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!