Mega Bloks Bebop and Foot Ninja set

My first shipment of multiple TMNT Megablox / Mega Construx sets arrived this week from Amazon. I grabbed a couple of other cheap ones on ebay, but most of these sets have been gone for years from stores – and a lot of them probably never even made it to local retail where I live anyway.

After hunting around for the best prices, – the ONLY online store I found that was not charging MORE than retail price for these sets was Amazon. I usually avoid amazon as the postage to Australia is horrendously shithouse – often costing up to two times the price of say a $20-30 product in postage fees. Meanwhile I can buy all kinds of cool toys from China with flat rate shipping for next to nothing.

Enough whinging about postal fees, let’s take a look at what is in the damn set.

First up, you get Bebop in the display window, three unassembled Foot Soldiers, a brick base to put together, plus the piping and background scenery pieces. Also weapons for each character and a little connector piece to make this base join other sets if you choose to.

Inside the box are the mini-figures, weapons, and bits to make the base for them to stand on, and the cool little manhole covers that act as individual platform bases on top of the main thing.

Bebop is already assembled, and the three foot ninja are very easy to assemble via following the pack in color instruction sheet. The weapons include  a Bo / Staff, Nunchuks, two throwing stars, a Katana sword and Bebops rifle / laser gun.

All the weapons are easily equipped, except the damn throwing stars. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but so far can’t get ANY figure to hold the bloody throwing stars.

If this were a Youtube video I’d say “here’s the back of the box” and then we would skip forward to see the toys already because boxes are boring and mostly go in the trash around these parts. But I’m gonna keep this one to put all the various instruction sheets from multiple sets in for now.

The smaller picture at the bottom of the box shows how this set can connect to others with the green brick base. I love that the green bricks are translucent, it gives a cool radioactive ooze / sewer vibe to it that fits the theme and color scheme of TMNT. It’s that care and attention to detail that really elevates the TMNT Mega Bloks set in my eyes above the LEGO TMNT sets – even if the build quality is inferior to LEGO.

Here’s the Bebop set almost fully assembled, with some dodgy poses to show off the cool articulation of the mini-figures. They have elbow and knee joints, the arms and hips are ball-jointed, elbows swivel and the hands can rotate the same as a lego figure. The heads are swappable too like LEGO figures.

Other body parts like legs are also interchangeable, but it’s not really recommended. The figures are slighter taller than lego figures, but not as wide in the torso and legs.

LEGO is made of a harder sturdier plastic, with simpler figures that you can swap parts over and over hundreds of times without fear of breakage. Mega Bloks / Construx are much softer plastic, better poseability as figures, but the joints pop off quite easily – and the more you do it the more potential stress marks you put on the limbs and joints. Swapping bits around even 5-10 times and there is good potential for something to break.

But I bought these for display rather than play, so it’s kind of a non issue once set up. One of my foot ninja hands is already nearly snapped just from holding a weapon that was slightly too big for his hand – a weapon from his own set. For that reason I would recommend LEGO anything over Mega Bloks for younger kids as it tends to not break even with several years of play.

Now that I am aware of that fragility , I will watch out for it in other sets – set them up and not messing with them too much will avoid these sorts of issues hopefully. It’s not a big thing with these figures, but something to be aware of.

For now, I’ve stuck a NICK foot ninja on this base from another set, cos Bebop is riding in style with his main man. I have not unboxed toon Rocksteady yet, (look for that post next week) so he is with his Out of the Shadows brother – despite the different aesthetics, they still look cool together. Each figure has a peg hole in their back for different accessories, or to peg on to the sewer pipe background that has loads of pegs.

That’s how that foot ninja is pole vaulting upwards in the picture, his back is pegged on to the pipe behind him. It’s a pretty cool feature and one I plan to make use of in other sets. The best use of it so far is the fly wings for Baxter Stockman, who appears in both his Fred Wolf era pale white scientist version, and his afro loving homage to Mirage Comics version from the NICK turtles show. One version has great wings, and the other does not. That will be my next post – comparing the two Baxter Stockmans, and why I’ve ordered a second set of one of them.

With this Bebop set done, I still have Samurai Leo with Mousers set, Toon Rocksteady Mutagen Set, Rocksteady and Foot Ninja sets to unbox. I’ve put toon Baxter together, and he will be in my next post. Here’s a quick preview.