MICHAELANGELO (UNDERCOVER) PROJECT# 448 CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT/CUSTOM BASE FIGURE: DON, THE UNDERCOVER TURTLE MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, ACRYLIC PAINTS FIRST APPEARANCE: "TURTLE TRACKS" "Listen up, you mugs!  I'm giving the orders around here, see?  ...Okay, so I don't do Bogart." Preamble:  When you think about it for a minute, it's kind of bizarre that the Ninja Turtles were ever able to go out in public.  Sure, they almost always wore disguises of some sort when venturing out into the city streets, but even a body-length trench coat and fedorah doesn't hide the fact that they've decidedly not human.  (One supposes the population of New York City is simply accustomed to weirdos.)  Of course, this problem is compounded by the fact that the Turtles frequently threw their disguises to the ground the very instant that Shredder showed up to steal a new brand of metal polish or when April O'Neil let out a blood-curdling shriek because she broke a nail.  You'd think Splinter would have included some training on how to perform basic ninja moves while wearing clothing, but apparently that wasn't part of the sensei's curriculum.  As soon as it was time to fight, it was time to get naked. Anyway, these outfits are arguably the quintessential Turtles disguises, but the official versions weren't very true to the cartoon.  I decided to do my own versions that were more accurate to their appearance in the show.   Construction:  After getting the usual superfluous accessories out of the way (the dagger and microphone, plus those obnoxious elbow pads) and fixing the bottoms of his feet (which were completely flat), I cracked open the figure to paint the parts before reassembling it.  The bodies of TMNT toys are sonic welded, but usually all it takes is a pair of well-placed screwdrivers to pry them open.  The fact that this specific toy doesn't have the usual ball-and-socket leg joints made this a little more difficult, since there wasn't an open gap in the body for me to work with.  I figured the best thing to do was to cut the head off and use the gap in the neck to wedge some tools inside, reasoning that I could reattach the head afterwards.  I ended up taking this approach with all four Turtles.  I equipped him with some custom-made nunchucks, which used to be vintage accessories whose plastic rope I replaced with individual links of chain made from copper wire.  (I made these accessories when I was a teenager, when the original TMNT show was still on the air, technically making them one of my very first custom projects.  The nunchucks predate this project by about 20 years!) Comments:  The color of the fedorah hats that the Turtles wore changed multiple times, depending on which animation studio produced a particular episode.  You'd think there would have been a single color key model that everybody would have used for reference, but apparently not—they wore hats ranging from grey to brown to tan (the last of which nicely matched their trench coats).  Needless to say, for this project, I went with the original classic grey, as they appeared in the pilot episode and most of the second season. This Page Created: 2/18/2010 Last Updated: 7/8/2010 Page Content ©2010 Inspiration Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® is a trademark of Nickelodeon Michaelangelo's ancient Egyptian pharoah outfit also doubles as a hardboiled detective outfit but only because the animators forgot what they were doing between commercial breaks.