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Bebop, Rocksteady, and the two unproduced mutants.
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, weren't 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
Junkman's hardcopy
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 energy alien who used a body of junk to get about.
Terrorpin[]
Terrorpin was a concept proposed by Steve Bissette 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 never made, but Terrorpin did appear in Volume 2 of the comic and inspired Tokka.
Terrorpin and Snappy Warhol
Unmade Mega Mutants[]
The Mega Mutant assortment was released in 1990, and consisted of two vehicle/figure hybrids; Needlenose, an ally to the TMNT, and Killer Bee, a Foot-aligned mount. However, there were also three other proposed mounts; an ant, a spider, and a buzzard. The ant went through two revisions; an army ant, and a picnic-themed ant. This ant would have probably served the TMNT, and made it to the hardcopy stage. The other two only made it to concept art.