When I saw a tweet from my pal Dex of AEIOU & Sometimes Why that mentioned “Stuffed Turtle Balls” I thought it sounded like a gross appetizer from a fancy French restaurant (for the record, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to eat Turtles, since they’re my favorite animal, let alone eat any animal’s scrotum–wait, do turtles even have scrotums? Anyone care to weigh in?), but he was actually referring to these a-freaking-dorable TMNT Beanie Ballz made by TY:
(Also for the record: TY has a horribly-designed website.)
A few weeks ago @Smurfwreck and I went to Myrtle Beach and every time we went out shopping we made a game of trying to hunt these things down. A lot of the touristy places and gift shops that carried TY stuff had a decent selection of Beanie Ballz, but only a few of them had TMNT. Rarer still was finding a store that had all the Turtles left in stock. After hitting up a bunch of different places, I finally picked up all four.
Supposedly Beanie Ballz “always land on their feet” when you roll, throw, or catch them, but I’ve found this to be true only about 60% of the time, according to scientific tests performed with my cat. Speaking of feet, I give props to TY for giving the Turtles the correct number of toes, and yes, I realize it’s sad to get this excited over two little pieces of green felt. I also love that each of the Turtles’ weapons are printed on their shells, although it’s kind of weird they gave Donatello two bo staffs–erm, staves?–which is something you don’t often see.
Here are some front and back shots of each ball, and I couldn’t resist posing them with my 11″ Turtle figures:
Leonardo
Michelangelo
Donatello
Raphael
