Jay's Toy Shelf : Playmates Toys' Shredder (Customization)

Oh Shredder, always trying to stop those dang turtles!
In the 2012 show, Shredder is the typical obsessed, megalomanic, arrogant, cold-hearted villain although most of his rage and vengeance is directed towards Splinter. In the show, they both loved the same woman, Tang-Shen, but in a heated battle, she died and Shredder has blamed Splinter (though it's pretty clear Shredder --aka Oroku Saki-- killed her). He's a pretty generic villain in terms of personality and motivation, but the turtles have to have someone to fight!

There's a story about buying this shredder, and it goes like this:
I was buying the turtles, excited by the show and my re-introduction to collecting the toys. I bought the four turtles, then went to order Shredder at the same time. I wasn't really paying attention, and accidentally ordered the 8 inch tall Sound FX shredder. To the figure's credit, the look was pretty spot on, but the articulation was garbage since it was mostly meant as a sound effects toy. So I kept the figure and ordered the first release of the shredder.

Like the first release of the turtles, it was not quite like the cartoon. For one, the face plate wasn't completely painted, and the head sculpt in general was poor. The shredder gauntlet blades were far too short, even if they were meant to be in their retracted state. Last, there was no purple cape! Though he does remove it sometimes, he is mostly seen with the cape.

Customization steps:

Begin Shredding them: Boiling water helped, but it took quite
a bit of leverage to get the blade pieces apart cause they had
screws in them

Take two Shredders

There's a longer SFX shredder blade
with an SFX shredder arm. Had to cut
out the indent in the blade after
separating it cause it wouldn't fit on the
original version's arm.

Disassembling the body to get at the head

Very bulky body in order to hold the electronics
and the three batteries at the back.

Head separated! Then boil and pop to remove from the loop peg

Mostly reassembled. Had to cut cape to size, then glue.

Completed! Added some blackwash
to the armor and painted a bit of lead
color to some of the blades (didn't have
silver paint at the time).

I am much happier with the figure now. I much prefer the well sculpted, longer and well painted SFX head, as well as the longer blades. I added a bit of paint to the metal blades and kabuto headpiece just to make it look slightly less plasticy, as well as a bit of blackwash on the metal armor. The one thing I can't quite get right as of yet is the cape. It's not well cut for him, and the superglue isn't staying well on most parts. That'll have to be changed up later perhaps.

For the review, I'll be doing a Original vs. Custom

Sculpt/Paint: 2/5 Original, 3/5 Custom. I think the addition of the better head sculpt and a bit of paint helped make him look a smidge better. The head sculpt from the original was too slipshod, where the SFX one is painted with both the sagging burned eye and proper face mask.

Articulation: 1/5 (8 PoA, both): I didn't add or improve any articulation points here. Shredder hinge/swivel thighs, shoulders and elbows, as well as a swivel waist and head. That's it! No knees, ankles or even wrist swivel. Unfortunately, all the playmates toys aside the turtles have pretty limited posing. To be fair, it is meant for kids, but I stopped collecting soon after I realized how limited all the other figures in the line were.

Price/Availability: 5/5 (both) Deep discounts online if you're looking for them, and they released much better versions of shredder later on.

Accessories: 2/5 (both) Shredder includes one curved sword and two 8 pointed pin-wheel style shurikens.

Fun Factor: 1/5 Original, 2/5 Custom .He looks good standing next to the turtles, though aside some upper body, will always stand a bit stiff due to the lack of lower leg joints. The cape allows him to use it as another balance point, which is good because before he would fall over quite easily even in a vanilla pose.

Verdict: 13/25 Okay He's a good enough figure to have in a collection now that he's customized, but I wouldn't recommend the original and I probably wouldn't buy my own custom, but I like the improvement and the experimentation I got to do with him anyway!