


#35: Muckman
Points: 64 | Lists: 3
I like monsters made of garbage. -- Johnny Unusual
Muckman is the first character on this list who was created expressly for the Playmates toyline. His file card paints him as an unnamed “sewer worker” who stumbles into some retromutagen ooze and becomes a shambling garbage monster. Though you’d expect him to take this poorly, Muckman instead embraces his life as a trash golem and even helps the turtles fight the Foot Clan when the time comes. And he’s never seen without his bin-riding ally, Joe Eyeball.
From a toy perspective Muckman is simply one of the best ever. The toy is bursting with sculpted detail and some of it will turn your stomach if you look too close. He was designed to interact with the green ooze that Playmates sold in plastic canisters. You can pull off his hat and dribble slime down through his head and watch it ooze out his mouth, or dump it in his trashcan backpack which ports through a hole in his stomach. His “muck gun” (amusingly pieced together with old cans and soda bottles) has a hole all the way through it so you can load it, too, with slime.
And the artistic merits of his little buddy Joe Eyeball are too obvious to state.
Muckman went on to appear in some cartoons and video games but we will always remember him for making our parents wonder if we had all gone insane.
I admire the flex of preferring life as garbage. -- Bulgakov
Oh and since I am a big fan of this green weirdo I have collected many toy versions of him which I thought you might wish to see all standing together:

(This is every unique mold of Muckman made so far. There are some other toys of him but they are basically the same ones but in glow-in-the-dark.)