This collectible has an extremely interesting but tumultuous history. Mirage Studios was the comic book publishing company founded by TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in the mid-1980s. As the TMNT started to skyrocket in popularity with the 1980s cartoon, major blockbuster movies, and the ongoing comic series, there was a whole team of people working at Mirage Studios on various parts.
One of the artists at Mirage Studious was Craig “A.C.” Farley who is probably most known for his covers from TMNT issues #50-62, known as the City at War story arc. A.C. Farley is an incredibly talented artist and there was a push to create a high-end collectible to celebrate Mirage Studios reaching its 50th comic issue milestone. Leonardo was the first bust created and there were rumors that each of the four turtles were planned to have their own bust created.
Initially, 500 of these Leonardo busts were planned in the production run. Mirage even put out a Leonardo’s Been Busted! teaser image announcing the bronze-tinted statues. As you can see on the box cover art below, there is a “1 of 500” printed at the bottom of the cover label. For clarity, these did not end up being individually numbered – each box says “1 of 500.”
Unfortunately, only about 80 of the statues were produced due to issues with the modeling company, Geometrics. These were designed to be cast in bronze-filled resin but, unfortunately, the 80 produced were made in white resin (photos below).
