MEGA Brands shocked the brick-collecting world at the New York Toy Fair 2015, when they quietly announced that they had acquired the license to produce Mega Bloks Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles construction sets and figures. Yes, that’s right, for one it is MEGA Brands who snatched a license away from LEGO and not the other way around! Crazy, right? Anyway, it’s been a long eight months since the stunning announcements, but at last the first image of the TMNT Mega Bloks figures has been revealed! Are you impressed, brick fans?

With the last big collecting event of the year–New York Comic-Con 2015–coming up in just two days, I had my suspicions that we’d finally be seeing the long-awaited Mega Bloks Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures and sets on-display at the show. And MEGA Brands must have been thinking on exactly the same wavelength as me–because they kicked off this week by sending out the first-ever preview image of the Mega Bloks Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo mini figures!

There hasn’t been any confirmation that we’ll actually see these Ninja Turtles toys at NYCC 2015 this weekend, but I’ll be on-hand at the event each day, so if the Mega Bloks Turtles turn up, I’ll be there taking a truck-load of photos of them!

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A couple of obervations based off this first look at the new Mega Bloks TMNT toys:

• It looks like there will be two different styles of heads for the turtles: both the classic “whited-out eyes with no pupils” look that has been the style of the action figures for many years, and also the Nickelodeon cartoon style with eyes. Awww! Mikey looks so adorable!!
• Donatello seems to have a weird skull tattooed on his chest. I haven’t seen every episode of the Nickelodeon TMNT, but I’m not entirely sure what this is based off of.
• Unlike the Mega Bloks Collector Lines such as Call of Duty and Halo, there are apparently no elbow joints on these figures (a la Mega Bloks Power Rangers). This is going to be a big disappointment to many folks if there’s no other style of these 2″ figures available. Even so, the ball-jointed shoulders already give these micro-figures superior range-of-motion to the Ninja Turtles LEGO minifigures.

The official release date for the first Mega Bloks Ninja Turtles mini figures and sets is January 1st, 2016. That’s a hard street date, as that’s when the MEGA Brands Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles licensing agreements states that MEGA Brands can begin selling their TMNT products.

That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Mega Bloks product that didn’t leak out into stores early, so I think it’s a safe assumption that these TMNT Mega Bloks figures will be popping up in stores either just in time for the holidays or just after. Let’s hope for the former!

Based off this first teaser image, what do you think of MEGA Brands’ new line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mega Bloks figures, turtle lovers? Are these a worthy successor to the LEGO TMNT theme, or do you wish that the license had been retained by TLG?