@TheOtherMike said:
"So, was https://brickset.com/minifigs/tnt027/victor mutated into https://brickset.com/minifigs/tnt025/spider-bytez, or does the set name refer to something else?"

Yup, we got pre-mutated Spider-Bytez, but no Casey Jones.

@MCLegoboy said:
"The edge of the stickers kind of imply a waterlevel that possibly wouldn't be present if the parts were printed. It's a neat bonus feature that likely wasn't fully intended."

No, the neat bonus feature is that the larger bubble pattern stickers exactly fill the side of a 4x2x6 half-cylinder.

The set name makes it sound like the set is gonna be Supaer awesome. I mean the set is awesome but not Super awesome.

I'ld have liked this set if the side build chamber is smaller and the set is less than $20, closer to $15.

The only reason I remember anything at all about this set, this character, and indeed the episode featuring the aforementioned, is because of one line.

"MAH PHONE!"

Dude was seriously obsessed.

All unique mini-figs, I don't know the lore but assuming the Spider is the innocent bystander and 'Spider Bytez' the mutant mini-fig afterwards?

This was a pretty cool set. I know next to nothing about TMNT as I never watched any of the shows or films. But a trans neon green vat of chemicals to drop a figure in and a revolving door to reveal a huge monster? Awesome! I thought so too when it came out, but I never got it. In the end the licensing made the actual figures too specific and that made the value proposition feel not as great for me.

Btw those trans panels are also doors to unleash the Spider Bytz figure from the vat. It's really cool but I always just wanted to see it closed from the promotional images. Having it open takes away from the giant vat of evil chemicals feel.

@Binnekamp said:
"This was a pretty cool set. I know next to nothing about TMNT as I never watched any of the shows or films. But a trans neon green vat of chemicals to drop a figure in and a revolving door to reveal a huge monster? Awesome! I thought so too when it came out, but I never got it. In the end the licensing made the actual figures too specific and that made the value proposition feel not as great for me.

Btw those trans panels are also doors to unleash the Spider Bytz figure from the vat. It's really cool but I always just wanted to see it closed from the promotional images. Having it open takes away from the giant vat of evil chemicals feel."

The idea is that the human minifig mutates into the spider monster. That's pretty much the entire premise of the franchise: people and animals falling in glowing green ooze and mutating into cool action figures.

@ambr said:
"All unique mini-figs, I don't know the lore but assuming the Spider is the innocent bystander and 'Spider Bytez' the mutant mini-fig afterwards?"

Mmm…more or less. He’s not a straight up villain, but he is an antagonist who inadvertently gets mutated. After that, he leans a bit more towards villain, because he gets on a revenge kick, and blames the Turtles instead of anyone else who was involved.

@ToysFromTheAttic said:
"The idea is that the human minifig mutates into the spider monster. That's pretty much the entire premise of the franchise: people and animals falling in glowing green ooze and mutating into cool action figures."

That really depends on the iteration. The first series, the third series, and the Mutant Mayhem/TV spinoff certainly follow that line, but I’m currently rewatching the second series (2003), and so far the only mutants are the four Turtles, Splinter, and maybe Leatherhead. Even Baxter Stockman never gets mutated. Mutilated, yes, frequently, but what parts of him are still alive are fully human. I don’t remember much about the specifics of the two live-action runs, and I never read the original comics. The TMNT movie also doesn’t include mutants outside of the core five.

This is my only TMNT set other than a couple of polybags. Not into the franchise but, like others, was drawn to the neon green and cool spider creature. Just had a look and quite a few other decent sets in the theme with some great figures. Might keep an eye out for some unless they’re too expensive on the aftermarket.

personally I don't think a chamber needed to be on a leash in the first place

@PurpleDave said:
" @ToysFromTheAttic said:
"The idea is that the human minifig mutates into the spider monster. That's pretty much the entire premise of the franchise: people and animals falling in glowing green ooze and mutating into cool action figures."

That really depends on the iteration. The first series, the third series, and the Mutant Mayhem/TV spinoff certainly follow that line, but I’m currently rewatching the second series (2003), and so far the only mutants are the four Turtles, Splinter, and maybe Leatherhead. Even Baxter Stockman never gets mutated. Mutilated, yes, frequently, but what parts of him are still alive are fully human. I don’t remember much about the specifics of the two live-action runs, and I never read the original comics. The TMNT movie also doesn’t include mutants outside of the core five."

I don't know about that last part, you might be forgetting Tokka and Rahzar from Secret of the Ooze, and of course, Super Shredder.

Were that not the case though, I think @ToysFromTheAttic assertion of the franchise's premise is still [mostly] valid, if it wasn't for mutations, even if just the core five, it would still be foundational to the franchise - the Bay-verse movies are obviously the lightest on mutations with only Splinter receiving that treatment.

@PurpleDave said:
" I don’t remember much about the specifics of the two live-action runs, and I never read the original comics. The TMNT movie also doesn’t include mutants outside of the core five."

Much the same for the 1990s Movie canon - asides the 4 Turtles and Splinter there were only Tokka, Rahzar and Super Shredder being Mutants (and the later 3 limited to part 2).

The Next Muation had the 4 Turtles, Splinter and Venus de Milo the fifth Turtle. Aside from those, the only mutants were Silver (though it was never confirmed he's a mutant, only joked about - all things considered he might be a "regular" yeti), the TMNT clones and maybe Dr. Quease, a mad scientist who regularly experimented on himself, though that wouldn't count as Ooze-induced mutation.

The Platinum Dunes (Bay) movies only added Bebop and Rocksteady in the second part, else just TMNT + Splinter.

In the original Mirage comic (1984) mutants were rather rare. I think Laird said something about not wanting the TMNT loose their uniqueness - something carried over to the 2k3 show. Though there were a few, like Leatherhead and a mutant leech.

Both Archie (1991) and the IDW (2011) were full of mutants, like Ray Fillet and Old Hob.

Never had this one; closest I had was 79100: Kraang Lab Escape, which isn't a direct-parallel, it's not bad for its scale/size.:)

@279 said:
[[I don't know about that last part, you might be forgetting Tokka and Rahzar from Secret of the Ooze, and of course, Super Shredder.]]

I said I didn’t remember much from the live action stuff. I’ve seen the first trilogy, and I’ve seen and own the two later films, but I dont even remember the last time I watched the trilogy, and for the other two it was probably when the second came out on home video. I know that TMNT (the first animated film) is supposed to be a follow up to the trilogy in some way, but they don’t encounter any new mutants in that one.

Were that not the case though, I think @ToysFromTheAttic assertion of the franchise's premise is still [mostly] valid, if it wasn't for mutations, even if just the core five, it would still be foundational to the franchise - the Bay-verse movies are obviously the lightest on mutations with only Splinter receiving that treatment.]]

@Atuin:
I never watched the live action show (or the Japanese D2V show). I also don’t remember a mutant leech from the 2003 series. I’m almost to Ninja Tribunal, so did I miss it already, or is it still coming up?

@PurpleDave said:
"
@Atuin :
I never watched the live action show (or the Japanese D2V show). I also don’t remember a mutant leech from the 2003 series. I’m almost to Ninja Tribunal, so did I miss it already, or is it still coming up?"

Nah, not the 2003 show, but the Mirage comics (sorry, might have phrased that a bit confusing).

"Bloodsucker" apparently is a bit confusing, as the comic he appeared in was guest-written ("Down to the River", 1989) and all those issues were later de-canonized by Laird, however there's a reference to Bloodsucker's story in a definitely canon story, so who knows...

He may or may not have been the inspiration for the later character of Wyrm, who is also a leech.

EDIT:
Regarding those Japanese exclusive OVAs from ca 1995:
I don't think they introduced any "new" mutants, but the core concept of that series was "Super Mutation" (at least as far as I could tell from articles, couldn't find it anywhere to watch). It was a secondary mutation, a bit similar to that gimmick they had in the early Red Sky era episodes from 1996 (with that human/mutant Carter). Though it seems "Super Mutation" was a bit more stable.
I think the cancelled part 4 (with "Kirby the Fifth Turtle") of the Golden Harvest movie series was also planned to have "secondary mutations"...

@Atuin said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"
@Atuin :
I never watched the live action show (or the Japanese D2V show). I also don’t remember a mutant leech from the 2003 series. I’m almost to Ninja Tribunal, so did I miss it already, or is it still coming up?"

Nah, not the 2003 show, but the Mirage comics (sorry, might have phrased that a bit confusing).

"Bloodsucker" apparently is a bit confusing, as the comic he appeared in was guest-written ("Down to the River", 1989) and all those issues were later de-canonized by Laird, however there's a reference to Bloodsucker's story in a definitely canon story, so who knows...

He may or may not have been the inspiration for the later character of Wyrm, who is also a leech.

EDIT:
Regarding those Japanese exclusive OVAs from ca 1995:
I don't think they introduced any "new" mutants, but the core concept of that series was "Super Mutation" (at least as far as I could tell from articles, couldn't find it anywhere to watch). It was a secondary mutation, a bit similar to that gimmick they had in the early Red Sky era episodes from 1996 (with that human/mutant Carter). Though it seems "Super Mutation" was a bit more stable.
I think the cancelled part 4 (with "Kirby the Fifth Turtle") of the Golden Harvest movie series was also planned to have "secondary mutations"..."

Weird. I know E&L didn’t want mutants that were created for the first animated series *coughBebop&Rocksteadycough* to appear in the live action films, but I know very little about the comics continuity beyond that Shredder dies in the first issue, the Turtles all wear red masks, nobody can agree on what ethnicity April is, who The Last Ronin is, and that four super-Turtles take over once even he’s passed away. Oh, and that Miyamoto Usagi is not original to TMNT, but appears in several iterations due to some sort of agreement with Stan Sakai regarding crossover usage when they were both published by the same imprint. I know that many of the characters that appear in the 2003/2012 series are original to the comics, but not all. Hun and Bishop are two I distinctly remember were created for the 2003 series, and then they completely flipped Bishop around for the 2012 series. But I don’t know if either showed up in any print stories.

@PurpleDave said:
"Weird. I know E&L didn’t want mutants that were created for the first animated series *coughBebop&Rocksteadycough* to appear in the live action films, but I know very little about the comics continuity beyond that Shredder dies in the first issue, the Turtles all wear red masks, nobody can agree on what ethnicity April is, who The Last Ronin is, and that four super-Turtles take over once even he’s passed away. Oh, and that Miyamoto Usagi is not original to TMNT, but appears in several iterations due to some sort of agreement with Stan Sakai regarding crossover usage when they were both published by the same imprint. I know that many of the characters that appear in the 2003/2012 series are original to the comics, but not all. Hun and Bishop are two I distinctly remember were created for the 2003 series, and then they completely flipped Bishop around for the 2012 series. But I don’t know if either showed up in any print stories."

Do you know that the original Mirage April turned out to be not a human at all?

The whole reluctance towards including more mutants is certainly a key point here. Eventually they gave in when Murakami-Wolf-Swenson (the original cartoon's studio) and Playmates Toys found that to be better marketable. Since that proved successful, Eastman was more accepting towards it, Laird not so much, creating a dispute between them.

The red masks thing is actually very much more "ninja" - confusing enemies by looking all the same, making it harder to tell how much ninja there actually are. Playmates introduced the colored ones, because they felt parents would refuse to buy their kids 4x the "same" action figure. Probably also the reason they introduced the different skin colors.

Usagi pretty much correct. E&L were apparently good frineds with Stan Sakai and they wanted to boost Usagi's fame by including them in both the 87 cartoon and toyline. There was a weird easteregg with the Usagi character Gen (an anthropomorphic rhino) dressing up as 1987 Rocksteady in either 2k3 or BTTS (which sort of is 2k3...).

Hun and Bishop were created for 2k3, also correct. They might have shown up in IDW, not sure about that, but they certainly didn't appear in comics prior to 2003. Funnily the "Normans" (Kraang disguises, who mutated our guy Vic here) were actually based on Bishop (who in turn is based on the generic MIB stereotype). That they later introduced a "Bishop" in 2012 (alongside Pawn (Kraangdroid), Rook (Ms. Campbell), Knight (Subprime) and Queen (Irma)) was... interesting. Hun is somewhat inspired by the character Tatsu from the 1990 movie in his behaviour and position, but not in looks. He changed further in 2012, to be a weird Bruce Lee parody.

As a side note, the now main stay character of Karai was long time exclusive to the comics (originally only known as "Lady Shredder"). She was a hidden Boss character in TMNT Tournament Fighters for the SNES and the 1987 character Lotos Blossom is loosely based upon her, but that's it. Before 2k3, she was mostly unknown.

Unfortunately I can't tell that much about the whole IDW arc and The Last Ronin either (though the "Last Ronin" is Mikey, "the one you'd least expect it to be").

Where's the third minifig?