donatello

Brother, can you spare 1600 V-Bucks? Tech expert, automotive genius and a master with a bo staff. In Ernest Kline's Ready Player One, the OASIS was a massive online world that everybody hung out in and which featured every pop culture character to ever exist. It really seems like Epic Games is trying to re-create that with Fortnite, because the number of actually significant properties that are not in Fortnite could probably be counted on two hands. Nintendo won't do it unless their characters are only visible on Nintendo devices, Valve won't do it because Epic is their competition... but on December 15, 2023, after a week of teases, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dropped onto the island. All four Turtles got Fortnite skins (bet you anything you can't guess what we're going to be reviewing next time!), but Donnie was unique among them in that he had two selectable styles: you could choose whether you wanted him to be wearing his headphones or not. In fact, the back of this toy's packaging suggests you'll be able to do the same, clearly showing him without them on. But no, you can't. They're glued in place permanently, and trying to remove them will either break them or the "ear" tabs they plug onto. Maybe NECA was planning an alternate head, but had to drop it? One problem with everything being part of Fortnite is that, for fairness's sake, every skin has to fit on the same rigging, and thus everybody has to be the same size. Like, Master Chief is supposed to be two full feet taller than Wolverine, but on Fortlandia, they have to meet in the middle and be the same size. And so it is that the Ninja Turtles end up looking far from "teenage," not quite reaching the full 7" tall but definitely brushing up against 6¾", which looks slightly odd, especially if you have any other NECA TMNT. And also, since we haven't had any 7" Fortnite figures since McFarlane. Since Epic was trying to sell all four Turts individually, instead of just making one skin with four styles, each of them shares a few basic costume elements, then differentiate themselves from there. Like, they all have those two bands around their upper thigh, but only Donatello has cloth wraps behind his kneepads. His pads are also the only ones to feature brown (leather?) around the silver metal part in the center. NECA's remembered to paint the tiny silver snaps that hold the pads on, and the wraps on the limbs look slightly dingy rather than pure white. All the boys get their initial on their belt buckle, in their signature color, and Donny has some darker speckles to keep his skin from being flat green. The little device he wears on his right wrist is a separate piece, but its screen is just a plain purple rectangle, lacking whatever tech readout the in-game skin displays. NECA's promo copy for these toys promised "new articulation for increased movement and poseability," which it does indeed have. Most of the joints are what we expect from NECA: swivel/hinge ankles, double-hinge knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, a balljoint waist, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, a balljointed neck, and barbell head. The "new" comes in in the hips, which additionally feature drop-down hinges, allowing you to raise the legs higher and get into deeper poses. Nice innovation! (Not that they invented it, just that they started using it.) Donatello includes two pairs of hands (open or holding), plus his Pickaxe and Back Bling - which is to say, his bo staff and Bo Sheath. The sheath is just a tube with metal ends and a purple cloth sculpted near the top, while the staff is surprisingly small and thin, but still quite snug to get into its storage. Per the game, the backpack is supposed to point toward the left shoulder, not the right. The release also includes a redeemable code for a free "Ninja Stance: Donnie" emote, in which you pull a bo out, spin-jump onto some sewer pipes, then twirl the bo for a bit before returning to normal. That's where we got the pose for the articulation photo. Most of NECA's stuff is priced at $37.99 these days, which isn't great. When the Fortnite TMNT first showed up at Target, they were priced that way as well, but almost immediately dropped to $29.99 on the website, which is the price NECA says they're supposed to be. We don't get a lot of accessories with these figures, but at least at a lower price they're not terribly insulting. -- 08/06/26 Why is his weapon so small? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.