Michelangelo

Coming as a surprise to all, NECA used the opportunity of the Spring 2026 Target Haulathon to drop a whole series of TMNT figures based on the art of Stan Sakai - not just the rabbit bodyguard himself, but all four Turtles, too! Since I figured the boys would all be basically the same figure, I decided to start with just one to see what the style is like; you can always go back and get the others later. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pursue the evil cyborg genius Dr. WhereWhen through a time portal... and emerge in feudal Japan! There, they encounter Usagi, 20 years into the samurai's future but decades after the arrival of Dr. WhereWhen... who has already carved himself a fiefdom using mechanized clockwork samurai robots... with the intention of conquering both the past and current timelines! That's the description of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen, a 2023 miniseries published by IDW and Stan's Dogu Publishing (an imprint of Dark Horse Comics). That was the second crossover between Usagi and the IDW Turtles - amusingly, in the first, he revealed that he remembers the Mirage Turtles as well, meaning that while it's been the same Usagi the entire time, the Turtles come from a multiverse. The first Turtle to sell out on Target' website was Donatello, who would normally be my first pick. Failing that, I opted for the one who looked the most "Sakai," so to speak: the super adorable smile and happy eyes on Michelangelo's standard head were what sold it for me. They all have great expressions, but that one was just so cute! His other head is more stern, with narrowed eyes and a bit of a sneer, but that could honestly belong to any of them: the happy head is pure Mikey! These Turtles are smaller than most, reaching only about 5½" tall - about the size of the cartoon Turtles. The figure was sculpted by Tomasz Rozejowski, who's done a lovely job re-creating the specific style of the comic's artwork. Take, for instance, the feet: they're super big, and flat, but also somehow bulbous? That's exactly the way they were drawn in the book. The body is stumpy and broad, with a fairly flat shell that still gets to have a wavy texture covering it. The padson his knees and elbows are thick, and the ties holding them on are sculpted very simply. Surprisingly, the face doesn't stick out very far - there's almost no snout to speak of. As is often the style with NECA's comic-based figures, the paint job includes numerous small black lines to suggest crosshatching and make the toy look "illustrated." There's also a black outline around his mask, to make that stand out better from the head - in truth, the head is molded from two pieces, one featuring the mouth, and the other featuring the mask and scalp. On the secondary head, the eyes are molded with the lower piece, and actually fit through holes in the mask to best create a sense of depth without needing to worry about paint spillage. Anyway, outlining the bandana helps the two pieces blend together better. Mikey's skin is a yellowish green, while his shell is darker; the gutter in between his scutes get to be darker still, and then the entire rim of the shell is a darker brown than the tan used for his belt and pads. The articulation is as good as you expect a NECA TMNT toy to be: we get a barbell head, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinged elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, some sort of torso joint that doesn't really serve any purpose since it's inside the shell, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, swivel/hinges at the top of the knee, a single hinge and the bottom of the knee, and swivel/hinge ankles. The upper knee swivel doesn't really offer anything the swivel at the top of the thigh can't already do, but it's good for fine-tuning poses if need be. The joints were slightly stiff, but none were stuck. Michelangelo gets a pair of fists, a pair of open hands, and a pair to hold his nunchucks. Those have molded plastic strings, so don't expect to get any wild poses out of them - it's "folded in half" or nothing. The weapons do store properly in loops in his belt, so that's good. Finally, there's a single silver ninja star. Ultimate Stan Sakai Michelangelo is a good figure, sure, but it's hard to justify the $37.99 pricetag - especially when the majority of the molds can be reused three more times immediately, and there are so few accessories. I'm glad I got this one, even over Donatello, but I'm not in a major rush to run out and grab the other three today. -- 04/02/26 Which Turtle should we get next? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.