Dear all,

I recently joined toyark because I need your expertise in a strange situation I encountered. I am currently dissolving my collection of Vintage teenage mutant hero turtles action figures and vehicles. A potential buyer rejected my Shredder action figure in very good condition because he suspected I painted on the figure. I was confused and investigated and found that Shredder is known to have a flesh-colored eyebrow/helmet rim. The eyebrow of my Shredder, however, is purple - perfectly matching the facemask. The black eyebrows are even printed on top of the purple area. The figure is definitely in original state from the 1988 series. One of the very first runs. I owned him all the time, opened the package myself some 30 years ago. Never painted on the figure. Could this be a rare variant?
I attached some pictures of my figure.

Thank you so much for your input!

Kind regards
Xuttuh

Could be a factory paint error. Usually such errors leave off paint, though, since they are usually sprayed on with "masks". Since Shredder's brow/rim was molded flesh colored plastic there's no paint mask or spray op besides the black eyes brows. That's the odd part. Where did that paint op come from? I'm assuming that there was no hand painting, though.

A factory does this 1000 times and it's a rare variant. Do it once and you have what you might have here, a one-off accident. That's hard to confirm in loose condition or put a price on.

You'll need to ask hardcore TMNT collectors, though.