I've never been a fan of TMNT, even during their earliest comic roots, when they were still radioactive. However, they have produced an interesting foe, the alien supervillain Kraang. There have naturally been toy versions of him along the way, but two of the most recent caught my eye; these being Lego and Kinder Eggs.
The Lego minifig version is basically a pink minifig head with a softer plastic body formed around it. It has nice snake-like tentacles and a leering, evil demeanour. The Kinder version has grippers on its shorter arms, to hold weapons and accessories from the figure range and a seriously peed off expression.
What I like about the figures is their simlarity to the Kelloggs Crater Critters from 1970, especially the tripedal King Crater, who does look much more benign, if not completely spaced!
But a possibly more interesting reference point is Kraang's resemblance to Terence Cuneo's beautiful painted illustrations for Well's 'War of the Worlds' which appeared in 'Tell Me Why' Magazine in a brief serialisation in 1970. Cuneo took the text literally and produced a wonderfully glaring, inimical Martian, 'glistening like wet leather', perched on the edge of a pit. The paintings stuck with me as a boy and unsettled me slightly with their realism. The Martians and the industrial looking tripods are for me, the definitive take on Wells creation.
