Apparently, Guerrilla Gorilla was used instead of Sgt. BANANAS, due to some rights issues. I don't have all the details, since this is based on speculation. It seems that the person who designed Sgt. Bananas or some third party might have enough leverage to keep him from the line... other characters may be on the chopping block as well. The weird thing is that allegedly Wingnut and Screwloose are on the banned list... which I don't understand since NECA made them and Wingnut appeared on Shredder's Revenge. I know that for Usagi, NECA had to deal with Stan Sakai. I guess that Super7 would have to do the same. This also applies for Panda Khan and now possibly other characters. The reason I'm commenting on this is based on the rumor that Wingnut and Screwloose are on the banned list. I want my goshdarned Batman parody!
I will assume it's fake news, but if this rumor is true, I hope that they can iron everything on, because it would suck if they can't make Pizzaface due to rights issues. But if they can use other media to "Bypass issues" then as I've said before, 2012 has a Tatsu we could use and beat NECA to the punch. Leaning towards Mirage, even if NECA is making Mirage figures would not be a bad idea... assuming the legal stuff allows it.
Also, The infamous Shredder variant is on wave 8 because allegedly they went overbudget on wave 7 and they had to cut back on wave 8 to balance things out... but again, obscure canceled version of Shredder (because metallic paints are more expensive) that no one knew about until 30+ years later makes more sense than using existing valid variants that require Zero new tooling... (Mirage or Toon Repaints) or a new variant with zero new tooling, the Mirage Shredder Clone. This could've led to the other Mirage Shredder clones.
Hopefully, after this, they'll learn to have contingency "refreshing variants" of existing characters. I know that they couldn't use the obvious solution for this wave due to a stupid GITD variant, but next time: when on a pinch, rerelease the Foot Soldier and people will army build. Maybe by spending some tooling budget preemptively for some alternate weapons for the Foot Soldiers and Shredder would be a nice idea. A katana, pair of Tonfa, a spear, a kusarigama and Thermite Grenades could make an alternate set of weapons.
But this issue shows that it's a bit Too Early on the line to have a decent library of "reissues"/redecos... Especially with the rather expensive price tag these figures have. The reason variants like Wacky Action, storage shell, headdropping turtles exist were to "refresh" the originals without being a blatant reissue. Nowadays we do not need those gimmicks, since they're items for the adult collector. Maybe if Super7 hadn't been wasting resources in GITD turtles, foot soldier, etc. then they could've cooked some interesting redecos ie, Mirage, cartoon, 2k3, or other color variants. Maybe even swapping heads, like say: Leonardo with Raphael's head in Leonardo colors, Raphael with Mike's head in Raphael colors, Mikey with Donnie's head in Mikey colors and Donatello with Leo's head in Donnie colors...
But this is armchair commentary speculating about rumors that may not be true...
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