I find the old figures a joke.
They don't look a thing like the characters (I think that's supposed to be par for the course with 1980's cartoons... He-Man figures didn't look a thing like the cartoons either). Those idiotic plastic model type weapons (I'm so disappointed they made a come back)... if you didn't have a nail clipper, you could cut yourself up pretty nasty on those little jagged edges. Then, when the popularity was starting to wind down, they turned the line into Monster in My Pocket/Garbage Pail Kids levels of stupid mutants, while a LOT of characters from the TV show who were worth making toys of were left out (at least they made the Neutrinos in the Toon line). Not to mention how losable the belts (which didn't even look like the belts from the cartoon series) were. The 2k3 line at least made it nigh on impossible to take them off. Sure, it could be done if you tried very very hard.
The sad thing is, the best TMNT figures were of everyone's least favorite series, Fast Forward. Yikes... show accurate sculpts in perfect scale with each other?! Such a thing has never happened before. The FF Splinter gave the pathetic looking 2k3 Splinter a real run for his money. Yet, there were some genuinely good things in the 2k3 line. A removable mask Shredder and Casey Jones. Some of the toys were show accurate. it almost would have been a great line if Playmates didn't spoil it with terrible character variants. And the one actually accurate variant of the Turtles was impossible to find (the Mystic Ninja whatevers... they had awesome face sculpts).