Tyler Gibson
Get ready for a blast from the past! The year 2024 is set to be a nostalgic trip down memory lane as all the ’90s toy lines that once rode the wave of the Ninja Turtle craze are making a comeback. Remember Street Sharks? Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa? And who could forget the iconic Biker Mice From Mars? (And let’s not forget the ever-present Toxic Crusaders, thanks to their roots in Troma films.)
With a rebooted comic and an animated series in the pipeline, produced by none other than Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, the Biker Mice are poised to make a bigger splash than ever before. Could they be the next big toy sensation that Nacelle has been searching for? Let’s dive in and find out.
Squeaky Clean
The Biker Mice design is a quirky blend of kiddie-cartoon style heads, reminiscent of Mighty Mouse and Danger Mouse, paired with biker bodies that would be more at home in a line like C.O.P.S. and Crooks. It’s a bit of a mismatch that might take some getting used to.
Nacelle is aiming to create a shared universe with all their revived toy lines, but it’s unclear if they’re considering how to scale all the different types of figures together. If a Sectaur is meant to represent a human height, these Mice are taller; if the Mice are, then Sectaurs are short. We’ll have to wait for the final cartoon to see, but it seems each individual toy line is more focused on internal consistency than matching the others.
Interestingly, the three hero mice that make up the first wave are all different sizes, indicating that there’s no simple mold reuse happening here. Vinnie is the smallest, Throttle the leader is medium-sized, and the cyborg Modo is the big guy. Modo is also the only one of the three who doesn’t reproduce his vintage action feature, but it’s impressive that any of them do.
The magic is in the weapons: Throttle has a working disc launcher with tarnished discs that resemble hubcaps. Vinnie has a lever-operated clamp. Modo used to have a spring-loaded gun, but here it’s just a solid piece. Spring-powered projectiles probably subject figures to more safety testing, but Nacelle surely could have found a way to do a finger-flick or pressure point missile instead.
Plastic and Bludd
Like the vintage G.I. Joe Major Bludd, his gimmick, as such, is less articulation in his robot arm — a single hinge instead of a double. At least he’s the biggest, so you get more bulk for the buck. All three come with more extra bits than they did back in the day, and as such are packed in boxes rather than blister cards.
The original figures came with removable helmets that rather notoriously broke off the Mice’s antennae after a while. Nacelle has simply made swappable helmeted heads, with Vinnie’s visor a unique cool blue. Each Mouse also includes serious and happier heads, as well as multiple swap-out hands, which, honestly, they really don’t need. Vinnie gets his crowbar bonus weapon, and all three come with blasters and their favorite hot dogs, because with the Turtles loving pizza, and Popeye’s pal Wimpy paying Tuesday for hamburgers today, somebody had to claim the other angle of the fast food pyramid real quick.
Throttle’s sunglasses are removable on all but the helmeted head. Like his teammates, he has red eyes underneath. [Note: bikes are not available yet for these figures, but they are coming. The bike used in these shots is a LEGO Technic Batcycle from The Batman, scaled slightly larger.]
Self-Identifying
Throttle also has an arm tattoo described as a “Biker Mice From Mars” tattoo, which seems odd, like if I were to get a “Writer Human From Earth” logo. To each their own.
The heads and ball-jointed tails pop off easily — these figures should play well with kids, so long as they’re forewarned they’ll be popping them back on a lot. With ball joints at the shoulders and hips, and double-jointed knees and elbows (except Modo’s robot arm), they hold a lot of poses, and feel extremely playable. If the aesthetic works for you, they’re almost everything they need to be (Modo’s gun should shoot, dagnabbit)
The base price for these figures is $35.99, which is a bit steep for standard 7-inch figures, but not unreasonable for limited figures with individual sculpts. (My guess is the extra hands are there to add perceived value, since they’d be fine with just the accessory-holding pair.) Compared to mass retail, they’re high; compared to similar male order 7-inch figures, not so much. The Nacelle Sectaurs cost more, at $39.99, and come with less stuff.
See How They Run
It’s arguably tough to judge Biker Mice without their bikes, which look to be far more deluxe than in the original line. But that’s what we must do so far, and to that end, it’s nice to see gimmicks returning in nostalgia/collector figures, even as simple as “push lever, clamp goes shut.” By the ’90s, too many toy companies got lazy and just put a spring-loaded weapon with everything — that, rather than the concept of play features, became the problem.
While I must confess a personal bias against the aesthetic of the Biker Mice, I can’t deny that the toys are fun to play with and pose. When you can have figures take on wrestling toys hold for hold, the articulation is good. I might not have bought these for myself — Nacelle sent them for review — but I’d definitely consider buying them as gifts. And unlike the Sectaurs, they are indisputably an improvement over their predecessors.
Except Modo’s dang gun!
Scroll down to see all the poses they’ll do in the photos below.
