The stands come in a standard style Matty white mailer box, only this time it’s got Matty on the front giving you that “Fuck You” expression. Seriously, Mattel, with how much difficulty you’ve put collectors through in getting your figures, I think you need to design a kinder, friendlier looking mascot. You get three flight stands, each one is individually bagged and include the base, the stand, and three different size clips. The clips plug into the stand’s strong ratcheting joint, which will hold the figure at whatever angle you place it in. The stands are molded in a sort of frosted translucent plastic and pretty sturdy.

Theoretically, these stands are a great idea. In practice, they have some flaws. If you want to position your figure flying horizontally, you can clip the largest clip around the front of their torso. The problem here is that the ratcheting joint is pretty big and it obscures a lot of the figure. It works, but I don’t think it looks all that great. Also, most of the DCUC figures don’t have the range of motion in their neck joints to really angle their heads right for this pose, so they wind up just looking down. I think the best use is to position the figure in a diagonal upward flying position and what you get is a pretty good look.

The other way to go would be to use it to hold your figures in a sort of hovering or vertical take off pose. Here too, there are problems. Since most of the flight enabled figures have molded plastic capes, you can’t really get the huge ratcheting joint of the stand between their cape and body to clip it around their torso from behind. Instead, you have to swap it out for one of the smaller clips and clip around one of their legs. This works really well for some of the figures, particularly Power Girl or Super Girl.

Overall, these stands work, they just don’t work as well as I would have liked or hoped them to. I think what happened here is that Mattel made a trade off when including the huge ratcheting joint. It allows for more versatility in the design, but it conflicts way too much with the fact that a lot of figures we want to use with these things are wearing uncooperative capes. I’m glad to have them to help some of my figures along that have problems standing on their own. Particularly Super Girl, who is top heavy, has week leg hinges and no peg holes in her feet. As far as value goes, I paid $12 for three stands, which considering how well made they are, I think is a pretty fair deal, and since I ordered them with my He-Man figure, the shipping wasn’t such a bitter pill.