TMNT Party Wagon
Well, the masses(all four of them) have spoken, and they decried that they wanted to see the “Turtle Van”. I know you’re probably thinking, finally!! Sometimes I procrastinate, even if it’s opening a new toy. But that is will power. I didn’t have any new toys to open today(I do, but not ones I want to open[just yet]). So, if I would’ve opened this sometime between Christmas and this past weekend, I wouldn’t have an awesome new toy to play with today.
So we open up the box and see that the van is held securely in place with some nicely crafted cardboard.
Now let’s look at the van and it’s accessories out of the box, but still encased in their protective packaging.
An now out of their protective packaging.
This exactly what it looks like coming out of the box. I actually looked forward to applying the decals, but no such luck! Now, I never had this as a kid, but I would imagine that just like 99% of the toys in the 80’s, you had to put the damn stickers on yourself. You would think that the stickers might be painted on, but they are in fact, stickers(one of them was not fully adhered to the side, but I fixed that).
You can see from the photos that the van isn’t very hard to put together. Everything fits into holes on the “Wagon”(or onto some of the other accessories), except for the front shield, which snaps onto two posts on the front. Total time to put the Party Wagon together( including putting the “Whacko Bombs” in the door)? Less than a minute.
All in all, I’m extremely happy to own The Party Wagon, and it still remains as my favorite Christmas Gift from this past Christmas. I only have a few minor gripes, and had I known about them in advance, I would still have wanted it!
I’m sure you would like to know the gripes, so I’ll let you in on them. First, I would have liked to apply the decals myself(like I said minor gripes). Second, The Foot Tenderizer Weapon(the spring loaded door on the side of the van) cannot hold a TMNT figure by itself. Well it can, but not very well, and if you can get one of the figures to sit for long enough to take a picture, it doesn’t look natural. And I think this is because the ledge on the door is too short to have a figure in a sitting or standing action pose. And lastly, on the side of the box, they show a Michaelangelo figure fastened to “The Foot Tenderizer Weapon” by way of rubber band. There was no rubber band in the box! Did the company think everyone has extra rubber bands lying around?! Like I said, none of these gripes are huge problems and wouldn’t affect my decision on wanting to own this.
Now the Turtles don’t have to walk everywhere, and are the envy of all my toys(except for the Transformers), because they have the first vehicle in my collection.
Now here are a few shots that I took for fun.
I lucked out getting this. It came out during the first quarter of 2009(I believe), so I was amazed I spotted it in a mall Toys R Us during the holiday shopping season of 2010. And I never thought I had a shot at it. If you can find it at less than 30 bucks, I would recommend picking this up. I highly doubt that you will find this still sitting on a shelf at a store, but if you do grab it!
January 10, 2011 at 22:41
That is The Bomb! Thanx! 😀
January 11, 2011 at 08:42
No problem. It was a fun toy and it was nice to be able to play with toys for a few minutes.
January 11, 2011 at 08:33
Nice job. You should steam the stickers off and put them where you want them. Fight The Power!
January 11, 2011 at 08:43
Nah. The sticker placement is fine, I just wish I could have put them on myself. Plus, knowing my luck, all the stickiness would be lost if I tried that. I don’t want to ruin such an awesome toy!
January 11, 2011 at 09:47
Awesome. I’ll have to hunt around the local stores and see if I can spot it. Almost had the pizza chucking vehicle from back in the day, but someone grabbed it at the flea market before I could claim it.
January 11, 2011 at 11:12
The Pizza Thrower would be a great addition to any TMNT collection! As I said, you may have a real hard time tracking this down on store shelves, as it was released in early 2009. Good luck!!
January 11, 2011 at 11:03
cool to see what it looks like … I never opened mine. I had the thing as a kid too and yeah, you did have to put the stickers on yourself. the downside to that was I sometimes liked to exercise my creativity and put the stickers in “cooler” places of my choosing on the toy. later, I’d realized it was dumb looking, but I’d already mucked it up by that point. also, I think it came with a rubber band back then too.
January 11, 2011 at 11:14
I thought that back in the day, you had to apply the stickers yourself. The placement is right, but I think a bigger wave of nostalgia would’ve hit me had I been able to place them on myself. If I did them myself, they probably would’ve been lopsided, so I guess it’s not too terrible.
January 11, 2011 at 17:00
Sorry I missed the vote… I would have voted for this one anyway. Awesome review, bummer on the stickers though, that’s the fun part. I seem to remember the old version having a seat belt for the figure on the door, I may be wrong and have a fuzzy memory from putting my sons together back then.
January 13, 2011 at 12:00
Glad you you liked it! I think this was my most thorough review yet. I wish there was a seat belt or something. What gets me is that, they show Raphael in a crouched position on the box art. Not even possible with the length of the ledge on the toy. I still love it though!
January 11, 2011 at 17:06
Oh just so awesome Jason and i really want one! Congrats on finding this and doing up a review on it. : )
January 13, 2011 at 12:02
Thanks! I happy to hear all of this positive feedback. I wish you luck on finding it(and at a fair price for that matter). Who knows? You might stumble upon one from the original line. Make sure to check thrift stores, yard sales or even Ebay or Craigslist.
January 13, 2011 at 09:50
Yay for the Party Wagon! I didn’t have this one as a kid, but I *did* have the Technodrome. It was awesome, but I have no idea what the heck happened to it; all I have now is the darned giant eye that sits on top!
Feels like we need to hear the TMNT theme music playing while looking at the pictures you posted!
January 13, 2011 at 12:51
I never did have the the Technodrome. I would’ve loved to have it. We never did get any of the playsets. We did get a metric ton of action figures though. I can’t complain, we had it pretty good. The only playset my brother and I ever got was the wood beetle playset from the Battle Beasts line. I sure wish I could get that now.
And that would be pretty cool if I could have the old theme song playing in the background.
January 13, 2011 at 13:24
That’s awesome! I wish they would have kept going and started releasing some of the more obscure stuff.
January 16, 2011 at 16:23
Good job. I still have my original Michaelangelo. It was one toy line I never got much of as a kid despite how much of a fan I was of the cartoon. Having the van now would be pretty sweet though.
Man, Battle Beasts. Now that brings back memories. I used to love that cartoon too.
February 16, 2013 at 23:35
[…] It’s missing on of the Foot Bombs, and that’s about all that’s wrong with it. Maybe I can do a comparison post of this and the 25th Anniversary Party Wagon. […]