BEBOP PROJECT #176 CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH BASE FIGURE: BEBOP MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, SCRAP PLASTIC, METAL CHAINS/RINGS, ACRYLIC PAINTS FIRST APPEARANCE: "TURTLE TRACKS" (AS HUMAN); "ENTER THE SHREDDER" (AS MUTANT WARTHOG) "Well, yeah.  I am pretty interesting.  Ask me my opinion on comic books!" Preamble:  Bebop's another of my favorite Ninja Turtles characters.  He and Rocksteady are both complete idiots, so I'm not sure why I like him so much in particular.  Somehow he just strikes me as being a far more adorable flavor of stupid.  (Or maybe it's the cool purple shades.) Well, anyway, I've always though that some improvements needed to be made to the original Bebop action figure, since it doesn't really match his animated appearance.  Bebop actually holds the distinction of being the first TMNT toy I ever customized, but the full extent of my early work involved touching up his tennis shoes with Wite-Out.  Years down the road, I picked up some duplicate TMNT figures on eBay for the express purpose of kitbashing them, and Bebop was the first one that I tackled.  I didn't really have a clear idea of exactly what changes I was going to make to him, only that I wanted him more show-accurate.  I ended up doing a lot more work on him than I'd anticipated, actually, but I consider the finished product an immense improvement. Construction:  The first thing I did was get rid of those goofy buck teeth, a modification I've been wanting to make for about ten years now.  (I feel better about permanently altering my toys when I can keep another unmodified one for the toy collection.)  While I was at it, I chopped off his puny little tusks and replaced them with larger, more pointy ones.  The original figure was sculpted with a leg brace, but in the cartoon Bebop appears to only wear part of it (perhaps it's a bandana), so I cut the lower piece off.  While I was chopping things off, I also cut off the unpainted skulls and finger bones hanging off the turtle shells on either of his shoulders. One of the things I wanted to do was add some actual metal to the toy to make it more authentic looking.  I carefully cut off his plastic nose ring, making sure to retain the shape of his nose since I wasn't in the mood to break out the Sculpey, and cut some holes into his nostrils.  I did the same thing for his earring.  (I also discovered that he had an unpainted lip ring, which I'd never noticed before.  I cut that off, too.)  The new nose ring and earring were made from pieces of an old keychain.  I also sliced off the chains that were molded to his wrist, and replaced them with a real chain that was originally part of a necklace.  With a bit of experimentation, I even managed to come up with a replacement belt for him, made from the chain and connecting rings from a keychain, along with the chain from a smaller necklace.  (Yes, I keep stuff like this around for precisely this reason.)  While cutting off the belt, I left some tabs protruding from the plastic in order to help hold the belt in place. Other changes I made include adding the straps that hold his turtle shells to his shoulders (made from the extra straps from a Donatello belt, with real screws holding them in place), an ammo belt (cut down to size and glued in place), grenades or fishing bobbers or whatever those things are hanging from his jacket (made out of craft beads), and his turtle skull necklace (made from the skull I'd cut off his arm and the legs from a toy lizard, struck together with sewing thread).  I also cut a thin sheet of plastic to more closely match the shape of the eye slits on his sunglasses, and glued that in place. I ended up repainting the entire figure, with a more glossy red color for the jacket (I figure it's probably dyed leather), and black for the pants, with a lighter color for his fur than the original figure had (I realize he was African-American in his human form, but in his warthog form his fur is more of a light tan color), and some highlights for his shoes and turtle shells.  Of course, his glasses needed to be purple (I think they were originally blue because a lot of the Foot Clan characters had a blue-and-purple color scheme). Comments:  An online search for the keywords "tmnt kitbash" reveals this page to be the top result of over 5000 search results.  Thanks for visiting! This Page Created: 8/2/2001 Last Update: 10/12/2009 Page Content ©2001 Inspiration Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® is a trademark of Mirage Studios Captain Cow® is... uh, not.