Recommended music: Ramones – Beat on the Brat
It’s #TurtleTuesday, and I hope you stop by to check out the NECA Toys Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tall Thug!
“Dopey” (also known as Tall Thug) first appeared as an unnamed background punk in the very first episode of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, called ‘Turtle Tracks.’ He was part of Bebop and Rocksteady’s human street gang and stood out because of his tall, skinny frame and the big cap pulled down over his eyes.
Later in Season 1, when Shredder tried to create a mutant army, Dopey was exposed to a faulty mutagen. He turned into a mutant shrew, keeping his human clothes but gaining a wrinkled snout and a huge swollen right forearm. Like the other background punks, he was sent to Dimension X in the Technodrome and disappeared from the main show after five episodes.
For many years, fans just called him nicknames like “Hat Punk.” His real name stayed a secret until 2020, when old production storyboards from 1987 were found. These notes showed that the writers had named the two main background thugs Dopey and Dumbo, as a playful reference to Disney movies. Dopey later appeared in the IDW comics, showing up in issue #105 as a mutant shrew living in “Mutant Town.”
In 2023, NECA released the only Tall Thug action figure, packaged with Dumbo (Short Gangster). The names on the box were changed to more generic ones, likely to avoid Disney trademark issues. The figure includes extra hands, a baseball bat and meat-hook gangster weapons, a mutated swollen arm, and a mutant shrew head. The bat is perfect for recreating the scene where Leonardo slices it early in the show. I’m glad NECA made a figure of this rare character because it looks just like the cartoon and fits perfectly with the rest of the gang.
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