Playmates Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Unproduced 1988-1994 Action Figures)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline is well-known for the zany and creative characters that filled the line. However, for every figure that did get released, dozens of others did not. Many of these unmade toys were of entirely new characters created by Mirage alumni such as Ryan Brown, but there were also figures of several major characters, like Ninjara, Armaggon, and Savanti Romero, that were ultimately not made.

Peter Laird's Original Pitch
Peter Laird's original pitch of the toyline had a set of ten characters divided equally among two factions. There would be Splinter and the four turtles, as well as Shredder and his four mutants. While two of them eventually evolved into Bebop and Rocksteady, the other pair, a bull and a bulldog, were not produced (though the bull possibly inspired Groundchuck). Playmates later requested Laird to design even more additional mutants for the line, resulting in him creating dozens of sketches for potential characters to serve the side of the Foot. Amongst these were a cyborg football-playing lynx, a crab who was a mechanic, another crab with flip-out guns, Oscar the snail man, Jumper and Crawler, two mutant assault vehicles, and a biker gorilla.

One of them, "The Unknown", eventually became Mutagen Man. While their designs are similar, the backstories are very different. "The Unknown" was the result of combining multiple animals in one mutant, whereas Mutagen Man is an unfortunate bloke who was turned into a blob monster by improper use of mutagen and survives via a mechanical suit. Other sketches resemble Baxter Stockman, Ace Duck, and Genghis Frog.

Junkman
The figure "Junkman" was probably the most fascinating of all the rejects. Junkman has gone through several



iterations until he reached a state final enough to have a hardcopy produced. One iteration included a small junkyard dog sidekick,and another concept was actually a human vigilante clad in junk. Junkman was originally a one-off character from the comic special "Turtle Soup", where he was an energyn alien who used a body of junk to get about.

Terrorpin
Terrorpin was a concept proposed by Steve Bissete of a large snapping turtle monster who came with a smaller turtle named Snappy Warhol, who was clad in a soup can. The figure was not made, but Terrorpin  did appear in Volume 2 of the comic and inspired Tokka.