Subscribe

News · 2026-10-01

NECA has turned the 1987 cartoon's disguises into a line called Neighborhood Dudes, and three of the four are orderable

By ninjaturtles.tv news desk

NECA has turned the 1987 cartoon's disguises into a line called Neighborhood Dudes, and three of the four are orderable

Four mutant turtles cannot walk into a shop, and the 1987 cartoon never solved that. It put them in costumes instead: a trench coat and a hat, a fake nose on a pair of glasses, a tailored suit if the week’s story could be bent into justifying one, and more than once the costume is on before the plot has any use for it. NECA has now made the outfits.

The listings went up on NECA’s own store this week under a sub-line it is calling Neighborhood Dudes. Three of the four are still orderable. Tuxedo Leo, Incognito Mikey and Construction Don take a pre-order at $37.99 each, with shipping expected in the fourth quarter of this year. They are 7 inch figures and NECA’s listings call the sculpting all new. Sailor Raph is the fourth, at the same price, and NECA’s own listing for him already reads sold out. No other retailer we checked carries the line at all, so for the moment there is nowhere else to send you. All four come on a card built as a VHS homage, with a marquee logo over an airbrushed city skyline. The art on the front of Leo’s box is not the figure in a tuxedo. It is the tuxedo peeling off a rubber human face.

Leo’s outfit comes from “The Big Cufflink Caper!” [1], an episode that opens with the Turtles going through their disguises and Donatello asking for a specially tailored formal suit [2]. They are not hiding from anything at that point in the story, and nobody is chasing them. They are bored, the episode says so out loud, and the cufflink robberies turn up as something to do. The accessory tray follows the same scene rather than the action: a bald rubber mask, a paper sack of groceries with greens and a feather duster sticking out of the top, and a pizza loaded with the brown and pale yellow of peanut butter, salami and double yogurt.

The Tuxedo Leo accessory layout on white, with a bald rubber human mask, six hands, a sack of groceries and a pizza.

Mikey wears his more than any of them, and NECA has not tried to pin him to a single episode. Its listing says only that he appears in several, and the episodes do not single one out either. The jacket is the powder blue puffer, the turtleneck at his throat is red, the beanie is orange, and the blonde wig sits crooked under it; the glasses carry the putty nose, and the hands are orange because the costume gives him human ones. The putty nose is the entire plan.

Incognito Mikey in a blue puffer jacket, orange beanie and blonde wig, lifting the false nose and glasses away from his face.

Don’s is the costume doing a job the plot actually set. In “Corporate Raiders from Dimension X” the Turtles cannot get near Octopus Inc. looking like themselves, so they go in as repairmen, and the figure carries that out to the tool bag, the pickaxe, the hammer, the briefcase and the jackhammer. The hard hat is yellow, the coveralls are tan, the sunglasses are black, and the ginger beard covers the beak from the eyes down.

Construction Don in tan coveralls, yellow hard hat, sunglasses and a ginger beard, leaning on a jackhammer beside a sawhorse.

The disguise in the 1987 cartoon looks like concealment, but it was almost never that. It was how the writers got the Turtles into an ordinary afternoon, and the costume did the work a human supporting cast would normally do: it got them into a room, and it got a laugh. “Green with Jealousy” is the clearest case. The Turtles are in sailor suits before that episode’s plot begins, for no reason anyone bothers to supply, and the suits only matter later, when Irma starts receiving anonymous gifts and decides her admirers must be navy men. The suits hide nobody. They are what gives Irma something to be wrong about.

Sailor Raph in a white sailor suit and cap holds a pizza at the open side of the Turtle Van.

The buy path is NECA’s own store, where the line was listed and the only place we can find taking a pre-order on it; BigBadToyStore returns no match on any of these figures by name, so there is no second US route we could turn up. Watch the fine print on the order rather than the price. NECA’s own pre-order note says an order will not ship until every pre-order item on it has arrived, and it recommends keeping pre-orders and in-stock items on separate orders. Put a fourth quarter figure in with something in stock and the whole cart waits for the Turtles. Archie Comics Leatherhead went up on the same day at the same price [3].

The Tuxedo Leo box front, with a marquee NEIGHBORHOOD DUDES logo over a city skyline and cartoon art of the tuxedo pulling off a human face.

Not one figure in the sub-line is holding a weapon. The grocery sack made it into the accessory tray; the katana did not.

[1] NECA’s listing shortens it to “Big Cufflink Caper”. The title card reads “The Big Cufflink Caper!”, season four, episode five, first aired 14 September 1990.

[2] Donatello is the one who asks for the specially tailored formal suit, and all four end up in evening dress. The tuxedo figure is Leonardo. NECA has not said why, and the episode does hand Leonardo the plan to infiltrate Big Louie’s mob.

[3] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Archie Comics) Leatherhead, 7 inch scale, pre-order at $37.99, read at the same time as the other four. NECA’s listing names a bendy wire tail, turnstone, pole knife, ftoom rifle, thoom blaster and hat, and credits the card art to Ken Mitchroney.

Sources

★ DISCUSSION

Join the conversation.

Comments below are mirrored on the ThunderCats.org forum. Sign in once, post anywhere.