SpeekyGeeky's NECA Archie TMNT Adventures Deep Dive Character Spotlight Series: FUTURE DON & CUDLEY
- Mr. Geek-E
- Jun 21
- 17 min read
“We’re looking for a few good Archie Comics mutants!”
Howdy folks and welcome to SpeekyGeeky, as always, I am your host Mr.Geek-E!
Today we are going to be discussing and giving a big ol’ spotlight to NECA Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures (TMNT Adventures) Toy Line!
Over the years, we’ve tried to bring you episode after episode of all different lengths and realms of Turtles. Sometimes those episodes were Mirage, sometimes Fred Wolf, sometimes 2012, but HISTORICALLY (and we you know we LOVE diving deep into all the history here) those would focus on around 6 or so rad characters within each offering.
Over more recent years however, we’ve had a myriad of folks take time out of their busy days to ask us if we might be able to keep all the deep divey fun, but, y’know…break it down a bit to because there is a BIG difference between finding 15 minutes at a time to learn about ONE exciting character vs over an hour to hear about 6 or more. We understand incredibly well that an hour or more is sometimes a long commitment than doable in this breakneck speed world we occupy.
So we figured HECK, we think there is a way to meet folks where they are at, HOWEVER they’d like to view our deep dives by creating BOTH a long form episode AND a series of shorter, broken down character specific episodes so THAT way we’re putting the (ahem) TURTLE power of choice in the VIEWERS hands on how THEY would like to interact with all our dorky character goodness.
PLUS, this way, if you like a specific character and want others to know how freaking BODACIOUS they are, BOOM, you can share a quick character specific story with them versus throwing a full on shelf of encyclopedia books their way…
That said, we'd love for fans to weigh in on who YOU would like to see covered in our TMNT deep dives too, so be sure to let us know in the chat and in the comments below, because WHO KNOWS, some of your choices may end up making an appearance or two in one of our upcoming episodes as well.
SO, welcome to our NEW…ISH Spotlight series, where every episode we choose a different character from the various worlds of Turtles (and eventually other shows as well) to deconstruct their origins for your viewing entertainment. A reminder here too that EACH of these episodes can also be found in their fuller form within other episodes within our channel (which we’ll always be sure to conveniently drop links for within the video AND the description), so if THAT is your preferred way of hearing more, by GOLLY we got you covered THERE too.
Now sit back, relax, and enjoy hearing more about a specific character within the world of Turtles than you could ever want to know….
TODAY's character spotlight deep dive focus is ALL about Archie TMNT Adventures FUTURE DONATELLO & CUDLEY THE COWLICK
TMNT Adventures FUTURE DONATELLO & CUDLEY THE COWLICK Deep Dive Character Spotlights
For the sake of simplicity, let's just call this version "Donatello Duz...TIME Machines".
We are of the firm belief that the only way to make Donatello even COOLER than he comes naturally is to throw him into a duster trenchcoat and send him traveling back through time to save the future from the past. Oh, and having a retractable bow staff that also doubles as a blaster doesn't hurt toward adding exra levels to his overall coolness factor either.
Sure, we've seen Donatello come in a wealth of different looks throughout the life of the Turtles Franchise, including a shrunken-down version of himself that embodies a mech suit similar to Metalhead in Tales of TMNT, a full-on Cyborg in IDW's Urban Legends, a Pteranosaurus in the original Playmates toy line, and even a parody of Electro in the form of Mirage and 2003's Super Turtles, and though ALL are 100% all major top class variants of Donatello we need to see someday in toy form as well, as far as we're concerned, within the Archie series at least, this is the version of Donatello we'd be excited to see the MOST.
Well hold up, you might be saying...isn't this basically just Donatello but..y'know...older? SURE, if you want to be reductive as all SHELL then we guess that is technically accurate, but importantly you left out the words "AND WISER." Yup, if you thought Teenage Donnie was one smart Terrapin, wait until you get a load of the techno know-how on his later model. This version not only had a wealth of failures under his belt, but this dude has also seen some stuff, and the result has made him a more confident and tempered hero.
Digging into this character a little further, aside from his bodacious look, future Donatello plays a fairly major role within the Archie mythos. In the incredibly thrilling "Future War" arch which came out ALL the way back at the tail end of the Archie run and was recently FINALLY finished thanks in large part to TMNT super-fan and co-creator of TMNT Odyssey Arseniy Dubakov in collaboration with original TMNT Adventures writers like Chris Allan. In this final arc, we see just HOW entrenched future Donnie was to the trajectory of the Archie series, which, without going into too deep of spoiler territory here, largely centers around his actions being tied to both his own fate and the fate of his brothers.
How could we see Future Donnie coming to us in the ...ahem...future?
Because this character would be comprised of quite a bit of reuse from the classic Archie TMNT Donatello's buck, we could see this figure's cost savings migrate into some pretty rad potential accessories. For starters, of course, we'd want to see him come with his quintessential purple duster maskless head, an alternate battle-damaged head, but additionally it might be fun to see him packed in with a fully extended and fully retracted bow staff, with a blaster effect to place on the tip, and perhaps a smaller scale time-slip portal and a lesser articulated helper robot or two.
CUDLEY THE COWLICK
Wait, BONUS??! But Geek-e, don't you usually do a firm six characters in these episodes? You're throwing off the whole rhythm to this series now. Well, firstly, thank you for noticing our format structure, we put a lot of thought into the way we pace these episodes and it truly means a lot that we've come to a point where there are legitimate expectations to be met with this series vs our traditional just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks mantra.
Secondly, TECHNICALLY we aren't breaking our rules here because even though this option is very much a character in his OWN right, he ALSO happens to fall into the category of a VEHICLE...though you may want to think twice about calling that to his...ahem..face. We'd say "don't have a cow" about this change-up, but we'd be entirely working against ourselves there, so instead we'll just say "Enjoy a ride that will leave you simply salivating."
Ok so what's this dude's deal Geek-E? Why is he so important to the series?
Put simply...he's the (ahem) vehicle for much of the Archie's plotlines to happen. Approaching this from a less reductive stance, within the Archie series, a great deal of the action centers around the Turtles' exploration of the world around them (both past and present) as WELL as interdimensional space travel, and more often than not, the preferred and ONLY mode of transportation (aside from the time-slip device we noted earlier with future Donnie) is a giant floating bovine head named Cudley (because as everyone knows, when you are four mutant Turtles trying to move stealthily between locales it's important to be as inconspicuous as possible, and nothing says "there's nothing to see here" than an enormous levitating cow head popping onto NORAD and moving in all sorts of erratic ways well beyond Earth's current transport capabilities...but luckily he doesn't leave a healthy dose of genetic material in his wake for any folks in the scientific community to gather and prove intelligent life exists beyond our planet because we're pretty sure that violates the prime directive on at least a few space-faring series, because that would be pretty b--...OH, he DOES? Like enough to fill a whole stump arena worth? Well...then in that case let's just remember that this is a comic that was predominantly meant to be read by a younger demographic, and we're already in the mode of accepting that four mutant Turtles are going on all sorts of wacky adventures undetected by the general populace, so let's maybe just not pick and choose where we draw that "um actually" line in the sand, yeah?
Also, as a fun and important aside, Cudley happens to make an appearance in almost every iteration of TMNT, so that's not NOTHING...AAAAND it is also worth mentioning that we ALMOST actually had a bonafide oversized Cudley action figure back in the Playmates days around the same time we started seeing those bigger-sized vehicle characters like Needlenose and Killer Bee, but this ally vehicle, along with a handful of other incredibly cool proposed mega-mutants sadly never came to be. BUUUUT if you are anything like us, knowing that information now only compounds that frustration that despite it being decades and a variety of additional appearances later we STILL don't have him in our geeky little hands.
As we noted, Cudley, despite being such an absurdly silly character also worked SO incredibly well within the franchise, and it turns out that he (or in the lone case of the comic strips...SHE) isn't just a pretty face, he's also incredibly central to a good deal of some of the Turtles most important stories within the world of Archie. The Turtles need to get to Stump Arena and become directly at the center of an interplanetary war? No worries, Cudley will get you there. The Turtles first encounter with Wingnut and Screwloose? Yup, Cudley was just the right place/right time giant McGuffin that allowed for that meeting as well.
TECHNICALLY, it's his actions that actually brought the Mutanimals together as a team, he even ahem, STEERed them initially in the right direction toward going after a common enemy versus pointlessly fighting amongst themselves, so in THIS way, Cudley might be considered an unofficial member of the team in the same respect that Nick Fury is an unofficial Avenger in the movie universe for orchestrating the creation of THAT team.
Even though Cudley's has appeared in Mirage, Archie, the comic strips, IDW comic, Turtles Forever, the 2012 series, the recent Shredder's Revenge video game, and a blink and you'll miss it nod in the Rise of TMNT series, his ACTUAL origin has never been addressed and we still have sooo many questions about this bodacious bovine!
Questions like: Are there more members of the Cudley family out there zipping around through time and space? How did it come to be that he'd find himself working for a couple of shady wrestling entrepreneurs like Stump and Sling in the first place? How did his relationship with Cherubae come to be, her being an exiled warlord and all? How does he...y'know...go to the bathroom? Does he even NEED to eat? And if he DOESN'T eat or drink, where does all that saliva COME from?
So, how do we see this Heroic Heffer making its way to us should NECA decide to thrust him through the pan-dimensional action figure nexus to spit cud sloppily all over our toy shelves?
Well, naturally this dude would be HUGE...big enough to hold not just the four turtles, but the entirety of the Mutanimals as well, so we're talking oversized Krang sized big potentially. In an ideal scenario, he would have all the fixings of a typical Archie NECA figure (minus some points of articulation due to the fact that he is missing quite a few appendages). We'd want to see him with adjustable eyebrows similar to the movie version of Tokka and Rahzar, as well as a fully unhinged jaw with both an elongated unfurled tongue or tongue that wrests nicely within his mouth for those moments he isn't gobbling up traveling passengers. A fun additional touch might be to have his tongue made of a rubbery substance with enlarged tastebuds so that it innately had that extra slobbery feel without having to apply a water substance into the mix.
If NECA wanted to go the extra intergalactic mile with this character (which, knowing NECA, they often do), we'd love for Cudley to double as a carrying case. Perhaps with a latch on the side we could flip open allowing him to swing apart like a Mighty Max playset, his interior looking like a dimension x, or Maligna's hive, or the Prison Planet of Morbus setting which might encourage folks to purchase multiple Cudley's, one to display as his floating head self and one to be used for a diorama backdrop.
Is it any surprise from our love of all things Sesame Street that Mr. Snuffleupagus's unofficial long-lost cousin might make it into the mix?
Yeah yeah yeah, we COULD talk about how this kicks major prehistoric butt and just looks freaking awesome look to boot, which just by its lonesome would land this wooly bully onto the list of our favorite characters, but MANMOTH also happens to be part of the elusive repeating guest club, joining the Turtles antics on two different occasions throughout the Archie series.
Starting in his debut appearance in "Origin of Species" as an ACTUAL caveman who was fished out of the ocean preserved within a block of ice Captain America style. Shredder being Shredder, manages to get his villainous hands on him right out the gate and decides to do the first logical thing and try to actively learn from the millennia-old mysteries of humanity, taking blood samples and DNA and...nope, who are we kidding, he just funnels some mutagen into the poor ancient dude's stasis tube with the hopes of enlisting him into his ever-growing mutant army....for, I don't know...let's say...reasons?
Seeing as how the last thing the caveman came into contact with was a woolly mammoth (thanks to his fashionable ancient animal skin toga) the caveman proceeded to transform into an understandably angry and confused supersized prehistoric ahem MAN-MOTH. Ahhhh, ok NOW we see what they did there!
Basically, this character never really had a fighting chance to determine who he was. Almost immediately after he was given a new mutant life, Shredder deemed him a mistake and sent Bebop and Rocksteady out to clean up his mess.
His origin story is essentially the movie Encino Man where it's a caveman who is resurrected as a fish out of water in modern times and has to make sense of the new and weird world he has been thrust into...only here he never had a chance to make any lasting (in best Pauly Shore voice) BUUUUDIES before he left said water and instead was instantly hunted down...it was quite a sad story when we look at it from an adult lens...but what's past is ...ahem...ancient past. Ohhhh Geek-e, we're trying to set a tone here, but you just couldn't resist COULD you?
There is a bit of a redemptive arc in his second appearance "...And deliver us from evil" However, when we discover that (spoiler alert) Shredder's plan to destroy Manmoth had failed, the Turtles have more of an opportunity to befriend him, try to help him remember who he was, and team up with him in stopping a handful of villains (including an evil clone of Manmoth himself), before he ends up sadly being shipped off to a faraway tundra never to be heard from again in the series.
As a fun aside for eagle-eyed fans seeking Easter eggs, the issue "...And deliver us from Evil" in particular has quite a few fun ones that your childhood self might not have caught, including a cameo of the artist Ken Mitchroney's original series characters Space Ark within the comic and nods to both Superman and Batman as their alter ego's but working for possibly a Catwoman nod in resurrecting the unnamed clone of Manmoth...who we're going to now go ahead and unofficially name as Wool-Zarro or "The Pachy-Derminator".
As with most of these characters, we only got a snapshot of within this series, we are left with a wealth of additional questions we'll likely never have answered, like "Would he eventually have been incorporated into the Mutanimals in some capacity as their resident bruiser?" Whatever happened to the clone Mammoth after he was knocked out...because he now just exists within this Archie universe with literally zero resolution? And the most OBVIOUS question of them all is, "How is it possible that we have still never had this rad character as an oversized figure in some fashion after all these years?"
To be fair, there was an absolutely dazzling short-run custom release of Manmoth from Dafoot_toys, and NECA's Archie line is essentially just getting started for which characters they are starting to dive into, so this is probably just our overly impatient kid self talking here, but we will say that it remains fairly shocking that we never saw this character in the original Playmates line.
But What about Doctor El, Geek-E? YES, we DID indeed see an elephant mutant in the form of the "Didn't particularly age well" mutant Witch Doctor El, but despite pretending this was Archie's Manmoth in our epic Turtle battles in our youth, and despite having ACTUAL cavemen Turtles within that Playmates line where it would have made an abundant amount of sense to logically plop Manmoth in, the Doctor El figure always felt a bit off for the kind of adventures the Turtle bros would find themselves in within our imagination (though, as we say this out loud, we're reminded of Mary Bones, so maybe not ENTIRELY off base on the voodoo front), but also, and this is more of a pet peeve than anything else, but it has always bothered us that his SCALE didn't properly match (not just as a stand-in for Manmoth, but also y'know, just as an Elephant mutant in GENERAL.
As anyone who remembers this character or understands proportions could tell you, a mutant of an Elephant would need to stand a bit taller over the rest...even if it shrinks because of the human side, the median here isn't the same scale as his Mutant Turtle brethren...but we digress.
Ok, so how would we see this character coming to life if NECA finally carves this epic Mastodon that time (but certainly not fans) forgot, out from his iceberg slumber?
Naturally, this dude would be HUGE with a Masters of the Universe Grizzlor-like fur tunic and boots. We think it might be fun to see him come along with a couple of pieces of clear blue plastic shaped like a block of ice so we could recreate his emergence into the modern world, a cryo-tube with a non-articulated human version of himself to replicate the mutation process, some various expressions to represent the wide gamut of emotions he is going through including friendly, confused, and raging.
It would also certainly be neat to have one of his tusks removable which could be replaced with a broken shorter tusk so we could have the ability to pose him against his now-in-canon-named clone Wool-zarro...which YUP, we've decided that name is growing on us, so we're sticking with it).
Throwing on a bendable snout similar to Masters of the Universe's Snout Spout might a be mighty spiffy and welcome addition here, plus an oversized wrench like he carried in his first encounter with the Turtles. Throw in a buildable snowman for fun-sies (perhaps with a metal exoskeleton undercarriage if we wanted to sneak in a sly nod to the baddie Frosty The Hit-Man from the classic TMNT console Arcade game), and a big ol' wooden club, because, come on, it just seems odd to have a caveman character without being able to pose him with a club, and we're talking Turkey...or rather...Mammoth.
But now saying this all out loud, it makes us hope NECA also makes some "What If" Cavemen figures of the Turtles as well as a nod to the past Playmates wave, because dang those would look fun standing next to a giant-sized Manmoth.
This dude may be coming straight out of history, but with NECA behind the wheel we now have an opportunity to finally MAKE history getting him as a figure after all these years, and this prospect certainly makes us excited for our toy shelf future!
SPEEKYGEEKY'S TMNT POLLS
Since we're already talking about wholly new characters in plastic, we figured we would take a moment to ask you the viewer who YOU would like to see in one of our upcoming videos. We have been running polls on our YouTube community page, as well as our SpeekyGeeky Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit pages as to which Archie TMNT characters we might want to see as Toys.
Here are some options from our latest polls, which you can weigh on in the comments here or head on over to any of our socials for the full list of option names to weigh in over there as well, and stay tuned because these winning options and more may very well appear in an upcoming TMNT deep dive or two...or ten.
There are also some incredibly talented TMNT customizers who are already creating some of those characters who appear on our polls, and it is a beautiful thing to see, here (in our video) are just a few of those absolutely creative folks that you are definitely going to want to keep up with so make sure to follow them on THEIR socials as well.
Finally, we wanted to give you a very brief tease of our brand new TMNT project we've got brewing on the channel that will be featuring some epic and familiar-sounding voice actors, incredible artistic talents, and perhaps an easter egg or two scattered into the mix for good measure. So, seen for the very first time, here is some fresh concept art for our upcoming TMNT X The TICK animation and webcomics series, art shown here from the astoundingly talented Cerbero Arte.
If you are digging the original art shown from Cerbero and (TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures Cover Artist) Mista Jonz style shown throughout the character options of this very episode, be sure to show their socials listed in the description some love and check out more of their upcoming art and projects on our Instagram channel as well.
WHERE ELSE CAN YOU FIND MR. GEEK-E IN THE COMING MONTHS?
Even though we are hard at work putting together a handful of geeky new deep dives and interviews together for you this very minute (never YOU mind how we know what time of day you are watching this buster, just trust us, if it's an hour of a day that ends in DAY, we're probably working hard on it), SpeekyGeeky's very own Mr. Geek-E (HEY, that's ME!) is still managing to make the rounds all over the YouTube's to spread his dorkiness far and wide (and yup, that sure DID sound way grosser than we intended didn't it?)
First up, over on our all-ages friendly sister channel GeekyJr, for those of you who appreciate the sound of a voice that can only be described as "if nails on a chalkboard" met Gollum from "Lord of the Rings", you're in luck because Mr. Geek-E tries his best all sorts of nostalgic classic stories with narration and voices for all your little geeklings and adults who are young at heart. We're talking characters from Sesame Street like Ernie, Bert, Grover, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Wonderpets, Daniel Tiger, Thomas the Train, Yo Gabba Gabba, Rubba Dubbers, and soooo much more.
You can also find SpeekyGeeky lending his voice to some upcoming Mirage TMNT comic read-alongs on TeddyGaming Review's bodacious channel here, as the voice of Professor Kaori on the fan-made audio adaptation of the hit fantasy series "The Fourth Wing" over on the astoundingly talented Maddie Mooregans channel here, and finally, we'll be geeking out and dishing on all the current TMNT news on Turtle Talk as well as helping some rad figures from their plastic confinement on Grippin and Rippin over on Dave Wonder's channel here.
ALSO, for more exclusive TMNT related product, be sure to check out figures inspired from TMNT Adventures characters that that ALMOST made it to us in the original series, but were unfortunately left on the cutting room floor...UNTIL NOW! Originated by former artists and writers on the TMNT Adventures comic series like Dan Berger and Jim Lawson.
And would you look at that?? if you use our special SpeekyGeeky code, you'll get an exclusive discount to make it even easier on adding some of these long lost treasures to your larger TMNT collection. You can find those riiight here: treasuremonstertoys.com/SPEEKYGEEKYOFFICIAL
FINALLY (and IMPORTANTLY) you can now deep dive even further with SPEEKYGEEKY with our OFFICIAL PATREON! That's right, we've just launched an ALL NEW way to go above and beyond interacting with the Geeky content you have come to know and love from the channel, from process art, animatics of upcoming new series, teaser's of upcoming deep dives, original comics, and so much more! You can join in on all the fun adding new layers to your geeky experience and get a front row seat to the exciting world we are building TOGETHER!
Alright, Shellheads, that's it for this episode, but don't stray too far from the Turtle Lair, because our SpeekyGeeky Archie TMNT spotlight series deep dive episode 3 is right around the corner.
We have no doubt you have some characters that make the tippy top of your list as well that you are stoked about seeing, so be sure to make your hopes known and join the discussion in the comments below.
We realize you could have gone anywhere and you chose to nerd out with us... and we appreciate that, so…
As always, I am Mr. Geek-E and Until Next We Archie NECA Turtle Speeky, Keep it Geeky Folks!
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