25 Nights of Nineties Nostalgia: TMNT’s Fugitoid

It’s TMNT Tuesday, the day of the week themed around a group of teenage turtles mutated from a green chemical spill (apparently the very same one that made Daredevil go blind) named after renaissance artists, trained to be ninjas by a giant rat, fight a criminal organization lead by a man dressed in kitchen utensils, and an alien brain tentacle beast that hangs out in his body-slave’s stomach… So naturally we will be talking about a robot scientist. This is Fugitoid, the fugitive android. Long ago on the planet D’Hoonib, Professor Honeycutt tried experimenting with teleportation only for lightening to strike at the worst time, thereby transferring his brain into a nearby robot, because that is how science and lightening works. The planet’s government blames the robot for the death of Prof. Honeycutt, despite this perfectly believable explanation, and so Fugitoid is now on the run.

Fugitoid via ragingnerdgasm.com
Fugitoid via ragingnerdgasm.com

At this point you may be asking yourself, what does any of this have to do with ninja turtles? Well more than you might think, actually. You see the Turtles are the invention of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, but before they accidentally stumbled into piles of money with their Daredevil homage/parody, there was the comic Fugitoid. This runaway science experiment was the first character the two ever worked on together in the beginnings of Mirage Studios. Fugitoid even guess starred in some of the opening issues of TMNT to try and boost the sales of the Turtles book. Little did the two men know that TMNT would soon become a hit TV show with children, and require a toy-line.

Fugitoid is a great toy for those that love that great 1950’s robot aesthetic. The dark gold is accented wonderfully by the black and bits of red. There is a little bit of the dopey inventor in his round appearance and soft expression, and it works until you realize the guy comes with a bo staff and three guns that attach to random parts of the figure. Oh, and there is a compartment of his chest that opens up as if to reveal a hidden weapon. This professor is packing some serious heat.

It’s great that this character has been immortalized in toy form for his place in TMNT history, despite him never being in the original TV show. Interestingly, he did make appearances in the IDW comic reboot, the 2003 TMNT series for Cartoon Network, and finally the 2012 series on Nickelodeon where he was voiced by David Tennant!

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Al Baldino is half bear, half owl-bear, which makes him some sort of terrible fraction no one wants to think about. He's a co-host on the Line Cutters every Wednesday at 7pm EST.