The Adult Nerd – A blog by Rob Blatt

Did I title this as a review? I meant to include “an excuse to talk about the history of Krang’s Android Body.”

I guess if Peter Laird is happy to have “nothing to do with Krang,” David Wise was just as happy to take as much credit as possible. It seems bizarre to not credit Eastman and Laird for the inspiration of Krang, being the original comics’ Utroms, but quotes are quotes.

The design of the TMNT 1987 cartoon’s Krang and his android body is interesting. As a kid, watching those episodes, I absolutely loved it. Does it make sense? Nope. Did it matter? Not really. I believe that Krang’s design, including the body, is one of the more iconic visuals to come from the cartoon.

Krang’s robot body. Kevin Eastman complained about this design. Fred Wolf, who mostly did not want to cause delays that would cost money, stood firmly behind my work (I was truly surprised this went through, I expected to have to redo it) while agreeing to add robotic elements- the metallic suspenders and visor which are in the final version. My own view was that the robot was such an advanced machine, that it would not fit our own idea of what a robot looks like. -Peter Chung posting to Instagram, January 8, 2022

I kinda love the last sentence from Chung here. Peter Chung isn’t wrong about Kevin Eastman disliking the design. Peter Laird took to blogging multiple times about just how much he and Kevin Eastman didn’t like the design.

The problem is that the design of the robot body as shown in the storyboards was absolutely dorky — it resembled a sick Pillsbury dough-boy.  -Peter Laird, blogging on January 20, 2015

Peter Chung’s perspective on the Krang Android Body wasn’t far from Peter Laird’s. Chung posted to Instagram, saying “the design was a joke, which tells you I had no idea this show was going to be so huge.” It’s kinda funny that no one took Krang’s android body design too seriously, but Eastman and Laird were clearly upset by it. Peter Laird created his own Krang designs, although even he is unclear when or where they were created in the creation process, and thus we don’t know if these designs were ignored or too late.

Ultimately, Peter Laird credited the Krang Android body’s design not changing to a combination of naiveté of two burnt out artists whose responsibilities were stretched too thin. As a result, the dorky dough-boy was ours! Super7’s Ultimates figure line scales up the original TMNT Playmates designs, but this falls into the Super Cyborg line, which “give you a window to the inner-workings of your favorite characters.” As a result, there’s seven points of articulation, relatively thin.

There was a four pack of drawings from Peter Chung up on Heritage Auctions in October 2024 that included some Krang designs that I haven’t seen a lot of information out there about, but they’re clearly alternatives to the “doughy boy” look that we ended up getting. With so many alternatives being available and no one taking the final design seriously, I’d imagine that it was someone at Playmates or Murakami-Wolf-Swenson that made the final decision?

While I put it forward that the original TMNT art was done by Erroll McCarthy, I can’t be 100% sure that he did the box art for this one, but the style looks similar. Does Playmates know that there are a lot of people that would buy larger prints of the original art for these items? Frustratingly, Super7 doesn’t include credits on its boxes for packaging art.

While literally no one has scanned and posted the Playmates 1991 catalog yet, the Krang’s Android Body was included in the 1992 catalog, looking shiny as ever, along with a slightly different paint job than what ended up in production. While I did see that the Krang Android’s Body was included in an order sheet, I haven’t seen the actual page where the it’s shown in the catalog.

Will someone please scan the Playmates 1991 catalog? They are prohibitively expensive to purchase or I’d do it myself. Is that the kind of thing that a library would have? Do I have to create my own public library to make this happen? As soon as I find a wealthy enough patron, I’ll do it, fine.

Let’s jump into the Super7 Super Cyborg Krang Android. The Super7 Super Cyborg Krang Android is shocking similar to the original Playmates toy. It’s essentially identical in terms of height. I never had the original giant android as a kid, so I was pretty happy to add this one to my collection. I grabbed it on sale on Amazon, so $63 for this version sure beats paying over $120 for a complete version of the original.

In terms of the seven points of articulation that the Super7 Super Cyborg Krang Android body provides, its head, shoulders, wrists, and ankles. Technically speaking, when you remove the chest piece you can rotate the little hamster on a wheel to make an eight point of articulation.

Despite the articulation and swappable hands, this one feels a lot like it’s meant to be put on a shelf and stay on a shelf or possibly never leave the box. The piece itself is made from a thin, hollow plastic, which has an odd feel in the hand, rather than vinyl. I don’t have anything else in the Super Cyborg line, but maybe that’s how these figures come. The figure is hollow with a hard plastic, which makes it feel a bit odd in the hand compared to a figure made of vinyl. There are plenty of chunky bois in the TMNT figure world that have a heft to them, but this one is separate from the pack.

Getting the attached Krang seated in the body is a bit of a hassle. It’s not just me, because I saw in the Cool Toy Review of the Super7 Super Cyborg Krang Android, he mentions that his also did not easily fit with the included peg.

I’ll normally keep figures on my desk to fidget with while I work so I can pose and admire them. This guy was on my desk, but aside from getting him in the right position with some other figures or swapping the hands out with the accessories, there’s not much to do. This a toy for display and play.

It’s impossible to talk about Super7 without making a comparison to NECA’s offerings. NECA has a big-ass Krang on the way at some point, although we haven’t heard anything about it for a while. The Molecular Amplification Android Krang from NECA was included in NECA’s 12 Days of Downloads in 2023, but there hasn’t been anything about it since. It’s clearly on a very different scale from to anything we’ve ever seen before, since it’ll stand over 18″ tall, compared to the Cartoon Street Diorama in the display. I don’t recall seeing it at NYCC in 2023 or 2024.

We likely haven’t seen the end of the new Krang Androids. After Playmates re-release of the Technodrome and Toilet Taxi appearing to be pretty popular in the turtle community, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Krang’s Android Body in our future.

Is the Super7 Super Cyborg Krang Android worth it? I had an 11″ Krang sized hole in my collection, so the answer was an absolute yes. If you love the Super Cyborg line, I don’t know how this doesn’t hit right. If you’re someone that has the NECA Krang Android from 2020 or the 1991 Playmates, this might be a pass. I bought mine after it dropped to a little over $60 on Amazon, which was the lowest price to date according to CamelCamelCamel.

Krang, I love you.