CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURE: FUGITOID
MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, MODELING PUTTY, ENAMEL PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #5 (MIRAGE)

"...And when a robot becomes a human, that robot becomes a rogue--to be hunted down and terminated!"

Preamble:  Unlike the majority of my Ninja Turtles projects, this one is from the original Mirage Comics stories rather than the original cartoon series.  The Fugitoid is actually a scientist named Dr. Honeycutt from planet D'Hoonib, who had been working on a new telepathic technology when he and his worker robot, Sal, were struck by lightning.  Honeycutt's mind was transferred to the robot body, but his human form was burnt to a crisp.  The military initially blamed Sal for the death of Honeycutt and classified it as a Fugitoid; they would later learn what really happened and attempt to exploit Honeycutt for his inventions.

I should probably say right now that I'm not what you would consider a full-fledged TMNT comics fan.  Back in the day, I picked up the first dozen or so Mirage Comics stories that were collected together and printed in full-color in four separate volumes by First Publishing, mainly out of curiosity about the stories that launched the Turtles' career.  I never got into the comics beyond that point, though I have enjoyed what little of the story I've seen so far.

When Playmates Toys released an action figure in the Fugitoid's likeness, then, I recognized him as being from the comics.  The toy never quite looked right to me, though.  They got his basic design right, but for some reason they added all these extra components to his body, maybe because they felt like it would make a toy incarnation of the character a little more visually interesting.  They also gave him a gold and black color scheme, rather than the silver chrome look he's got in the full-color version of the comic book.  While most of my TMNT toy modifications are characters from the TV series, I figured Fugitoid deserved a better looking toy, too.

Construction:  Cutting all the extra components off of the toy was pretty easy, and for the most part it was all stuff that could be removed without compromising the contours of the toy.  I did have to go back and fill in some gaps with putty to completely smooth out the surface of his body, though, mainly on his forearms.  Also, the toy had been designed with an opening chest that swung open to reveal his internal mechanisms, including one on the lower right part of his chest that was visible through a hole in this opening panel.  I had to whittle down that component and cut a piece of scrap plastic to fill up the gap.  I didn't see any real reason to glue the chest shut, so it still opens up.

Surprisingly, painting the toy ended up being the most involved part of this project.  I wanted his finish to be as smooth-looking as possible, so I ended up giving him several coats of paint, particularly around the front and back of his upper torso where there had been grooves in the original sculpt.  (I actually had the foresight to test-paint a spot on his leg with the enamel paints, just to see if it would actually dry on this type of plastic.  It did, but when I painted the figure, I had a problem with sticky paint anyway.  Go figure.)  A touch of yellow for the eyes and some black for the mouth and pupils was it for the finishing touches.

Comments:  Originally, I had considered buying a sheet of metal foil from baremetalfoil.com and attempting to give him the appearance of a vacuum metalized look.  I've never worked with the stuff before, though, and after I went to all the trouble of making the surface of the toy nice and smooth, I didn't want to risk ruining it completely.  (The stuff is also around five bucks a sheet.)  One day I might hunt down another Fugitoid toy and try doing that instead.

Addendum:  In 2004, two years after I completed this project, Playmates Toys released a second Fugitoid toy as part of the reborn TMNT toy line.  This second Fugitoid figure is much closer to the original look of Fugitoid as he appeared in the comic book.  Looks a lot like mine, don't you think?