Hey look! The same old DC Universe Classics packaging. You know what they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Is that 75 Years of Super Power thingie behind the obnoxious flash glare new? No. No it isn’t. It’s been on the packages for a little while now.

So, let’s start with Golden Pharaoh. Like I said, I knew nothing about him, but oh man, is this a gorgeous figure. Everything about this guy, the sculpt, the paint, the use of the purple transluscent plastic all comes together to make him a great showpiece. The head sculpt is beautiful and definitely among the best Mattel has done in the line to date. He just has a majestic and noble look about him. The glider wings are made of softer rubber to keep them from snapping off, and the clear purple inlays as well as the clear purple collar behind his neck are all nicely sculpted with decorative patterns. When I first saw pictures of this figure, I thought the purple on his chest was just an inlaid piece of clear plastic, but it actually makes up the core of his torso, creating a cool see-through effect.

Granted, there are a couple of downsides to the figure. The glider wings on his arms do inhibit his articulation a bit, and I would have really preferred that both of his hands were capable of holding his staff, like Jack Knight. Instead, Pharaoh’s left hand is just sculpted into a useless fist.

Golden Pharaoh does not come with any of the C&C pieces for Validus. He does, however, come with a Superpowers decoed figure stand. It’s the exact same kind that was included with both Mary Batson figures a few waves back. He also comes with a collector button and a really nicely sculpted golden staff. It would have been really cool if Mattel could have used the same clear purple plastic to make the stone in the staff, but I’m guessing that would have added a lot of cost.

And then there’s OMAC. This guy is pure cheese. I like cheese, but in this case, I don’t mean that in a good way. While researching his backstory has intrigued me enough to want to track down some of his funny books and give them a read, his character design just has “up against a deadline” written all over him. There’s really just nothing for me to like here. The headsculpt is just one travesty after another. Besides that ridiculous mohawk, he’s got Ernest Borgnine’s eyebrows and George Jones’ sideburns. This guy is a freakshow of facial hair cliches.

The rest of OMAC is standard fair for a DCUC figure. He features a very generic body sculpt and relies on a lot of coloring to make him who he is. The eye emblem is nice and clean, although it does have a tiny chip. He’s a pretty good recreation of the source material in figure form, but I really hate that color of gold/yellow/ tan (ochre?) plastic used on his gauntlets, collar and boots. It just looks cheap. Apart from that he’s just blue with red leggings. His arms also look disproportionate and underdeveloped to the rest of his body. The whole thing gives off the vibe of a Masters of the Universe knock-off reject. Mohaw-Kor perhaps?

OMAC comes with the right arm piece for building the Validus figure, and that right there is the only reason I own this figure. I’m guessing Ebay is going to be flooded with loose OMACs in the days to come, so I’ll hang on to mine. He also comes with a collectible button, which instead of featuring him in comic form, it has his eye emblem. I’m guessing they couldn’t fit that ridculous Mohawk on such a tiny button.

There’s a bit of variation in the articulation on these two figures. OMAC has the standard points for the DCUC line. The head is ball jointed. The arms have ball jointed shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists and hinged elbows. The legs have universal movement in the hips, swivels in the thighs and hinges in the knees and ankles. OMAC has the swivel in the waist and the ab crunch hinge, but Golden Pharaoh does not, for obvious reasons.

So, here we have two converging examples of how the DCUC collection sometimes rolls. I knew next to nothing about these characters, but I adore one of these figures and really don’t care much at all for the other. Nonetheless, it’ll still get me to branch out and read some more comics that I probably otherwise wouldn’t have sought out, and that’s a big part of what makes me love this line so much. Granted, a big part of my problem with OMAC is the character design and not the figure’s execution, but also he was released in what in my mind was a wave of pretty exceptional figures, which only makes him look crappier.