TMNT's Ace Duck!

Couple of points of interest before we move onto the next Quickie -

1) The reason there's been so many Quickies lately as opposed to normal headlines is because I dug myself into a bad hole by considering my phone and cable modem bills at the apartment as 'optional'. So I'm waiting till the money rolls through so I can pay off a few months of bills and get back up running from home. In the meantime, it's easier to post using the Quickies newspro system while using temporary, shitty computers. To me though, Quickies are fun because I really consider the headlines section an avenue to post stuff that took quite a bit of time to put together. I don't want to spend twelve hours reviewing shitty movies on someone else's computer in someone else's house where I can't even employ my usual article ritual of writing while wearing a battle outfit made of tin foil. On the plus side, the big one I'm working on for when I'm back on my normal comp should be a classic - a review of a certain toon special I've been drooling to post about ever since the site opened. With download. :)

2) I've gotten a ton of link swap requests lately. First off, I should mention that X-E really doesn't send out too much traffic. I'm doing good with it but if you're confused when you see our link partners and think I'm running something that's competing with the likes of Fark or Ape, that's not the case. But it's irrelevant anyway: there's a lot of older 'static' pages of the site that need updating, and the links section is one of them. Until I get on that, (when you notice that the links have changed) don't bother asking. In the meantime, I scoured the last few days worth of mail and gathered the link swap requests - check the bottom of this post to links to all of them that I thought were worth checking out. Sorry, I've neglected to link the 2-3 sites about ferret breeding and that one special tribute site to Val Venis.

3) Thanks to everyone that sent feedback on the last article, 99 Cent City. Turned out to be a pretty popular one. I can't take all the credit though - the fine people at the store deserve a quick shout out for being too afraid of the scary homemade tiger-claw glove I was wearing to ask me to stop taking pictures.

Finally, I don't often get the opportunity to talk to you guys directly in the articles, so lemme jump at the chance to say thanks for your continued support and for all the terrific feedback that makes this gig seem nowhere near as monotonous as it should be after doing it for nearly two years now. If I had enough cake for every one of you, we'd all be eating cake.

You know how people usually find a ten dollar bill, or even a twenty, while cleaning up their homes? It's like you keep putting off cleaning until you're flat broke, because you know you're gonna find that standard 10- or 20-spot under a sweater or in a pile of papers once you do. It's like the payoff for cleaning up. You find money. My fortunes are a bit different - I clean up my home, and I find a carded TMNT Ace Duck figure from 1989. The jury's still out on whether that means I've got good or bad luck by social comparison.

No matter what, there's a personal triumph involved here - this figure is worth so little on the collector's market that I have no qualms about opening it up and taking in that big whiff of plasticky nostalgic scents that take me back over a decade ago to a time where nothing else in the world mattered aside from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys. I swear I'm gonna start using this figure as a meditative smelling salt whenever I feel like my burdens are too much to bear - Ace Duck's new toy smell will make everything okay. And if it doesn't, the egg bomb accessory pack he comes with surely will. I cannot falter - I cannot fail.

One of the very first figures made for the line - actually the first 'heroic friend' ever in the entire series. He's got seniority over such favorites as Genghis Frog and the celebrated Usagi Yojimbo. Unfortunately, his impact on the actual cartoon was so nominal that I can't say with any certainty that he was ever even on it. If he was, it was for one forgettable episode. Almost nobody had an Ace Duck because nobody knew who he was. Yeah he came in Turtle packaging, but they could stick anything in that...if the character never appeared on the cartoon, what was the point in getting him? You didn't even know what tone to keep your voice at when mimicking him during playtime.

The card boasts that he was the driver of the Turtle Blimp, even though every time we saw the damn thing Donatello was at the controls. I guess the show's writers weren't thrilled with the idea of trying to write a comical duck into the script every time the action called for the Turtles to conveniently find their blimp stashed within ten feet of wherever they were standing at the time.

By the way, is it just me, or does it seem a little odd to anyone else that the Turtles, who usually wished to remain conspicuous from the public eye, opted to paint a giant 'TMNT' logo across the body of their blimp, which they often flew between buildings in the middle of the day? If the Turtles wished to remain a mere legend to society, certainly there must've been better avenues of transportation than flying around in a hideously colored floating green warship from Hell, coasting in front of every office building in NYC. I guess the Turtles theorized that if Shredder could drive a 300' metal spherical dome underneath the city with absolutely no one noticing, they were safe.


So while Ace Duck was technically the pilot of the vehicle shown above, everybody knew he wasn't really the pilot. He was just some weird duck wearing a flight jacket. This wasn't enough to inspire a mass purchasing craze. So this duck went the way of the Dodo and is probably in the top five most obscured TMNT characters ever, beaten out only by Joe Eyeball and those kids who drove flying corvettes in Dimension X. But that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve some attention, even if it does come a decade late. Ace Duck, here's your fifteen minutes.

The package art is great - features paintings of Ace flying the blimp, throwing eggs, and just chilling out in various pictures that all display him with this sinister tooth-shown grin that makes him look like he's the first weight-conscious duck to have his teeth wired. The back of the card has a small comic panel summing up the Turtles' origin, with a great pic of Shredder pouring mutagen down the sewer hole. Jeez if the people walking the city streets didn't freak out when they saw that, it's no wonder they can fly blimps around town without anyone batting an eye.


Accessories: Ace Duck came with a veritable bonanza of gizmos and goodies - first off, a removable cap that helped establish him as a vulnerable character - this duck thinks it's people, and you've just really gotta feel for him. You can soooo tell he wants to go to the movie theater, eat in restaurants, and ride the trains like the rest of us, but every time he does it somebody breaks out a hunting license and opens fire. And when that doesn't happen, people simply throw bread at him. Either way it's always an embarassing situation and I feel bad that he'll never get to experience the wonders of a 7-11 Slurpee without making some minority clerk feel really blended with society.

Next up are his fantastic egg bombs - four pieces of molded oval plastic which Ace uses to crush the villainous intentions of Rocksteady and Bebop. Course, he also comes with a friggin' pistol so I'm not sure what kinda desperate situation would call for him to break out a few eggs instead. Maybe four high school kids are paying him 50 bucks a week to do their 'egg baby' projects for 'em. Maybe those are his unborn children. Whatever the case, they sure fit snugly into his weapons belt, which give him that Han Solo-esque vibe no rogue freighter pilot should be without.


Ace also comes with a removable pair of wings, because he IS a duck and they can fly. The wings are hysterically oversized and make Ace look more like he's being attacked by a giant butterfly than anything else, but it's a nice touch to make them removable, since it'd be pretty hard to fit Ace into any of the vehicle toy pilot chairs while he's got this big gypsy moth attached to his back.

As stated, I don't know if he ever appeared on the cartoon. So we don't know his animated origin - the story on his file card is pretty interesting, though. It claims that Krang ordered Shredder to beam a regular earth duck to Dimension X, because they had a shortage. I'm not making this up. During the transfer process, the duck hit an energy beam and became Ace Duck - a heroic, fully clothed fighter pilot with a sharp tongue and a big bill. Now this is a pretty strange set of circumstances to be involved with, even for a talking gelatinous brain like Krang. I'd imagine it's his favorite story to tell the grandkids.

Krang: Sooo...you kids wanted a story, aye?
Kiddie Krang #1: Grandpa tell us about that weird duck guy again!
Kiddie Krang #2: Yeah Pop we want the duck story!
Krang: Hya hya hya...okay kids. One time I told Oroku to send me a duck while he was on Earth and I was here in Dimension X. He kept arguing that we had more important issues to deal with than maintaining the balance of the duck population between the dimensions, but after I reminded him that he owed me a favor for the time I got his cape unstuck when it was caught in our rare experimental super-vacuum, he agreed. Meanwhile Rocksteady and Bebop were beeping in with messages to send them a module. Turns out they had a big mob of people carrying sticks trying to beat them up because they didn't believe in a two-party system. Now, this is where the story gets interesting--
Kiddie Krang #1: SKIP TO THE GOOD PART, GRANDPA!
Kiddie Krang #2: Yeah!!
Krang: Oh, all right you bothersome little cretins. The duck turned into this big talking duck who wore hats and didn't like us very much at all. So we used our political stroke with the office boys to get him written off the show entirely, rendering his action figure sales nil and his family penniless. I love that story.
Kiddie Krang #1: Grandpa, where's the duck now?
Krang: IN MY BELLY!
Kiddie Krang #2: Oh Grandpa you say that everytime you tell the story.

Congratulations, Ace Duck - you're X-E's Obscure Toy of the Month. You also look terrific in blue jeans. We salute you - a tremendous fowl with great intentions and eyes bluer than the crystal sea herself. You're not a teenager, you're not a ninja, and you're not a turtle - but you're a mutant and that's good enough for us. Ace Duck: we love you.


PS - the card alleges that the Turtles pay Ace Duck to fly the blimp. Pay, with what money? Did the Turtles have day jobs somewhere? Besides, what does a flying duck need money for anyway? He could shit anywhere he pleases, sleep under whatever tree he liked, and if he wanted to eat, all he had to do was sit with his mouth open near a hot dog vendor while curious children threw bits of pretzel at him. He already had the life. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what he did with all the money he got. Try to keep your visions at least under PG-13.


- Matt