O·P. adj. (pron. oh-pee). Acronym for “overpowered.” Established as video game slang; used to describe when a particular character, weapon or item is opinionated to be excessively effective, to the detriment of the claimer’s opinion, but has capabilities of being applied in uses outside of exclusively video games.
In the case of action figures, protagonists that are three times the size of their antagonists, could be classified as being OP.
I saw this commercial for these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, and the first thought that came into mind was “are you fucking kidding me?” Gigantic TMNT action figures to do battle with Foot Clan villains that are a third of their size? Is that even remotely possibly fun for kids?
Seriously, in no (even) imaginary world should the Turtles made to be this OP. Shredder is the one supposed to be large and imposing, and twice fold for Krang in his giant robot. If anything at all, an OP Shredder figure is really the only thing that should make sense, because as far as action and adventure goes, good is always supposed to have this uphill climb to make, and nothing signifies adversity more than a size discrepancy.
But no, Playmates has decided that they want to mislead children into thinking good can steamroll bad, with superior size. And they represent it pretty wholly, in the way that all four Turtles dwarf an entire army of Shredder and a horde Foot clan soldiers.*
*I love when TMNT commercials past and present always show an army of Foot soldiers, as if any parent would actually buy their kid more than one sold separately Foot clan soldier. I didn’t know a single kid growing up with more than one, much less ten, to really be able to portray that massive battle with their action figures.
From a kid’s standpoint, this can’t really be that stimulating to the imagination. Just how many times can they imagine up scenarios where Godzilla sized TMNTs don’t just fall on top of the Shredder action figure, and end every skirmish in two seconds?
I’m pretty sure the only action figures that would stand a chance against these massive TMNT giant figures, are the old dense rubber WWF action figures back from the 80s that had no articulation whatsoever, much less an opening and closing compartment, and they weighed a ton for what they were.
But at least they had the appropriate size to combat giant TMNTs. It only took almost three decades before someone made an appropriate challenger for them, and we saw how well things ended up for them; OP toys just can’t really be that much fun.
