Between the summers of 1991 and 2023, there were no licensed Bellybomb toys. A creation of Stephen Murphy and Stephen Bissette, he debuted in what is likely the comic I’ve read more than any other comic since my childhood, Search and Destroy, issue 23 of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, alongside Slash. Penciled by Chris Allan with he comic written by Stephen Murphy under his Dean Clarrain pseudonym. The design of the character is a few different “what if” scenarios all in one. Mouth in his stomach, giant cyclops eye, and horns? Yes. Yes. Yes.
At New York Comic Con in 2024, NECA had their Bellybomb (Cover Variant) on display. Repainting a sculpt is nothing new for NECA. Most of the Universal Monsters figures have seen black and white releases. Casey Jones was released in three color variants, there are two Renet options, each of the versions of Shredder have multiple color variants, the clones have color variants, and all of the figures of foot clan members have at least two, if not three, color variants. It’s Bellybomb’s time!
Pink Bellybomb is great, but there’s something about Blue Bellybomb’s colors that hit so damn hard. The blue, pink, white, and yellow color combo is so Miami in the 80s, or more specifically it’s the modern take on those retro colors that are closely associated with synthwave. The pink is a more saturated color than the previous pink used for the non-variant, making this more than a simple shuffling of colors.
Why was Bellybomb blue? I asked Steve Lavigne!
“If I remember correctly there were no colors established when I colored the cover. So I guess it’s my fault his color changed…” -Steve Lavigne, Instagram comment 5/32/2025
I’m going to ignore that Shredder’s colors have also been swapped from the blue, purple, and white of the Adventures comics for cartoon-accurate purple and gray colors for this cover.
“The tongue for the shoes, the rolled up jacket sleeves, and the broken cuffs give the figure small touches that add up to a ton of visual charisma from this one-eyed dude.”
The Bellybomb sculpt is by Brodie Perkins. Ahead of this review, I listened to an interview he did about his career and art on the podcast Secondary Colors from July 2024. He talked about a career change from animation to sculpting because he was given the feedback that he had a stronger focus on the subject rather than the animation. He brings Bellybomb alive with this action figure with its small details and articulation. The tongue for the shoes, the rolled up jacket sleeves, and the broken cuffs give the figure small touches that add up to a ton of visual charisma from this one-eyed dude.
His jaw articulation is something to behold. NECA figures will sometimes feature an additional head sculpt, which would straight up be impossible for Bellybomb. Instead, the jaw can open and can also completely close, giving the figure a completely different look. It would have been fun to get something that would change the eyelid expression around his eye, similar to swappable mouths for the Cartoon Muckman or ear swaps for Panda Khan.
Bellybomb’s companion, Krang, is sculpted by Tomasz Rozejowski, whose sculpt appears closest to Chis Allen’s pencils for inspiration rather than Garret Ho, Jim Lawson, or Ken Mitchroney’s work with Krang in the Adventures comics. Mitchroney’s Krangs were visually similar to the cartoon Krang because when he was penciling the Adventures comics, it was still early in the book’s life and they hadn’t turned away from the cartoons as source material, and Ho and Lawson’s Krang had a smoother look. Chris Allen’s Krang is a funny little guy instead of a rude little dude.
Bellybomb never migrated from the Adventures comics to either the Fred Wolf cartoon nor the Playmates toys. Nickelodeon did pull a version of him into the 2012 cartoon in their own weird way. Despite the extremely long list of releases that were tied to the 2012 cartoon, he didn’t get a toy.
Before NECA announced or released any of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures figures, DAFOOT Toys releasing figures of characters that never got plastic love from Playmates. Grisly Grimace (never released concept by Ryan Brown that eventually became Antrax), Savanti Romero from the Mirage comics, Brick Bradley/Bugman, Granitor, and Grybx from the Fred Wolf cartoon), Dreadmon, Ninjara, Jagwar, Mammoth, and Bellybomb from Adventures, amongst others. A few are making their way to the Radical Rejects Kickstarter project that isn’t live yet as I’m writing this.
The box art is a re-colored version of the first Bellybomb’s box art by Ken Mitchroney. Oddly enough, this Bellybomb art might be the second published piece of Ken Mitchroney art since the cover of issue 25.
NECA’s first Bellybomb was revealed at San Diego Comic Con 2023 along with the Stump Wrestling turtles and Mondo Gecko. While he wasn’t a part of the August 2024 Cowabunga Corner at Target, he arrived at Target stores at the same time for about $35. I got my hands on it in September of 2024 and it instantly became one of my favorite figures of 2024.
| Title | Credit |
| Director | Randy Falk Trevor Zammit |
| Sculpt & Fabrication | Brodie Perkins Tomasz Rozejowski |
| Paint | Geoff Trapp Mike Puzzo |
| Prototypes | Roger Fernandez |
| Photography | Stephen Mazurek |
| Illustrations | Ken Mitchroney |
| Packaging | Travis Hastback Gary Fields |
Bellybomb (Cover Variant) was available first at Walmart, but isn’t an exclusive. I found it in-store at a Walmart in May of 2025 for about $35. The NECA issue number from the packaging’s corner box, Bellybomb (Cover Variant) is issue 12 in the NECA series.