Kraang was always my favourite enemy from the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, I wasn’t so keen on the later interpretation, but what can ya do? I just preferred his big goofy robot body. The Kraang for the 2012 Turtles seems to be a cross between the two, with a smaller robot body, but still looking like a goofy brain. As a result, I felt compelled to get this guy as well.
Had I known more about the figure, I probably wouldn’t have…
It comes in the standard Turtles Blister package with an exposition on the back about Kraang. Actually it seems that the race are known as the Kraang, as opposed to a particular character. It doesn’t mention Dimension X though, just that they are inter-dimensional creatures. More army building figures I guess.
As you can see, most of the toy is an exo-skeleton for the brain guy (Who I am going to refer as Kraang). He comes with two laser blasters, both of different shapes. Let’s get him out of the box hey?
There he is in all his tentacled glory. Once again, this figure is afflicted by ‘battle stance syndrome’ which was a big flaw in the Foot soldier, but with the Foot Soldier it wasn’t that bad. Sadly for Kraang, it is quite debilitating. you can see by the length of the limbs that the robot would be tall and lanky which is no problem, but his battle pose has him crouched down. To me it looks like he really needs to pee or he has just been kicked in the balls.
Despite the clever skeleton design and the good use of colour to insinuate the tentacles of the brain go all the way through the body the incredibly limited articulation of this toy really stops me from enjoying it. The head is connected by a ball joint to the neck and the sculpting allows a great range of head movement, the shoulders are connected by ball joints as well and the hips have hinges.
And that is it. 5 points of articulation.
What I find really annoying is that although the shoulders have ball joints, the sculpting inhibits the joints quite a bit, almost to the point where they might as well just be hinged joints. He has no elbows and no knees or ankles. Which again I find very odd, because the knees, elbows and ankles all have sculpted ball bits that would have easily made a ball joint, at the very least a hinge would fit easily in there too.
Not only that, but the feet are thin and one is posed on the toes. You can tell the sculptors had issues with this toy’s balance, because they have actually added and extra tab on the inside of each foot to aid balance!
Oh my…
Why they just didn’t opt for a generally more stable stance in the first place is beyond me. Even if you have his legs in the pose (once again making the hip joints redundant), his balance is still bad. Put his guns in his hand and have him point them at anything and chances are the figure will just fall over.
Speaking of the guns, they actually look quite nice and adequately future-tech looking enough. They are designed for specific hands however. Hmm, which it would seem aids in his balance a little bit. But not much mind you.
On the plus side though, there is some nice colouring on it, it houses Kraang rather well and has some nice dry brushed silver on the chest and thighs.
And of course there is then Kraang.
Kraang is pretty cool.
He also comes out of the exo-skeleton too, once out you will discover that, he is a squishy piece of rubber with wobbly tentacles. One of mine has seen some abuse as it was put in at the factory as it seems to be coming off a little bit.
Which is great for…
Kraang is good fun, very adaptable and able to take some abuse.
And of course he interacts well with the Turtles.
The brain Kraang is a great little toy.
So to summarise the exo-skeleton up, it sucks, very much so. It is bad, really bad, I like to see a positive in any toy, but the skeleton by itself doesn’t really have one. Shoddy balance, incredibly limited articulation that is almost unforgivable in this day and age for a figure this size, since there is no bulk to it at all it’s a major disappointment and feels a bit like a rip off when you get it out of the box.
On the up side to this figure though is the rubbery Kraang brain which is brilliant, well sculpted and the choice to make him rubber is an idea bordering on genius. The brain will provide you with more fun than the exo-skeleton ever would. So like I said at the start of this review, had I known more about this toy, I would have skipped it. As cool as Kraang in brain mode is, it is not worth the price with the exo-skeleton in any way at all. In fact, since characters always get re-coloured, upgraded and generally done to death in toy lines and shows these day, I would even suggest waiting for a later wave of the Kraang to come along. A beefier robot for one would be much welcomed and since the blurb on the back is talking more about the Kraang as a race rather than a particular character, you can easily pass this guy up and await a better version.
Hopefully they will make a body closer to the 80s body!
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