While I kinda love the original Bebop action figure, the 1988 Rocksteady toy has, for a long time, disappointed me. His legs make him feel like he’s too skinny for a rhinoceros, and I didn’t like that he wore a helmet with goggles that the cartoon tacitly ignored. And while his brown camo pants and black tanktop were cool, they didn’t really make up for the rest of the figure’s shortcomings.
However, I know that every TMNT figure is someone’s favorite. Your mileage may vary. And that’s totally okay.
My TMNT repaints were always intended to just be repaints. No adding additional sculpting or whatever, I just wanted to bring out the most extra potential from a figure as I could.
I put more detail into his skin tone to bring out the sculpting, and gave him a more proper camouflage patter on his pants. I grimed up his helmet, and decided to make the belt more of a dirty tan than the pea soup green that it was originally molded, with a silver buckle — Not exactly US Army regulation, but I’m pretty sure Rocksteady wasn’t actually in the armed services, he just stole things from an Army/Navy Surplus store.
Finally, I chose to make his tank top brown, as it was halfway between the black shirt of the toy, and the yellow top of the cartoon series.
After painting this, I was randomly playing the TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist video game on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and saw that my repaint greatly resembled the sprite that Konami’s artists came up with for the character. It must have subconsciously been in the back of my brain, because this was not intentional. I took it to mean I made good color choices.
I think that I did as good a job I could with what is maybe my least-favorite basic figure in the entire 1988-1996 TMNT toy line.
Here are the two henchmutants together:
Say your prayers, toitles.