Tag Archives: Casey Jones

#3691: Casey Jones

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

CASEY JONES — ONE-MAN WEAPONS RACK

TURTLES OF GRAYSKULL (MATTEL)

Toy crossovers are becoming a pretty common thing, and, honestly, when it comes to that sort of thing, TMNT has pretty much always been the king of that sort of thing.  At the very tail end of last year, Mattel launched a crossover between TMNT and their own in-house property, Masters of the Universe, dubbed “Turtles of Grayskull”.  I got the Donatello, of course, because that’s what I do.  The Metalhead/Roboto combo is a Build-A-Figure, so there’s a barrier for entry on that one, but that leaves me with one more TMNT character I always buy: Casey Jones!  So, let’s see how his amalgamation worked out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Casey Jones is part of the third assortment of Turtles of Grayskull figures.  He and Mikey are the two Turtles characters, and are joined by Teela and Skeletor from the Masters side. The figure stands about 5 1/2 inches tall and he has 26 points of articulation.  Donatello and the other Turtles were making use of a lot of new base parts, but Casey’s actually just using the standard Origins male buck.  It’s a little buff for Casey, I suppose, but it seems like when you travel to Eternia, you just immediately get jacked.  Donnie was specifically patterned on Man-At-Arms as his MOTU-equivalent, but Casey’s “One-Man Weapons Rack” gimmick makes him a bit more his own thing.  He’s pretty decidedly the classic Casey Jones cartoon design, but assembled using MOTU parts.  It’s honestly a pretty cool concept.  He gets a new head and a new overlay for the torso.  The head’s unmasked, and is certainly more in line with Casey’s more modern “pretty boy” interpretations.  It’s also rather unique when compared to the standard Origins heads, giving Casey a lot of character.  The new torso piece pairs up with a re-used Man-At-Arms shin guard to give him his slightly more padded appearance.  He also gets a new facemask and armored glove, patterned on Ram-Man’s headgear and the Jitsu/Fisto hands, respectively.  The glove’s a little tricky, because it feels like it *should* just slide over the hand, but because it’s an open hand, it sits way too far down.  You can remove the hand, of course, but then it feels like it sits a little too high, and it’s never totally secure.  I feel like just having it swap for the standard hand and putting a peg in place to hold it would have been the best solution.  Casey’s color scheme is his classic color lay out, with the saturation pitched up ever so slightly, and a few more metallic colors thrown in for good measure.  The paint work is minimal but generally clean, with the only notable issue on mine being some slop on the white paint for the boots.  Casey gets quite an impressive assortment of extras, with the previously mentioned mask and glove, as well as a MOTU-ified version of his usual sports bag, as well as a hockey stick, warhammer, axe, katana, and staff.  The “bag” clips securely onto the harness, and everything fits well inside it.  There’s even a special spot on the side to clip the hockey stick in place.  Obviously, the hockey stick is the classic armament here, and I love the translucent green, but I also love the warhammer so very, very much.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Donatello was fun, but as I said in that review, I didn’t see myself really jumping into this line.  Metalboto being a Build-A-Figure that I wasn’t given much of a chance to complete seemed to cement that…and then they showed off Casey.  I already have a soft spot for Casey figures, and this one also looked really, really cool.  As it turns out, he *is* really, really cool!

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.

#3656: Casey Jones

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

CASEY JONES

TMNT (PLAYMATES)

I sort of started month (well, sort of, anyway; it was like a preview to the month) with a review of a Chris Evans figure, and you know what? I’m gonna end it that way too. However, in a shocking turn of events, it’s *not* a Captain America. Heck, it’s not even a Human Torch. No, it’s from one of the two comic-adaptation roles he played in between, when he voiced Casey Jones for 2007’s TMNT. Oh yeah, let’s look at some more Ninja Turtles, with a guy who’s neither a ninja nor a turtle!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Casey Jones was released in the main product launch for Playmates’ TMNT tie-in line, shortly before the film’s release in early 2007. He fell into the line’s “The Good” subset, along with April and Splinter.  The figure stands just over 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  Movement is pretty basic, and kind of restricted, especially when compared to the Turtles from the same line.  There’s a distinct lack of movement for the elbows, and the knees are jointed oddly high up on the leg, so there’s not a *ton* of posing to be done with him.  It was pretty typical of non-Turtles figures at this point, so it’s not a shock.  Still a bit of a bummer, though.  The sculpt aims to adapt Casey’s animation model from the film, specifically he’s fully geared up look from the movie’s climax, which is definitely his best look of the options available.  The sculpt does a solid job of recreating the look.  In particular, the head really gets his “likeness” down.   The body’s a little more basic and soft in some spots, but it gets all the main layout down as it should.  The gashes on the shoulder plates are a nice tough, though.  Casey’s color work is basic, but hits all the main marks for the design.  The paint application is pretty clean, and all the basic colors are there.  I do especially like that they remembered to give him the slight bit of visible red from his shirt under the armor.  Casey is packed with a removable mask, two baseball bats, a cricket bat, a golfclub, his bag, and a separate harness for just the bats.  The mask is surprisingly on model, and sits well on the face.  The only slight drag on it is that it’s an off-white, indicating it’s just a standard mask, rather than the metal one April gives him just before the final battle.  It’s a small thing, and this makes him more generally on-brand for the character, I suppose, but it’s such a nice plot point in the movie that I’m admittedly a little bummed it’s off.  The sports equipment is fun, though, and I appreciate the options for the bag or the harness.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

TMNT is the first piece of Turtles media that *really* clicked with me.  I’d enjoyed other elements of the franchise, but this one actually excited me.  It was also the film that really cemented my love of not only Donatello, but also Casey.  I liked Evans’ performance a lot, and the new design just really worked.  I wanted this figure when they were new, but I was never able to snag one.  Over the years, I’ve seen a few, but he was always incomplete.  I was actually talking with Max about it being one of my grails, and then, like, a week later, I came across a sealed one at a toy show, sitting on a table for 50% off.  He’s a product of his time, and certainly lacks in the articulation department, but he looks really cool, and I’m very glad to have finally gotten one.

#3039: Casey Jones

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

CASEY JONES

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ULTIMATES (SUPER 7)

Apart from they year 2019, which saw an inordinately high number of TMNT-themed reviews, they tend to be a little bit scarce around these parts.  Not that I deliberately avoid them or anything, especially when I’ve got a good reason not to.  I guess I’ve got a good reason not to.  The story of where we are right now starts with Matty Collector.  I know, that’s rarely a good start, but this one plays out okay, I swear.  After running pretty much the whole platform into the ground, Mattel decided they didn’t really want to support a collector site anymore, and was looking to shut things down.  However, Masters of the Universe Classics still had a little traction left in it.  Rather than giving up entirely, they licensed the whole thing out to Super 7, who had previously been pretty much exclusively focusing on smaller Kenner throw-back figures.  Super 7 took the assignment rather to heart, initially continuing, and then circling back to further improve upon what Mattel had been doing with MOTUC.  When Mattel decided to take Masters back in-house, Super 7 opted to keep the style they’d started going, under the banner of Ultimates, and spread to other ’80s and ’90s properties, chief among them being TMNT.  They’re a good way into the line now, and they’ve just added one of the Turtles’ two best human friends, Casey Jones!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Casey Jones is part of Wave 4 of Super 7’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ultimates line, alongside Donatello, Mondo Gecko, and Muckman.  As with the rest of the line, his focus is specifically on recreating the vintage Playmates figure, up to modern standards of sculpting and articulation, so that’s what he’s specifically based on.  The figure stands 6 3/4 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  His articulation scheme is sort of its own style of thing.  There are certainly some elements of the Mattel work that Super 7 inherited with their Ultimates lines, but with its own sort of flair, which honestly marks some improvements to how things work.  There’s a pretty solid range of motion on most of the joints (the neck and waist are both a little restricted on mine, but that’s really it), and he holds poses well and maintains a pretty stable footing without much trouble.  The figure’s sculpt is all-new, with the express purpose of recreating the original Playmates toy design for the character.  For Casey, that’s not as far removed from the animation design as some others, making him perhaps a more comparable offering to what we got from NECA.  That said, there’s a slightly more in-depth level to the detailing, especially the smaller stuff and the texturing.  You can make out the individual wrappings of the bandages on his knees and right hand, as well as little traces of hair on his arms and what we can see of his torso.  I also really dig the smaller, personal touch details, like his left shoelace being untied, adding to Casey’s classically disheveled appearance.  His mask is even sculpted to look convincingly like a separate piece, even though it’s non-removable.  Casey’s color work isn’t terribly involved, which is rather true to the original design.  There’s a lot of swathes of solid colors, largely molded in the proper color of plastic.  That said, the base work is generally pretty clean, with only a few minor fuzzy spots.  He’s also got some decent accent work to help some of the sculpted elements pop just a little bit.  Casey is packed with a rather impressive selection of accessories.  He includes four sets of hands (fists, open gesture, gripping with a forward/back joint, and gripping with a side-to-side joint), three different baseball bats, a golf club, a hockey stick, three hockey pucks, and his bag to carry everything.  All of the figures also include a weapons tree simulating the ones included with the old Playmates figures.  The vintage Casey didn’t have one, but this one still gets it.  It’s actually kind of neat, since the excess parts of the tree resemble a goal net.  I don’t see myself getting any use of of this piece from a display standpoint, but it’s still kind of a nifty piece.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

While the idea of spending $50 a pop on TMNT figures doesn’t exactly thrill me or seem like a thing I’m really game for, I do certainly have a soft spot for Casey Jones, and after all of the fiascos surrounding NECA’s various figures, I decided it might be worth my time to at least give this one a try.  After snagging this guy, I think it’s safe to say that he was definitely worth my time.  He’s a lot of fun, and I think Super 7 really found a footing to justify the price point on these.  I’m not going to be jumping in full force or anything, but I’m definitely game for at least one or two others, to say nothing of the other Super 7 Ultimates offerings that are upcoming.  But, in the mean time, I can safely say this is the best Casey Jones I’ve got, and that’s certainly a plus.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website.

#2761: Casey Jones & Raphael in Disguise

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

CASEY JONES & RAPHAEL in DISGUISE

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE MOVIE (NECA)

“Now you can catch America’s favorite green teens in their first live-action blockbuster film!  After wading in a puddle of radioactive waste, these radical reptiles are transformed into New York City’s greatest crime-fighting quartet.  Raphael’s a skilled sai-wielding ninja.  Beware: when he gets angry, you don’t want to be around.  Casey Jones, the masked vigilante, carries a golf bag on his back filled with clubs, bats, and sticks…makeshift weapons in his war against crime.”

Hey, how about that totally not at all troublesome or even slightly infuriating topic that is NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Which one in particular?  It doesn’t matter!  They’re all equally infuriating!  Yay!  Equal opportunity awfulness!  ….Okay, I’m gonna try not to let this be a review of me just complaining about distribution issues.  Those are no fun to experience, and even less fun to read about.  Let’s just skip past, shall we?  Remember back in early 2019, when I had a man on the inside a fiancee working at GameStop, which was pretty much the sole reason I was able to get a set of the GameStop-exclusive movie Turtles?  Well, NECA decided to do more of those.  And they were even harder to get than the first round, so they stopped giving them to GameStop entirely (not a bad decision, to be fair), and moved the movie-related stuff over to Walmart (a horrible decision, really).  Now, instead of single releases, they were doing two-packs, which they kicked off roughly around the middle of last year, starting with the pairing I’m looking at today, Casey Jones and Raphael in Disguise!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Casey and Raph were, as discussed above, a Walmart-exclusive two-pack, released as part of NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie line last summer….or they were in theory, at least.  It’s not like anyone really saw them–right, trying not to dwell.

CASEY JONES

Casey here is really the main appeal of this set, since he was previously unreleased by NECA, in any scale, or any style.  We got two of them last year, and neither one was particularly easy to–right, I’m dwelling again.  Don’t do that.  This one is movie-based, as you may have guessed from him being in a line that has “Movie” in the title.  This is a kind of big deal, since we’ve not gotten any form of movie Casey from any manufacturer prior to this one.  The figure stands 7 1/4 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  He’s a little bit better in the articulation department than the Turtles were, showcasing some of NECA’s steps forward in that area since doing those guys’ sculpts back when they were still 1/4 scale.  In particular, he’s got much better range on his elbows, which have the same sort of structure as Brett did earlier last year.  Casey’s sculpt is all-new, and certainly on par with NECA’s usual work.  Since they didn’t get Elias Koteas’s likeness rights, the figure is without his face, instead keeping him permanently masked.  While it’s somewhat limiting, it’s also not that weird for a Casey Jones figure, since the vintage figure’s mask was sculpted in place too.  This one does at least look as if it *could* be removed, since it is actually a separate piece.  It’s a sharply defined and very clean piece, and definitely the best part of this figure.  The body sculpt does a respectable job as well.  The level of detail is definitely up to the standards of the other figures in the set; there are some spots where the articulation could be a little better worked in, especially on the knees, but for the most part, he’s pretty strong.  Casey’s paint work honestly isn’t all that involved for the most part, largely being just large open areas of solid color.  The shirt and vest do get some impressive accenting, however, and, apart from one spot on the side of his hair, the application is pretty clean.  Casey’s accessory selection is certainly one of NECA’s most impressive.  He gets four pairs of different hands (fists, loose grip, tight grip, and open gesture/flat grip combo), as well as his golf bag mentioned in the bio, which can be filled with his included hockey stick, goalie stick, golf club, two baseball bats, and cricket bat.  It certainly gives him a lot of options in how to bring the pain.

RAPHAEL in DISGUISE

Raphael largely exists as an excuse to make a two-pack out of this whole set-up, but I guess also as a way to get Raphael out another time, after the less than stellar distribution of the first two movie releases.  This one operates on the general thematic of Raph and Casey’s first interactions with each other in the first film, which has Raph in the aforementioned disguise, which amounts to a trench coat and hat.  How does this figure manage that?  By taking the previous Raphael (which I reviewed here) and putting him in a trench coat and hat.  The coat is a cloth piece, and is decent enough for the scale.  Some of the tailoring is a little oversized, but it’s not a terrible look, and it’s a pretty close match to the one he had in the movie.  It can be removed, if you so choose, but it’s not really optimized for it.  It’ll definitely take some doing (hence why I didn’t, what with already having one sans coat and all), but it’s possible.  The coat is held in place a little more so by a sculpted back pack, which is a reasonable enough piece.  The whole disguise is topped off by the hat, another sculpted plastic piece.  It’s designed with a hole at the back, so that it can sit more properly on the head, while still allowing for the knot on the back of his mask to be left undeterred.  It’s a little janky to look at from behind, but it does stay in place pretty nicely.  In terms of accessories, Raph has the same alternate hands, alternate ties to the mask, slice of pizza, and sais as the single release, but also adds an extra set of hands which are pointing, you know, for pointing purposes.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve always been a Casey Jones fan, and I’d go so far as to say he’s my favorite part of the TMNT mythos.  Despite all this, I owned no Casey Jones figures beyond the Minimate, which seemed wrong.  I’d been hoping for NECA to do some version of Casey, so I was interested in this one, but then there was the whole distribution thing.  That was a mess, wasn’t it?  Fortunately, I’m a patient man, so I just kind of avoided the whole issue for the entirety of the last year.  As luck would have it, my patience paid off, and someone happened to trade this set into All Time last month, at last giving me the opportunity to get one without having to deal with Walmart.  Yay for me!  Casey’s definitely a nice figure, worth the wait, but also not really worth the mark-up, so I’m glad I didn’t pay it.  Raph is kind of redundant for me, and I ultimately decided not to hang onto him, but he’s still as good a figure as the first release.  If someone didn’t get that one, I imagine this one would be a great alternative.  Perhaps even a better one, really.  Whatever the case, I’m just happy to have a Casey to go with my Turtles.  Now, here’s to hoping that April’s not quite as much of a nightmarish ordeal to acquire.  Man, even *I* don’t believe myself when I say that…

#0665: Casey Jones

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

CASEY JONES

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MINMATES

CaseyJ1

So, my love of almost all things Minimates and my moderate interest in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles insured that I found myself a full set of the line’s first series. After the first series, my interest kind of waned a bit. Not the fault of the line or anything, I just got distracted by other stuff. I did manage to track down one of the Series 2’s figures, Karai, which I liked well enough. One of the more glaring omissions from Series 1 was long-time Turtle ally Casey Jones, who found his way into the second set.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

CaseyJ2Casey Jones was released blind-bagged, as a part of the specialty assortment of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Series 2. He’s also available packed with Michelangelo in the Toys R Us assortment, for those wanting to go the non-blind-bagged option. The figure stands about 2 ½ inches in height and has the usual 14 points of articulation. Like all the others in this line, he’s based on Casey’s appearance in the current cartoon. Casey features a fair number of sculpted add-ons for his mask/hood, straps/shoulder pad, elbow pads, belt, and his padded gloves. The elbow pads are re-used from the Ghostbusters Minimates line, but aside from that everything’s all-new to Casey. Everything is exquisitely sculpted, with tons of detail work, but not so much as to make him look out of place amongst the other Turtles Minimates. The padded gloves in particular look pretty amazing, with some great texture work on the stitching and padding. Paintwork is the downfall of most of the Turtles Minimates, but it seems to have turned out a fair bit better for good ol’ Casey here. For the most part, the base color work is pretty cleanly handled. There’s a little bit of bleed over here and there, but nothing too bad. There CaseyJ7are even a few areas with purposeful slop, which are very nicely handled and add a nice extra bit of character to the figure. The detail lines are all carefully placed, so as to capture the animated style in as few lines as possible. Under the mask, there’s a full Casey face, which is a little bit goofy looking for my taste, but captures the show look pretty well. Casey, like a lot of the Turtles Minimates, is no slouch in the accessories department, featuring an extra head, hairpiece, hands, a pulled down hood, two different hockey sticks, a baseball bat, and a clear display stand. The hair and hood allow for unmasked displays of the character, and the extra head gives us the skull-ish face paint he’s sported on the show. The various sports equipment is kinda key to the character, so it’s cool to see here, and well-sculpted to boot.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

After playing the blind-bag game with Series 1 and then trying again with Series 2 and getting Karai, I decided to give up and just get an opened Casey from my favorite Minimates retailer, Luke’s Toy Store. Casey’s long been one of my favorite parts of the Turtles mythos, so I was happy to see him turn up in the Minimates line. The final figure is a little different from my preferred interpretation of the character, but he’s one of the better figures this line’s had to offer.

CaseyJ3