Out of their box...

I opened a new set of Ninja Turtles action figures tonight. Big deal, right? Those of you who know me well know this isn't news, so why blog about it?

Because these brand new figures are nearly 25 years old. I'll explain.

When you were a child in the late 80s it was impossible not to be hit by the tremendous wave of pop culture that was "turtle power". I was just another victim of the pizza eating, cowabunga yelling,  foot bot fighting ninja knuckleheads. I remember very well when we first went to buy a turtles action figure. We finally wore my mother down. She fought against the turtles, she didn't want that in her home. Well, she lost ;)

The first turtle was to be a gift for my brother's pending preschool graduation. The turtles were so popular at the time, finding a figure was nearly impossible. Oh there were figures, but they were all supporting characters such as Splinter, Bebop and Rocksteady. Finding an actual "turtle" turtle was a tall order.

With the help of a friendly walmart associate, we literally started taking each figure off the shelf until finally, we found Donatello! The trouble came in, though, that after we gave him to Matthew, I was super jealous. Fortunately over the weekend, Walmart had a chance to restock, and when I came home from school Monday, Mom had a surprise for me...

My very own ninja turtle! Leonardo! I remember to this day how brilliantly his bright blue bandana popped out against his olive green skin tone. He was a beautiful figure, my first of many, and my favorite to this day.

Over the years, I ended up assembling all four turtles, and several other characters, April, Shredder, etc. but they wore out over time, and then in my "too cool for toys" teen years, I sold them in a church garage sale. Sad times.

A few years later when moving moving into college, I wanted some background noise, and randomly popped in one of the TMNT movies. As new friends came by to introduce themselves over the next couple of hours, and saw what I was watching, we ended up talking all about our memories of watching the turtles, playing with our turtle toys, and pretending to be them on the playground at recess time. Before long, after spending the day sharing old memories with new friends, it seemed almost like I was experiencing it all over again for the first time, and the turtle power wave hit me just as hard, if not harder than before.

I suddenly really missed my toys, and regretted selling them. Especially the four turtles. Oh well. Life goes on.

Fast forward a few. Years, and my wife Jesci (who is awesome) bought me a most excellent Christmas gift. She had gone to eBay and purchased a huge box full of TMNT toys! It was great to see a lot of those old toys again, but the main attraction, the crown jewel, the MVP(most valuable plastic) was an original 1988 Leonardo and a Donatello in perfect shape, still in their original packaging.

I couldn't believe how cool that was. I didn't know how to tell her what that meant to me. And I couldn't open them. They were just too... Perfect! In time, I picked up Raph and Mike as well so I could have a set of four. One of the advantages of your childhood heroes being named after renaissance painters is that eBay sellers often miss spell their names, and you can buy that's tuff cheap, since no one thinks to try miss spelling "Rafael".

Anyway, over the years, I kept them in a closet, unsure of what to do with them. When my son was born, we decided to hang them in his turtle themed room, at least until we could get him his own set.

Well, in the past year I noticed the plastic bubbles that hold the figure on the cars were coming apart, they were just kinda wearing out. Eventually the figures were going to come off of the package whether I liked it or not. Then the other night while I put Torrin to bed, there went Raphael. Fortunately I Caught him in time.

Donatello followed, and while I thought it would bum me out, it was actually really great to have those toys back. I have quite a collection of action figures, and have often thought about selling them all and just going down to those four original turtles. You know, I think I'm ready to do just that...