In writing about the Krang Android Body designs, I came across two designs by Stephen Murphy and Dan Berger, which were pitches to Playmates for alternate Krang bodies. The first, “Krang’s Gladiator Body” and the other “Krang’s Gross Dimension X Body.” Two unique pieces of TMNT history.
According to TMNTEntity in a post from 2013, these were pitches that were rejected by Playmates. I’m not sure how often pitches like these got rejected, but it’s a lot of fun to see what could have been. I’ve been a collector of David Arshawsky’s zines of his original art of his pitches to Playmates, the Varner Turtle Sketchbook is also on my bookshelf, and I’ve gone out of my way to buy Model and Toy Collector Special #3, which contains interviews and a lot of sketches of early character designs.
People are really hungry for more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from back in the day. One of the David Arshawsky zines that I picked up features design drawings for Soldier Ant, which spawned a successful Kickstarter in 2024 to realize the never-before produced toy., raising over $100,000 in the process. As part of the launch of the documentary Evolution, Mutation & Reboot, Definitive Films is making a Punked-Out Commando, which is another unrealized action figure from the pitches.
Do I expect the Krang alternate body idea to be resurrected, a la Soldier Ant or Punked-Out Commando? Likely not, without Murphy and Berger’s push for it to happen, but it’s possible.