Leatherhead

At this year's San Diego Comic Con, it was confirmed that Mattel, who will be taking over the TMNT license at the start of 2027, is not interested in partnering with other companies to make different products, which means it's not only Playmates who will be scrambling to find a replacement product line, but NECA as well (and to a lesser extent Super7, but that's... whatever). It's to their credit that NECA saw the end coming, and so prioritized finishing a set that was close to completion. Unlike most other incarnations of Leatherhead, Archie Leatherhead didn't begin life as an alligator, but as a human. Also unlike the other ones, he's not a mutant: Jess Harley was poor white trash living in a shack in the bayous of Louisiana, and he broke into a swamp witch's home looking for something to steal. The something turned out to be a mystical artifact called the Turnstone, and when the witch, Mary Bones, tracked him down, she turned him into an alligator man as punishment. Thus, he's not a mutant, but some kind of mystical hybrid. This is actually the second Archie Leatherhead NECA made - they did a "wrestling" version in 2024 alongside the Turtles, but we held out for the "real" one. This is him in his original outfit, aka the "Archie-ized" version of his toy design: a fur vest, blue pants with holes in the knees, and a beat up red hat. His chest has large, horizontal scales, and it and the vest are molded as one PVC piece that fits over whatever physical constuction exists within. He's got smaller scales on his arms and knees, and there's a tail packaged separately in the box that plugs into place. The wrestling Leatherhead got a hinged jaw, while this one is solid; I know NECA often thinks ahead about these things, so I wonder if it would be possible to swap heads? This one's hat is removable - it has grooves inside that fit onto the ridges on top of Leatherhead's plastic head - but it fits so seamlessly that you'll forget it's a separate piece until you actively try to take it off. Or just knock it off by accident. It's not a tight fit. As is the style of the line, Leatherhead gets thin black outlines painted on him to better look like a drawing - the cartoon figures get the same thing, because what are cartoons except a comicbook with a ton more panels? His belly (and the underside of his tail, and the underside of his chin) is a lighter green than the rest of the body, while the vest, wristbands, and shoes are all the same shade of brown. His eyebrows are pale yellow, which looks weird, but is true to the way the comic was colored, so if we want to complain about that we need to get in a time machine and go back to 1989. Leatherhead's articulation is, by this point, unsurprising: swivel/hinge ankles, swivel/hinge knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a balljoint waist, balljoint tail, swivel/hinge wrists, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a barbell head, which is why we're left to wonder if it could be removed and traded for the older one. Everything moves the way it's intended - nothing molded in the wrong shape, and thus prone to popping apart. He can't get into the squat, horizontal pose of the original 1980s action figure, but no other media appearances of Leatherhead ever copied that, so it's no loss. Naturally, his tail is bendy. The figure includes eight interchangeable hands to hold different accessories. Said accessories include a knife tied to a stick, like he used in the Donatello and Leatherhead miniseries. It's entirely white - staff, knife, and rope alike - with minimal black detailing. Technically this is a telescoping bo staff Donatello lent him, so even though there are panels in the comic where it's brown, it's likely it would be metal and thus this color is more accurate. Next we get a pair of big, silly guns from Mighty Mutanimals #4 and 5. The marketing copy for this toy calls the, a "ftoom rifle" and "thoom blaster," after some of the sound effects seen when they fire. Not the coolest accessories ever, but accurate. Finally, he gets a plain white ball, the Directional Thought Transanimator - aka the Turnstone! A device from Dimension X, the Turnstone responds to the user's thoughts, rewriting reality however they wish. It's kind of like a Cosmic Cube from Marvel, but round instead of flat. The comic coloring generally made it look like a crystal ball, but that's not the way NECA has interpretted it, so it really is just a white globe. One of the hands is specifically shaped to hold it, and it stays in place very well. Since this was the major mcmuffin of TMNT Adventures' first original storyarc, getting it in toy form is awesome! This is the last Archie Comics TMNT figure NECA is getting to release, which is sad. The line's been good, and we know for a fact NECA was working on other characters that have never showed up. All we can hope is that Mattel pulls a "Hasbro Power Rangers," and gets tired of making things themselves after a while and decides to farm some of it out to other companies. We need a Cherubae, a Maligna, a Ninjara... lots of things! But at least NECA cared enough to finish the full Mighty Mutanimals team before the end, rather than leaving us hanging. -- 10/15/26 What figures do you wish they could have done? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.