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Donatello (TMNT2: Out of the Shadows)

June 20, 2016 | By Errex More

So, I finally got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle from the latest Out of the Shadows movie. To be frank, I had to struggle to accept the updated look for these reptiles from the previous Michael Bay movie, but for the sequel, they seem to have dialed back a little bit the gritty, urban styling.
Toy maker Playmates usually does a very good job of capturing the new designs in plastic, and Donatello is a perfect example of this.

The new turtles have pretty distinctive physical traits, and Donnie has a slimmer build than his brothers. He is depicted wearing army pants and boots, with several wrappings of diverse colors on the limbs.

Donatello has a backpack glued to his shell, sculpted full of details simulating gizmos of undetermined functionality. Donnie’s face sculpt is good and captures the features of the digital model used in the movie quite well.

Articulation on this figure is pretty decent, consisting of:

• Ball jointed neck.

• Peg & hinge shoulders.

• Peg & hinge elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Peg & hinge hips.

• Peg & hinge knees.

Unfortunately, the character design prevents most of these joints to bend 90° and the lack of ankle joints makes it rather tricky to achieve a number of dynamic poses given the weight of the torso, but Donnie is still a fun figure to mess around with.

The paintjob on Donatello is average at best. The color scheme is rather colorful and much brighter than what is shown in the movie; also, the actual applications are somewhat sloppy, but the real issue here is that a number of sculpted details were left intentionally unpainted and I find that very distracting.

As far as accessories go, Donatello comes with a staff, a set of wireless headphones that can be plugged onto his backpack and a remote controlled drone. None of these accessories have paint in them, and the drone is molded in one solid rubber piece and has a camera sculpted underneath.

I expected to like this version of Donatello a bit more before I pulled the figure out of the package but I think it still makes for a pretty decent toy.