Remember just over a week ago when I pointed out that cool Rocksteady Mask and said it was an interesting time to be a Ninja Turtle fan? Perhaps I should change my words from interesting to "crummy". To be fair, I just bought a brand new TMNT shirt at Walmart of all places, showing that TMNT merchandise has probably penetrated the market more than ever before with it's retro program.


Sadly though, the world of Ninja Turtle toys is not so lucky. Back in October Playmates announced that they had secured the license for TMNT again and were going to produce exclusive Ninja Turtle toys for Toys R Us until the new movie and cartoon hit from Nickelodeon. They even announced a re-release of the Movie Star Turtles.

Things were even starting to look up with the 2nd Series of the TMNT 25th Anniversary products arriving on some online locations. Sadly, today news is trickling in that Playmates is putting a hiatus on Ninja Turtles as well as Star Trek (Big shocker there) indefinitely for 2010 with no real news on when toys may be made again. Whether this means that TRU will continue to stock the older figures for the forseeable future is unknown.


Unfortunately that also means that the Mirage style TMNT turtles, which first were previewed here all the way back in 2008 (FIRST LOOK AT MIRAGE TMNT) aren't coming either. That's a bit of a bummer, because while they weren't NECA figures by any means, they looked to be some of the best Turtle product that Playmates had made in a long time.


While I understand the business end of it, since TMNT has no real merchandise tie-in like a TV show and the movie is at least a year or more away, it's a crappy way to end the 25th Anniversary of the Turtles. Playmates failed to deliver no less than FIVE announced lines in the past two years for TMNT without ever so much as releasing a figure. Even their retro figures, which should have been a shoe-in for easy sales were marred with horrible case packouts and slow distribution.

Playmates has had a rough year, with total bombs in their Star Trek and Terminator lines, but TMNT is the one area that they probably could have succeeded with if they'd wisely produced certain products. Not making Turtles Forever toys is a massive misstep, not re-releasing the Movie Star Turtles is money missed and even not releasing their Comic Style Turtles after NECA has so dropped the ball is another mistake. All three of those lines could have made Playmates money and kept the TMNT alive and vibrant.

For Turtles fans, now all we can do is wait and hope that Nickelodeon does the TMNT right and that with whatever new energy they bring to the franchise, so too comes great products and toys.