#207 – TMNT Kickstarter Post-Mortem and Swag

Breakfast puppies?

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. You're listening to the Glitter Boys Radical.

The year's 1984 and 2 broke artists decide to throw ink on paper. And 30 years later, people are— 40 years later, people are still talking about it.

Of course, the most successful franchises of all time.

And you got 4 brothers and a father figure fighting the horrible ninjas, Foot Clan, depending on which storyline you're reading. It changed multiple times. And in 2023, Palladium got the license back. And of course we're talking about TMNT, one of the most fundamentally altering things that I read as a kid and then as a teenager and then as an adult. And now as someone who's, uh, has more silver in his hair than he would like to admit and is freaking awesome.

Pretty cool.

So of course we're talking about the Kickstarter.

Yep. We've talked about the Ninja Turtles on multiple occasions in the past.

Absolutely.

I recommend if you want to hear us talk about the franchise or some of the previous books and their original incarnations, go back and listen to those. We still have a few more of those to review too, but today talking entirely about the Kickstarter and its rewards.

Yeah. And it was one of the ones that I feel was very successful. Incredibly successful. Money-wise, it went insane. It raised, uh, $1.2 million, which if you're not following Kickstarters, that's a healthy chunk of change.

Mm-hmm.

Licensing-wise, I can only imagine you get one of the books and you open the inside cover, you know, and as a lifelong Palladium fan, I've never opened the COVID of a book and seen Nickelodeon, Viacom, Universal Copyright Corporation. And then Palladium copyright notifications. It's, it's, if you've never worked in copyright and had to deal with that, the fact that they were able to work through the morass to get this accomplished now that you had this many big corporations who protect their copyrights like Disney, it's amazing. Uh, and, and the quality of the materials that we got was amazing. I had, I heard a few people complain, oh, it's taking longer than it should. Some of us who got a lot of stuff, We were expecting that maybe I was expecting another 6 months, to be honest.

I was not expecting to see mine until almost 2027, to be perfectly blunt.

And, and some of us at the table here made house payments in the form of Kickstarters.

So let's talk about the big elephant in the room, the big mutant elephant of its massive size that spent all of its bio-e on being huge. A lot of people on the comments of the Kickstarter page complain. And sometimes I think, oh man, well, you know, everything seemed to have gone well for me. Maybe I should go back and see if people have changed. Nope. Nope. Nope. They just broken records. I will say this. I had to pull up my Kickstarter account. I have backed 230 Kickstarters since like 2013, 2014, over a decade. 230 projects. Minimal communication aside, I will definitely agree that they could have communicated more updates. This is one of the most successful I've ever been part of. Like, the product is amazing. I am 100% pleased with everything.

Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. I had— I know some people had some shipping issues and Palladium addressed those. I know some people got some damaged product. And they got it replaced.

Yeah.

Immediately. Um, which I've been in 87, so you definitely trump me when it comes to Kickstarters. But this is next to a couple of really small niche Kickstarters where I got like one small thing and was like super happy about it because they had it basically in the bag already. I expected with the amount of stuff that they were trying to coordinate and the quality of the materials that we got, I was Very, very happy. Now, my significant other, not so much when the big box and I have no idea where I'm going to put it all. And then a friend of ours who's going to be painting my miniatures doesn't know this yet.

They don't know that they're going to be painting your miniatures or—

They don't know they're going to be painting my miniatures. I doubled my miniature order.

So is this, is this a friend? The one I think it is?

Yeah. This is the friend that I've been told by this friend listens to this podcast.

Yes.

So, but he's a big fan. He'll get a set.

But in exchange, he'll paint me a set. How's that?

But, um, did you plan this when you ordered?

Oh, of course I did.

Oh, absolutely. No, no, I know this friend. I don't, I'm not into minis, but if I were into minis and I were into minis painting, that would have been included in my initial plans as well. Thanks, Bonerman.

Absolutely.

Uh, would you, would you, would you, uh, consider Bonerman to perhaps a, um, A bulk paint thing, you know?

Well, okay, tell you what, we're, we're already moving into talking about the product here. So let's talk about the minis. They're the first thing we've talked about. I have an open mind because I'm not into minis.

Yep.

I'm probably going to give these away to somebody. I just haven't figured out who. Don't know yet. We'll see.

You know, there'd be an awesome opportunity to donate them to a charity auction that happens once a year at a small convention.

Oh, I wonder how much they'd get if they were painted.

I like it. I like these thinking.

I like this plan. I like this a lot. Uh, okay. Yes. So the minis, 2 boxes. They look really good. Like these look really damn cool. These are probably the most detailed. These are more detailed than I was actually expecting them to be.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. And I will, I will say this. When I back a Kickstarter, regardless of how much I've put into that Kickstarter, my general approach at that moment is to forget about it. Oh, I back a Kickstarter and it's out of my mind.

100%.

And then one day I will be pleasantly surprised when something cool arrives in the mail. And I think that's the healthiest way to approach Kickstarters, folks. I think if you're going to get like super, super pissed off that something you ordered didn't come through, you're doing Kickstarter wrong. This isn't a shopping cart. This would not have happened without the Kickstarter.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Kickstarters, if you always wonder what a venture capitalist feels like when they spend their money on an unknown endeavor, Kickstarters are your gateway drug to venture capitalism because you may not get anything out of your $200.

Yeah.

Well, out of my $87, I think I've had 10 that were just smoke and mirrors. Like 100%.

I've had a lot.

And so that's the fact that I've only had like 10, 12% being smoke and mirrors is actually awesome return on my money. Another half of them, at least I didn't get what I thought I was getting. It was like, oh, it is what they said, but okay. You're, it's a fire and forget. And if you don't think of it that way and you can't afford to spend the money, you shouldn't be doing a Kickstarter. You should wait for a finished product if it's ever going to come out. And I mean that really deep in my heart because I've had people lose their shirts on a Kickstarter and be very unhappy. This is not the case with the TMNT Kickstarter. The miniatures are awesome.

Yeah. And the reason I even went there is because I know that these minis probably got like pictures and shit in the updates, but I didn't really follow.

I, I'm super excited.

Um, I think I never saw them.

I think they're a little bit bigger than I wanted them to be. The turtles, I think I've always envisioned the brothers being smaller, but that's—

I've— they're big.

Are they?

In my mind, they've always been big. They've been the same size, like in the movie, they were big.

Oh yeah.

Okay. Then of course we're going to go into a deep dive on the books, but the different covers on the manuals is insane. The red, red and black cover is just awesome. Like so simple, so beautiful.

We got 4 variant cover sets on this table in front of us.

Yeah.

We'll talk about those in a bit, but I will give a special shout out. That red and black to me is perfect.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the dice.

Oh, so let's start with the TCRI dice.

Oh, the controversial ones.

The controversial dice. Um, first of all, they come in a really cool oversized medical beaker. They are green fills dice. They have like what looks like the green ooze inside of them.

Pretty cool.

It's very cool. They are sharp as all get out. You do not want to step on one of these at all.

I just rolled the d20 for the first time. Nat 20. Good set.

That dice is going to screw you for the rest of your life.

And then I got a 2. 19.

These are great.

1.

I really like these. Yeah, it's random.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Um, these dice are good. The points, some of them are a little— need a little like fine-tuning, but they're sharp, they're clean. They feel good in your hand. They're a little bit bigger than normal dice. I can't remember what size these would be considered, but 30 mil instead of 25 or so is kind of what they feel like.

Yeah, they're a little bigger.

As a person with bad eyes, I do like the enhanced size.

Oh God.

They do not, however, fit in the dice roll of the TCRI rolling pad, but okay. They also, they're a little, some of the angles of them, if you put them into, if you put them back into the container, the wrong approach, they'll get stuck.

Yeah, they will.

Yep. I think the container could have been like 1 or 2 millimeters wider.

Yeah.

Diameter.

But otherwise the presentation is kind of cool. The other dice sets, you could get dice sets for each of the brothers. You get a dice set for Shredder, which I've not opened mine. Have you opened yours yet?

Not Shredder. All of them.

You've opened your Shredder?

I've got them all, yeah. Because I've even used them.

Um, because the box says plastic, but I think they're actually aluminum.

I think they just reuse the same box text across all of them. Yeah.

Okay. That would make sense.

That's my take. These are heavy dice. These dice have an impact to it.

You know, you will damage your table for 1d4 damage.

Yeah.

Yes.

So I will say against these dice, okay. As cool as they are, as They feel, you feel like you were holding dice-shaped ninja stars. And that's exactly what they should feel like. You should feel like you were holding individual parts of the Shredder. They are hard to read at a distance in dimmer light. Like you better be playing in a very well-lit room if you want to use these.

So they should have had a fill in the, in the either a bigger cut for the numbering or a fill or something. A white fill would have been really—

White fill. So, or just even a brighter red. Yeah, this is a very, very, very dark red.

Right. And that was my takeaway is from an aesthetic, does this die scream Shredder to me? Yes, 100%. Is it easy to use at the table? Uh, it is my second least favorite die of what they came out with. Um, honestly, the, the worst for me to read. just because of my eyes is, uh, the blue ones.

Oh, so yeah, the blue ones are difficult because it's a blue and green. Trying to read these is almost like reading, uh, one of those Magic Eye things.

Yeah. The Leonardo dice.

Yeah. Where you're trying to piece everything together. Also, one of the sets I think was hard to differentiate. It was, it was the Donatello and the Michelangelo ones.

Yeah. Yeah.

Their colors are so similar. To the point that I almost feel like one of the dice that I got in one set should have belonged to the other set. But other than that, I mean, they seem pretty cool. They, they roll well.

They roll well.

They're— I don't hate them.

For outside of color and print issues, they're very well constructed. I like the— they have the heft I want for each, each type. So Good dice.

Yeah, here's what I'm talking about. These are 3d10s, right? And it's hard to tell. You can just kind of tell that the one in the middle is from the Michelangelo set.

Yeah, could have made them a little more distinct.

Yeah, but if you're just going by a quick eye scan and trying to sort them out, if they all got mixed together like I do, then you're gonna have 3d10s in your Raphael set.

You know, it's unfortunate that we don't have more than one set here because just eyeballing that from across the table, I think I think I'm wondering if that would be true on other people's dice set. And you just got a weird one. A weird one.

Could be. The Donatello dice look really cool.

Purple.

I love purple. Yeah. And they're sparkly.

And then with the add-ons, if you had them, you get a really cool TMNT dice rolling tray. I didn't bring my tower, but And I just noticed this for the first time. The back has, of course, Nickelodeon Palladium Books presents TMNT, Other Strangeness, little copyright with Viacom. Again, every trademark and registered trademark and copyright on the back of this thing.

Yeah.

It's good, decent construction, decent, decent, decent snaps. Yeah. Very snappy. If you're using a dice tray, it has a good surface area. I hate dice trays that are super small that you're like, eh, not really rolling. I like to get my dice a good roll on them.

Yeah.

Piss off all the croupiers at the craps table.

I hate you.

I hate you deeply.

I think the dice tray is pretty nice. It actually, if you run your fingers over the inside of it, has a very, very nice feel to the rolling surface.

Is it kind of svelte?

Kinda, yeah.

For those of us that have problems with super soft things, I will never touch the bottom of this dice tray.

I mean, it's not super soft though. It's just soft enough. So the tower, I didn't like it at first.

You had some complaints about this.

I didn't like it at first because I didn't quite understand a few things. One, when I got it, I completely overlooked this other little separate rectangle piece. So I got it. I didn't, I thought it was just, oh, whatever, something extra. I couldn't figure out how it went. So I got it and I started trying to roll with it and things kept getting stuck. And then, then We're like, oh, oh, oh, there's a— that's what that slit in the back is for. You're supposed to pop it onto the edge of the dice tray.

And all of a sudden you combine your, your TMNT green dice tray with the dice tower and a back.

Oh, wow. And then I'm like, oh, wait, why is the bottom back magnetic? Oh, this little rectangle is magnetic too. It provides the back support.

Got it.

And from that day forward, I'm actually really like this dice A tower. Yeah.

Okay.

For, for a portable dice tower. It's so—

It all folds flat, right?

More or less. But yeah.

I'm not a huge fan of dice towers, to be perfectly honest. Um, and especially not portable ones because they're always like just not great. This is one of the most cleverly designed ones I've seen. And I, yeah, hats off to whatever designer put that together. It was very well executed.

Um, this is from, uh, oh, what are they called? Uh, damn it. Now I can't, I don't remember the name of the company that made these stuff.

I don't have a picture of them.

Uh, Reroll something. I don't know. Uh, we'll correct this on the show notes. Uh, but yeah, they do a lot of stuff like this. Yeah.

So, and then from the dice and the dice tower, you have a roll mat that you could get, which is kind of like a play mat, almost like a CCG playmat kind of thing that you can wrap your things into. And it has a little compartment that you can put dice in.

And the compartment is weird. I think it's for pencils.

Oh, is it?

Okay. I don't—

it's too small for dice. Yeah, it is for pencils.

The dice just barely fit in there. And the TCRI ones do not.

No, no, no.

You can't. There's no way. Yeah. They jam it up. So you could, I guess you could fit 2 stacks of the Ninja Turtle dice in here, but I think this is for pencils.

Okay.

It's pencil, stylus, pen, that kind of thing.

Okay.

This dice tray, I think is the weakest part of the Kickstarter product.

Dice tray or the mat?

The mat.

Sorry, the mat.

The rolling mat. It is, it's cool looking. It's got a cool roll to it. It snaps. I don't feel that the snaps are poorly placed. The construction of this is very nice.

The metallurgy on the snaps is actually pretty nice. I don't feel those snaps are going to wear out fast, which is one of the things I always look for as someone who grew up doing leatherworking.

So yeah, the problem with it is one that I— this is an audio medium, so you can't quite see this, but I've rolled it out, set it down, and it just rolls back in on itself.

Right.

Yeah.

And, and that's kind of— that is one of the inherent problems with the materials they used that you're, you're never going to be able to get it to— until you wear it in, which is going to take a while with those materials. It— if you keep it rolled, it'll just stay curled. It'll just stay curled.

Yeah, it's— and if you roll it backwards, does it work? Does it warp the material at all if you roll it back?

It doesn't warp it, but I mean, you can't It's a really, really stiff polyvinyl.

I haven't even opened mine.

So yeah, it's really stiff. I've been laying it out flat and putting my massive stack of books on top of it to kind of flatten it out. But even then, like I just rolled it up, shoved it. It fits very well, by the way, inside the rings of a 3-ring binder, just so you know. Oh, that's kind of where I shoved mine. But once I, you know, as you just saw, Rolled it out and it was like, oh, this is how I want to be. And it tries to roll back in on itself.

I think overall that's probably the weakest component of the Kickstarter, which, which is still, it's still a high quality piece of equipment. It's still high. It's still really well done. But for me, I probably would never use it.

Yeah, it's cool. I'm going to put some pencils in it and maybe see if I can find some use in it over time. Maybe as a mouse pad. Yeah.

Yeah.

But we'll, we'll see. I, I don't know. I might not get much use out of it either. You can, I think, I think you can at least roll the snaps back on themselves so they stay out of the way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's, I was wondering. Oh, that's okay.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can roll the snaps backward and counter snap.

Right.

So I guess that kind of helps. Maybe that's what you're supposed to do.

Especially if you throw the TCRI dice tube in through the snaps after you snap them backwards. It puts some counterweight on it, but still not, not, you know.

I mean, it just barely fits.

It just, you're not going to want to like use it for the, it's going to be a counterweight. That's all you're going to do with it.

As someone who plays a lot of Savage Worlds and has a, there's a couple of us at this table who have a fetish for decks of cards.

Oh, I have a massive drawer. I used to play Savage Worlds. And one of the things with Savage Worlds, if you're an established Savage Worlds GM, you want to really tie the whole table together is that deck of cards needs to fit the theme of the game.

I have 3, not, not counting the TMNT deck. I have, I have 2 other decks of cards in my game bag.

Yeah.

Um, because of games that I'm running. Uh, now, uh, I get particular when it comes to cards. I like a set of, I like a stiff card. I like it to have a good feel to it. I like it to have a I really like Bicycle cards. I'm sorry, like the plastic, the way they've dipped them and everything, it feels usually pretty good. It'll hold up. These, these feel good. They feel really good. The other thing I like about these, so they have your standard red suits, your hearts and your diamonds. The black suits are mutant green. So your spades and your clubs are mutant green. The jack through ace have images Direct colored art from the manuals.

Yeah.

Your jokers are Shredder and Splinter, which is fun.

Excellent.

Excellent.

We've hit something though that bothers me. We're stepping back a little bit. The Jack of Spades is one of my favorite bad guys. That is Baxter Stockman. What bothers me is I wanted Baxter Stockman and Mouser minis. Like, there aren't any.

Yeah, there aren't any. You're absolutely right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when they do the second TMNT Kickstarter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So on the cards, I, I also have strong opinions on playing cards and I like the weight. I like the quality, but for this particular use, they have a texture I really don't like.

Oh, okay.

So I'm not going to go into the full backstory on this, but they have what's called, um, a grip texturing.

Yes. Yes.

Which is great for playing cards, which are inherently disposable.

Oh, okay. Okay.

What I don't, what I don't like about them is grip texturing picks up oil and dirt from your hands super easy as opposed to smooth texturing.

Got it.

And so I was kind of bummed when I saw that. It makes them easier to use at the table, but it also—

It won't last as long.

They're not going to last as long. They're going to get smeary just because oil's going to get eventually through the plastic coating and impregnate the paper.

Yada, yada, yada.

So I was a little bummed about that, but it's not a deal breaker for me. Uh, it's— were I still sitting regularly at baccarat tables, I would be a little bummed about it, but I would be totally fine with it. But as a collector item, it's like, oh, this is kind of sad.

Uh, I, I got 2 decks because I tend to run a 4-joker deck because I, I'm that GM. I'll probably leave the other one in box and just not open it. It did come double sealed. So the box was sealed and the deck was sealed. So That was kind of nice. They, yeah, they got a good weight, good feel. I see what you're talking about, the texturing.

For the next TMNT Kickstarter, they need to do a couple more. Yeah. They need to include a special package, which includes a TMNT themed shoe.

I would, I would love if they did a special release of all plastic cards for them because I, over the years, got spoiled. All plastic cards to me are the way to go. They feel better. They shuffle better. They, they just have a better weight. Unfortunately, you cannot get them as frequently in custom designs. They tend to be a bit more expensive. And, you know, so if you're trying to match a theme to your game, you're going to have a harder time if you're looking for plastic cards, as opposed to the paper-plastic mix that Bicycle does.

Yep.

Okay. So then after these cards, lovely cards, depending on what package you got, You got some artwork?

So I got 3 sacks. Oh, I got the COVID art print set.

Mm-hmm.

I got the comic artist tributes print set and the RPG artist tributes print set. And these are the same pieces that are in the books now. At the back of the books, they have all of these, these cool pictures that people did as tributes. I haven't opened this print set yet because I know as soon as I do, it's going to go all over the place and they're going to get bent and they're going to get damaged.

Yeah.

I haven't opened mine either.

Yep. Yep. I'm considering how I'm going to display some, if not all of these, because they're really good. We'll talk about the tribute art. However, when we talk about the books in more detail, because they're all in there and they're really cool. And then there's a game master screen, which is fucking awesome. It has a good solid feel to it. It has some of the old school artwork on the back, on the center, where it also has the new cover artwork on the panels on the outside. And then on the inside, it's got 4 slip sleeves.

Yep.

That are wonderful. Now I have multiple of the so-called World's Greatest GM screen. Which I don't think is the greatest GM screen because they fall apart way too easily. Now those are, again, those are 4-piece, 8 panels, and all 8 panels are—

Slips.

Slips that you can put stuff in. However, problem that I have with those is that they are top entry only slits. These are half slits and They fold out.

Oh, nice.

They are not sealed on the inside edge, so you can peel them back and much more easily put things in, as opposed to the World's Greatest GM Screen, where you have to physically slide the thing in from the top.

Yep.

And it fits the page so closely that you're gonna have a hard time. It's caught— the edges are going to be getting stuck.

The— I love the same thing about the GM screen. It's a 4-panel screen, which I prefer 4 to 3. The— I am slightly worried. I don't know this, that this is going to happen, but those peel-away style—

Yeah.

Screen plastic parts are both a blessing and a curse. I've found a blessing because they're very easy to use. However, they do depend a little bit on static.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And over time, as age gets in, those flaps will sometimes not completely snap back as you're closing the screen. And I'm just, I'm hoping they got a decent quality plastic where it'll snap back fast. It's rigid, so it doesn't get caught and then force folded over as you're folding the screen if you're not being careful. But, you know, it's, it's, it's a, inherent problem in a product that solves so many others.

The 4 panels that come with it, they have these cardstock panels that are pre-printed with all of the TMNT data for you to slide in there on your own. I think they have— these are, I would say, probably the most useful of any Palladium GM screen that I've seen throughout the ages. It has relevant information for the game master running a game. Everything in there is stuff that you're probably going to be wanting to look up frequently. And it doesn't seem to have any excess filler.

It also utilizes the space really well.

Yeah.

So it's, and it's a big enough font. It's that, that nice balance between big enough font, you can read it and small enough font. You're getting a lot of stuff on it and not the overuse of white space where it's like so much wasted. I mean, this is probably half-inch margins, which on the side, left and right and the top and the bottom, it's like quarter inch. So, um, yeah, this is nice and it's such a nice weight. Like it's going to hold up. Probably would have liked maybe an alternate on each side on the backs.

Yeah.

Um, the only thing that I've seen with GM screen, I like the 8.5 by 11, not the 11 by 8.5 form factor. I like the half height form factor because I find a lot of times—

Swap that around. You want portrait and you want landscape.

I want landscape, not portrait.

Yes.

Yes. Thank you.

These are like, these are portrait sized.

These are all portrait, which I just like being able to see the players a little bit better when I use a screen.

I agree with you on that point. However, for an on-the-go screen where you can't always control the size of the tables you're working on, portrait is the way to go.

And, and also the artwork on the back of that screen would not work.

No, no, no, no, no. No, it really wouldn't.

It'd all be sideways or they would have had to crop it in a weird way or something. So yeah, I totally, for aesthetics reasons, I know why they did that.

Now I do have another concern about the GM screen, however, and this is the same concern. This is a concern that I have after years of owning multiple World's Greatests. And this remains to be seen by the test of time. World's Greatests have a problem with Sticking.

Yes, to each— to themselves.

So you slide a sheet in.

Okay.

And this sheet will stick. And then if you pull the sheet out, now deep inside you have bits of that sheet permanently stuck to the inside and you can't clear it out. So you have old text, shadows of text down there. It sucks.

Uh, but do you get— have you seen the transfer, the ink transfer? to the, to the, to the plastic on the inside.

Yeah.

I've seen that. It's, and it's funny, I've seen it usually because my bag was in the back of a car and it got so hot that the ink got just warm enough it transferred. And so not only can you get pieces of paper stuck in the bottom, you get ink transfer on top of the new sheet that you stick in there. So you're like, ah, but these, the way it slips open and folds from the corner, It might avoid that. So yeah, we'll see.

Then there's also this 3, uh, trifold poster.

Yep.

Mine will never get opened.

Mine will never get opened. And honestly, trifold folded posters essentially means I will never hang this.

Right.

Because it will always have that fold.

Right.

Fold, you know, when they would be like, here's poster art in a magazine. I'm never going to hang that because it's going to have a fucking fold in the middle.

So. Yeah, I am fully in agreement on the the poster. The at the same time, I loved that it was in there because it was so nostalgic to the era of the original comics and like at the I don't believe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness comics ever came packaged with a poster, but. During the period they were out, there was a kind of a big thing for comics to come with posters of that style bagged with them. There'd be special editions and such. And from a nostalgia point of view, it made me very happy to see it in there, even though, like, I am, I am looking for a young child who is really excited about it, who wants to tack that up in their bedroom.

It's like I just got a Wizard magazine and there's a poster in it. Yeah, exactly.

Uh, the, uh, or Dragon Magazine, Wizard Magazine. Heck, half the Palladium products, if you ordered them from Palladium during this time period, would come with a poster just thrown in with the checklist on the other books you should buy. Right. So from that, you're spot on.

Yeah.

Spot on.

And at last we come to the books. We mentioned the books. We mentioned their covers. We got 4 different covers here. Just a quick review of what these are before we do a separate deep dive into the books. themselves and their content. First, these are hefty tomes. These are, these are big, meaty, hefty tomes. This is solid binding. These books feel good.

Yeah, these books are ones where if I am dealing with a home invasion, I grab them to use to defend myself and then immediately realize what I grabbed and drop it back on the table.

Yeah, we have 6 or 8 variant covers here of the 2 different books. Yeah. Or I should say 4 per book. We'll post more pictures of them online, but I have a full set because of the level that I backed at. So I got all of them. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them. I know I'm going to at least keep the red ones for the table. That's the ones I'm going to use in play. I'm just going to always use the red ones because They are my favorite. And the leather-bound ones I'm putting on a shelf.

Yep.

That's where mine, I brought mine today, but they will go directly on a shelf as soon as I figure out shelf space.

Yeah. So, and the other 2 sets, I don't know, maybe I'll keep one as a player reference and then give it away another one. I don't know. We've got that, uh, that charity thing you're talking about.

There's a, there's a buddy of mine who wasn't able to get into the Kickstarter.

Yeah.

And, uh, I don't know if he listens to the cast or not, but, um, he will be getting a couple of my books as a gift from me. 'Cause I know he was a huge TMNT fan, just he wasn't able to get into the Kickstarter. Things were going, you know, life happens. Um, and so, uh, I'll probably be giving him a couple of them. I don't have as many. I think I do have every copy too. Uh, but it's, I think I have a couple extra. I think I got some extras just for him. The, the leather-bound ones, as with all of their, their faux leather-bound ones, they're exceptional quality. Uh, and that's like, I putting them into my bag, I dropped one and like, I thought I hurt the corner, but it actually held okay.

They feel really nice. These actually feel better to me than any of the ones they've done before.

Yeah, I agree. Um, there's a feel to the COVID of the TMNT books. that doesn't exist on the other faux leather ones that they've done that I just love.

The paper quality, I think, is a heavier bond on the paper quality.

Very much so.

I will admit I've not had a lot of time, uh, to go through these in depth, but just looking at them every time I flip through them, they feel like a modern gaming book now.

Yeah.

Right.

Whereas previous, when we've gone through the previous, the original editions, you're looking at it and the formatting is that kind of clunky formatting.

Palladium formatting.

Yeah, these like, someone took some time.

I mean, the originals look like they were done on a typewriter. And they probably were. Yeah, these look like actual modern-day gaming products. So tell you what, let's go ahead and close this discussion. And then now we're going to talk about the actual books themselves. So we're just going to jump to it. Thanks for listening, folks. And we'll catch you in the next episode.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

Have a good one.

You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sembida and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furbyguy from freesound.org. This closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org. All sound effects used are self-made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as The Glitter Boys— that's B-O-Y-S— and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.