Tag Archives: mattel

Sep 2 2011

DC Universe Classics: Crime Syndicate of America 5-Pack by Mattel, Part 1

The moment I heard that Mattel was doing a set of Crime Syndicate figures in the DCUC line, I was beside myself with joy. Then the news soon followed that it would be one of those Walmart exclusive 5-packs and my heart sank into my feet. I’m sure I’ve cried plenty of times here about how the Walmarts in my area all stopped carrying DC figures a long time ago, so the chances of me finding this set at retail were impossible. My only hope was that Walmart would offer the set for sale on the website like they did with the less spectacular Green Lantern 5-pack. Thankfully that hope paid off. The set went for sale online, and thanks to a tip from a friend and fellow collector, I was able to buy it before it quickly went out of stock. I’m going to break this up into two parts. Today we’ll start with a look at the packaging and two of the figures: Johnny Quick and Power Ring.

This is the first time I’ve purchased one of these 5-packs from the DC Universe Classics line, so the packaging is pretty new to me. The set basically comes in a huge tray-like window box with the familar DCUC deco that we’ve seen so many times on the carded figures and the 2-packs. Obviously it’s a pretty big package to hold the five DCUC scaled figures in a staggered layout. You get Superwoman, Owlman, Ultraman, Johnny Quick, and Power Ring, who are of course the evil alternate versions of Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, The Flash, and Green Lantern, respectively. Some of these figures are packed in action poses, so here’s hoping the joints didn’t get too messed up. The back panel of the box has bios for each character, along with a photo of the figure and a shot of their comic counterpart. Overall, I like the presentation here. I’m somewhat tempted to hang on to the box as it is fairly collector friendly, but since these figures are going right up on my DCUC shelves, I opted to pitch it. Good thing too, since Walmart slapped some huge, f’ugly product label on the bottom of the package.
Johnny Quick features a standard DCUC male body and relies mostly on coloring and paint apps to distinguish him. The head sculpt, however, is new, really fantastic, and much better than I expected to find in a set like this. The bulk of the body is cast in a nice rich, red plastic, whereas the boots and gloves are in yellow plastic. I’m really not a fan of this quality of yellow plastic used. It just looks waxy and inconsistant compared to the rest of the body. I much prefer the yellow paint used on the Barry Allen figure’s boots. On the upside, the paintwork on the figure is really sharp, particularly the lighting bolt pattern that runs up and down his torso.
Just like Johnny, Power Ring features the same standard male body. He’s cast in green plastic with painted white gloves and lighter green paint for the boots. He’s also got light green stripes running up his arms. The emblem on his chest is clean and sharp and the paintwork applied to his sculpted power ring is very nicely executed. Power Ring features an excellent head sculpt and looks mighty pissed off. The mask is actually part of the sculpt and painted over. There’s a wee bit of bleeding between the flesh paint and his mask, but nothing too bad at all. I’m guessing this head might have been reused from one of the DCUC Green Lantern themed waves, but I don’t have all of those figures, so I’m not entirely sure one way or the other.

Both figures feature the same standard DCUC articulation. The head is ball jointed; The arms feature ball jointed shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows; The legs feature universal movement in the hips, swivel cuts in the thighs, and hinged knees and elbows. The figures also swivel at the waist and have the hinged ab crunch in the torso.
So far, I’m extremely happy with the way this set turned out. While I didn’t hesitate at all to order it, I was a bit concerned about not being able to pick out a set with the best paintwork. Sometimes with sets like this you just need to pull the trigger and hope for the best, and based on the first two figures, everything seems fine. I’m still not all that keen on the yellow plastic used for Johnny Quick’s gloves and boots, but that’s really all I have to complain about here. Both of these guys were a little pre-posed in the package, but thankfully it didn’t do any harm to their joints. These are awesome looking figures.

Next time, I’ll wrap it up with a look at the last three figures in the set.
Aug 30 2011

Masters of the Universe Classics: Megator by Mattel

I’m not exactly an expert on the vintage MOTU toyline, so I’m not ashamed to say that I never knew the 12-inch giants even existed. As Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Back when Matty introduced the first of their Classics versions of these figures I passed on Tytus. Megator, on the other hand looked a lot cooler. Maybe I just prefer my giants to look like monsters rather than regular dudes, so despite my reservations about the $40 price tag, I decided to go for it anyway. It didn’t hurt that Megator was plenty easy to get, even when I logged on that night to buy my stuff.

I gotta be honest, I wasn’t prepared for just how big this guy is, especially when he’s in the package. The last larger MOTUC figure I bought was Shadow Beast, and this guy really dwarfs him. The packaging maintains the green Greyskull stone deco of the regular sized carded figures, but this is a window box, rather than a card and bubble. The box dubs him an “Evil Giant Destroyer” and there’s a cool “The Powers of Greyskull” sticker on the window, which I don’t recall seeing before. I’m not usually a MIB collector, but I probably won’t be displaying Megator with my regular MOTUC figures, so I was able to carefully remove this guy from the box without mangling it and he’ll likely be living in his box on my shelf of other boxed 12-inch figures. Needless to say, I’m happy the packaging is collector friendly.
Megator’s design gives him something of an easy sculpt. As far as his body is concerned, he’s just a green guy in a furry diaper and a leather harness. Still, the muscles are sculpted very nicely and I think the different shades of green make for an outstanding looking figure. The harness is soft plastic and features some nice detail work that include tiny rivets and a skull motif. The harness clips together behind his back, and is pretty easy to take off if you so choose.
And then there’s the head. I’m not crazy about it and I can’t quite put my finger on why. It’s not terrible, it just looks maybe too cartoony to fit in with a lot of the more realistic modern sculpts. The hair is sculpted, which fits in with the rest of the MOTUC line, and its soft enough to not terribly hinder the neck articulation, but I just don’t think it looks all that great. Thankfully, just like Man-E-Faces, Megator came with a secret accessory, and yep, its an extra head. While I didn’t care about Man-E’s extra head, I think Megator’s extra head is so much better than the one that came with it. The sculpt is more hideous and generally better looking than the in-package head and the rooted hair works much better for me than the standard head’s sculpted hair.

One of the reasons I didn’t pick up Tytus was because I hated his weapon. Yep, that terrible hammer-slash-vacuum thing. Megator, here comes with a much cooler weapon: A giant spiked ball on a chain. The ball is almost half the size of a regular MOTUC figure, so he could really do some damage with it.
Megator’s articulation isn’t up to the standards of the smaller figures. The head is ball jointed and pops off pretty easily to do the swap. The shoulders are ball jointed, but you don’t get a lot of lateral movment there. His elbows are hinged and he has swivel cuts in his wrists. His legs swivel at the hips and are hinged at the knees. The only thing I’m really missing here are hinges in the ankles. Apart from that I’m ok with the limitations.
Megator turned out to be a really cool figure, even for someone like me who doesn’t care about the vintage toy’s history. Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly appreciate all you vintage MOTU collectors being thrilled to finally have a toy version of this guy that is affordable and fits in with the modern line. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a crazy looking giant and that’s good enough for me. I can’t say I’m really thrilled about blowing almost $50 on him including shipping, especially when Mezco can put out such an amazingly sweet and significantly bigger Lion-O for $35.
Aug 26 2011

Masters of the Universe Classics: Man-E-Faces by Mattel

Last Monday was a Matty Sale Day and Mattel had a number of items worth looking at. In addition to offering second chances on Beast Man and Gygor, the two new MOTUC figures were Man-E-Faces and Megator. Today we’ll start out with Man-E. He’s not one of my favorite dudes from Universe, but there’s no denying he’s a pretty high profile character and he was no doubt very high on a lot of collectors’ want lists, especially after getting releases like Battleground Teela and The Faceless One. Despite his demand, Man-E turned out to be a pretty easy figure to get, as he lasted a couple of days. He also came with a secret accessory! Oooh! What could that be???

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Man-E comes in the standard MOTUC packaging, which still looks everybit as awesome as it did last month, and the month before that, and so on. If I were a MOC collector, I’d be pretty pissed, though. My Man-E is packaged with his helmet askew, half turned to the side with his face barely visible. I don’t know how many shipped like this, but I do know a lot of collectors keep these carded. If you’re one of them, good luck. I hope your’s was packaged better than mine. The secret accessory is packaged under the insert so if I had avoided toy forums for the last bunch of weeks I would have been really surprised when I ripped open the package. But I didn’t. So I wasn’t.
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And there’s the Man… er, E-Faces. The keen eyed collector will instantly notice that Man-E owes his legs to Trap Jaw’s parts. You’ll also notice that Matty had to really rethink their “no gimmicks” rule with this figure, as by nature, Man-E is basically one big gimmick. So let’s get that gimmick out of the way first. In case you were worried that in order to change Man-E faces you’d have to take apart his whole head and put in a different face plate (I’m looking at you two, Battle Armor He-Man and Skeletor!!), fear not. Man-E’s gimmick works the same way it did on the vintage figure. You turn the knob on the top of his head and it rotates through the three faces: human, robot, and beast. The faces are a bit sunken into the helmet, but you can still see them pretty well and I think T4H did a fine job recreating each one for the modern line
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But wait… order now and you’ll get three more bonus faces! Now how much would you pay? Yes, the secret accessory is another head with three more faces. To swap them out you pull off the knob, pull off the helmet, swap the head plug inside and put it all back together. It’s actually much easier than it sounds. The new heads consist of He-Man, Orko, and Skeletor. Orko? Really?? I don’t tend to complain about extra accessories, but I can tell you right now that my extra Man-E head will be tossed into the bottomless pit of extra MOTUC accessories that I don’t give a shit about. I will also point out that the ability to swap out the heads made Man-E’s helmet a little unstable and bounces around while rotating the heads. In the end, I would have rather Matty nixed the extra head and permanently attached the helmet to the figure. See, the extra head is an example of the gimmick hurting the figure, and I thought that’s what Matty was trying to avoid.
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But enough about Man-E’s faces, the figure in it’s entirety looks fantastic. The sculpt and proportions are great and while I may catch some hell from purists about this, I am glad Matty went with the fleshtone rather than the more vintage color for his skin. The purple and blue used for his armor is a gorgeous combination and really makes the figure pop. In addition to the extra head, Man-E comes with his trusty orange laser pistol. It’s a new sculpt and I like it.
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Men-E features fairly standard MOTUC articulation. The arms feature universal movement in the shoulders, swivel cuts in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows. The legs have universal movement at the hips, and hinges in the knees and ankles. The torso swivels at the waist and features the standard ab crunch. Obviously, his head doesn’t turn, at least not in the conventional sense.
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It seems like I’m saying this a lot lately, but here’s another MOTUC figure where I don’t care so much about the character, but I absolutely love the figure. He has a great sculpt, very appealing colors, and an overall sense of great quality about him. As always, casual collectors will no doubt balk at the $20 plus shipping pricetag, but I tend to get more and more pissed over the shipping charges, rather than the $20 for the figure. Yep, as always, Matty, thanks for charging me $10 to ship a figure in a box with no packing and have it take almost 10 days to get to me. That’s quite a class act you and Digital River are running.
Aug 17 2011

Masters of the Universe Classics: Captain Glenn (Queen Marlena) and Cringer by Mattel

2011 was a rough year for me and SDCC exclusives. There wasn’t a lot that I wanted and I still got skunked out of most of it. Who would have thought that old Matty would have come through to deliver the most painless way to score a Con exclusive? And yet on August 1st, after a long night of merriment at the local pub, I came home, sat down at my computer around 11pm, and was able to order Queen Marlena and Cringer without a bit of bother. Unlikely? Yeah. Cool? Definitely. It was certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the experiences on some other webstores… Yeah, I’m looking at you Hasbro!

Now, based on the packaging you can argue that this release isn’t really an SDCC exclusive. The one sold at the Con was packaged as Queen Marlena, whereas the one sold on Matty afterwards is packaged as Captain Glenn. I understand that if you’re a MOC collector, this is a huge deal, but I’m not, so once I tore her out of the package, all things became equal. Either way, I’m a happy camper. Glenn comes in the standard white mailer box and carded on the now all too familiar MOTUC card. The figure looks really nice in the package and the back panel has the ubiquitous bio as well as pictures of other figures in the line. I think it was a brilliant idea on Matty’s part to make this release two figures in one. Queen Marlena is a nice figure for collectors looking to complete the Eternian Royal Family, but she ain’t all that exciting. Give her the ability to turn into her younger, galaxy-hopping space adventuress persona, and now you’re talking! Anywho, when you open up the package you’re greeted with a whole lot of stuff.

Considering the nature of this figure, I’m actually going to start by listing her accessories, because you get a lot of stuff packaged onto this unassuming little card. Most of it is either on the figure or stuffed under the bottom insert. If you strip Marlena down to her base figure, you’re left with her royal robe, her astronaut vest, astronaut helmet in two pieces, gun belt with holster, extra head, laser pistol, laser rifle, sword, and staff. That’s the kind of assortment I expect to get with a 1:6 scale figure, and I didn’t even mention Cringer yet!

Let’s start with Captain Glenn. The figure looks great with a space suit that’s not too bulky and yet fairly convincing. The only thing odd is that she’s not wearing gloves, but I can certainly let that slide. She has a definite retro-thing going on with the huge fishbowl style helmet and low slung gun belt. The back of the helmet has a panel that hangs down her back with some instruments sculpted into it. The Glenn head sulpt is ok, but maybe a bit too angular. There’s a defintie difference in the faces between the two heads and the Glenn one is not my favorite of the two. She also looks a bit too much like Teela.

Glenn’s accessories make her a bit of a walking arsenal. The gunbelt fits on so nicely and secures so well it looks like it’s not even meant to come off. The pistol is a great little sculpt and fits snugly into the holster. The rifle is pretty big and also features a really cool and unique sculpt, complete with a scope. Too bad she didn’t encounter Skeletor when first crash landing on Eternia. She probably could have killed him without breaking a sweat.

To convert Glenn to Queen Marlena, you basically remove everything from the figure, including the head. Then you pop on the new head, put on her rubbery, plastic robe and stitch it up the back. As I mentioned earlier, the Marlena head is my favorite of the two. The hair is a bit more poofy and she’s wearing her crown, but the face just looks more natural and attractive and less stern and angular. The fasteners on her robe are just tabs that fit into sockets and they work amazingly well. Once you get them lined up and fastened properly you’re left with just a seam in the back and the robe is pretty snug and looks very natural. Of course, it also cripples the figure’s articulation from the waist down. You still have full movement in the arms and head, but that’s it. As Marlena, the figure is fairly simple, but very faithful to her character design and should appease both Filmation and comic fans alike.

As Queen, Marlena comes with her staff and a sword. The staff is nicely sculpted and rounds out her queenly ensemble very nicely. The sword is the same one that was packaged with Battleground Teela, which is cool because I really like it. It’s a nice, no-nonsense, functional looking weapon. I’m not sure how often the Queen of Eternia needs to go around sticking swords into people, but I’ll never scoff at an extra accessory.

And speaking of extra accessories, let’s not forget Cringer! For what is essentially a bonus item, Cringer is an amazing piece. The sculpt features every bit of love and detail that T4H put into their main attraction figures. He’s the spitting image of the Filmation design, right down to his “Oh shit, we’re gonna die” expression and his one snaggle tooth. The paint apps are argueably better than the ones on my full Battle Cat and no detail has been spared. If you turn him over, you can see even the pads on his paws have been sculpted and painted. Of course, Cringer is mostly just a statue, but he does have swivel cuts in his neck and the base of his tail.

As I mentioned up top, Glenn/Marlena was very easy to purchase from Matty Collector after the Con. If you somehow missed her on Matty, you should still be able to get her from a third-party dealer without getting your wallet raped too badly. But even if you are paying a bit extra, there’s enough stuff in this package to make the inflated price tag well worth it. It’s not often I can say this about the MOTUC series, but at $37 shipped, I’d actually consider this figure a decent value.

Aug 10 2011

DC Universe Classics Space Heroes 2-Pack: Adam Strange and Starfire by Mattel

It seemed only fitting to sneak in some more DC Universe figures this week, since the fate of the line is currently being decided by a subscription thermometer on Matty Collector’s homepage. Yep, just like the bake sale at your local church, Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, is coloring in a thermometer to see if they can meet their undisclosed number of subscriptions. If they hit their goal the line lives as an online only property, if not… well, I guess 20 waves was a good run.


I don’t mean to sound cavalier about what now seems to be the certain death of this great line of action figures. Nonetheless, the two week subscription window only netted about 35 percent of the goal and while Matty has extended it another week,I don’t see it happening. We can sit here and postulate forever on why the line didn’t perform well at retail, but in the end I think it was a combination of crappy distribution and the limited appeal of niche comic book characters. Afterall, who actually reads comic books anymore? [Sarcasm! -FF] 

But enough about that… let’s get on to today’s figures. It’s Adam Strange and Starfire, a set I’ve been trying to snag for a little while now.

I absolutely love the packaging on these sets. The figures come in a nice big window box with the same kind of deco that we’re used to seeing on the regular carded releases. The back panel of the box shows pictures of each figure and includes biographies and stats for the characters. The box is perfectly collector friendly, and believe me if I had the room, I’d take advantage of that. Alas, I don’t, so the packaging gets deep-sixed. Both figures are posed a bit on the bubble, and that had me a little worried, particularly about Starfire’s skinny little legs, but no worries. Both figures came out of the package without any warping or joint damage.

Let’s start off with Starfire. I may not be making a concerted effort to collect Teen Titans, but my TT shelf has certainly been expanding as of late. But Teen Titan or not, I love the character and it’s hard to argue with having a figure on display that looks as good as Kory does. Starfire doesn’t rely a lot on unique sculpting, but what is here is fabulous. In particular, I’m referring to her head sculpt, which is perfect as far as I’m concerned. Beautiful, stern, maybe a little hint of bratty conceit, it’s all there. The sculpted hair is also excellent, as it sweeps away from the figure just enough to save the neck articulation, and yet still look pretty natural. Apart from the head, there are her bracers, collar and strategically placed crystal, but everything else on the figure is conveyed with paintwork.

So how about that paintwork? Overall it’s pretty good. The figure is cast in a slightly orange fleshtone, which possibly could have used more orange, but that varies on who was doing the colors on the comic. I last saw her when I was re-reading 52, and she was definitely more orange-yellow, but it’s all good. I really like the sparkly purple paint used for her, ah, garments. There’s a wee bit of slop on the straps running down her midriff, but otherwise the paintlines are pretty clean and sharp.

I’m also really impressed with the quality of the plastic used on Starfire. Having just opened Wave 16, y’all know that I found myself with some really buffed out characters with joints a lot weaker than the hinges in Starfire’s tiny arms and legs. The figures keep getting more expensive, and the plastic keeps getting softer and cheaper. That’s all I’m saying.

Moving on… Adam Strange is a really unique looking figure for the DCUC line, mainly because of his sculpted armor, which is a separate piece and includes a working holster for his sidearm and his jetpack. Obviously, Adam’s been kicking around the DC Universe for a long time and he’s got the awesome retro sci-fi design to prove it. The curves of his jetpack tanks and the mohawk fin on his helmet really deliver on the whole Buck Rodgers vibe, which I absolutely love.

Unlike Starfire, Adam’s paintwork has it’s ups and downs. The figure is molded mostly in red and uses yellow and white paint apps to make up his costume. He looks sharp and the yellow is pretty good, but the white is hit and miss. The worst of the paintwork is on the armor, which shows off a lot of unfortunate sloppy brushwork. If this guy hadn’t come out of a sealed box, I would suspect a shady seller had touched him up with whiteout. I can kind of let it go as it looks like scuffing and wear on the armor, but from a QC standpoint it could have been done much better.

Prices on the DCUC 2-packs tend to be all over the place. After re-reading 52 last week, I went hunting for this pair on Ebay and was able to find them at a reasonable $34.99 with free shipping. It seems to fall in just under the highly demanded Hawkgirl/Gentlemen ghost set, but still demands a fair amount more than the Batman/Clayface or even the Aquaman/Black Manta sets. Still, the figures worked out to be only about $17.50 a pop, so not bad at all. Even with the QC issues on Adam Strange’s paint, both figures are pretty cool and welcome additions to my collection.

Aug 3 2011

DC Universe Classics All-Stars: The Joker by Mattel

I promised we’d get back to the two All-Star figures that came in my Wave 16 case of DC Universe Classics, and so here we are. Let’s kick off with that most iconic of Batman villains, The Joker.

The packaging is the same used for all the Wave 16 figures and it looks amazing. The dynamic shaped bubble has “HA!” embossed into it all around the figure. I love when Mattel does little touches like this for the packaging. If you don’t look hard enough, you could easily miss it, and I think that’s part of what makes it so cool. Uh-Oh! The Joker is packaged in a very dynamic pose, and you know what that usually means for the joints! Still, I can’t deny he looks absolutely stunning on the card. His legs are set in a wide stance and he’s holding aloft his giant green hammer. Joker has a few more accessories mounted off to his right.

Tearing open the package and pulling out the figure, I’m happily surprised to find that his joints are fine. The plastic used on this figure is really solid and high quality with no warping. I’m really thankful for that, because I consider Joker here to be one of the DCUC line’s masterpieces in terms of sculpt and overall paintwork. The head is as perfect as I expect to get in a mass release figure in this price range, if not better. T4H really captured all the manic personality of the character and the paintwork is razor sharp. I just love the head sculpt. The colors on the figure really pop, from the purple on his coat and trousers to the garish orange and green combination of his vest and shirt, and of course the yellow on his lapel flower. Joker’s jacket, vest and shirt are all separately sculpted to give the figure a very nice layered look. This is a figure that really stands out on the shelf, even amongst all the other costumed characters.

Articulation is fairly standard for the older figures in the DCUC line. The neck may or may not be ball jointed, all I know is my Joker’s head will only turn side to side. He has universal movement in the shoulders and hips; Hinges in the elbows, knees, and ankles; And swivel cuts in the biceps, wrists, and thighs. I was surprised to see that Mattel was able to keep the ab crunch hinge even with Joker’s sculpted jacket. Nice. Joker does have a swivel in the waist, but it’s all but useless because of the sculpt.

The Joker comes with a nice array of accessories, which is certainly uncommon for the DCUC line. You get a fish, a deck of cards, a cane, and his oversized hammer. While I’m not one to gripe about extra accessories, particularly not in this line, I really have no use for the fish or the cards, which is good because I’m guessing I will lose them sooner or later. The cane is extremely well done, with some exceptional paintwork. It’s much nicer than the cane that came with the Riddler figure that came with Wave 16. The sculpt on the hammer is excellent, with the head of the hammer sculpted as Joker’s face and the handle is his nose. Awesome.

In a line chock full of niche characters and back benchers, The Joker here should be a staple for any collection. Joker’s gone through a fair number of changes over the decades, but this style is how I remember him best and this has quickly become one of my favorite figures in my DCUC collection. Sure, he’s been available before and never all that tough to find, but I still applaud Mattel for keeping him on the shelves as much as possible for newcomers to the line.

Aug 3 2011

DC Universe Classics All-Stars: Deathstroke by Mattel

I don’t get a chance to meet Deathstroke a lot between the covers of the comic books. I love the character when I encounter him, but I just don’t tend to read a lot of the funny books that he populates. Nonetheless, the magic of the DC Universe Classics figures is that you don’t have to be intimately knowledgeable about the character to really enjoy their figure. And that’s certainly the case with Deathstroke here. Besides, I prefer to stay out of all that Deathstroke vs Deadpool nonsense. Let’s check out this amazing figure…

Just like The Joker, Deathstroke comes packaged in the same manner as the Wave 16 figures. He isn’t subjected to an action pose, thank god, but he is standing with his arsenal of weapons on the ready. Deathstroke fills out the bubble very nicely and looks spectacular in the package. If seeing this guy hanging on the pegs doesn’t make you want to take him home, I don’t think I want to know you.

A good portion of Deathstroke’s main body is comprised of a fishscale sculpt on his metallic blue armor, while his upper chest and shoulders is left smooth. He has sculpted orange boots and gauntlets, straps on his thighs, a utility belt with pouches and a working snap flap holster. The head sculpt features his simple blue and orange mask with the ribbons coming down the back and onto his shoulder. Keep in mind, the original wave release featured a very cool unmasked variant too. Deathstroke also has a soft plastic ammo bandalier that hangs loose over his chest and gives the figure a lot of depth. As far as mercenaries go, Deathstroke looks badass.

Deathstroke features standard DCUC style articulation. The head is ball jointed; There’s universal movement in the shoulders and hips; The elbows, knees, and ankles are all hinged; There are swivel cuts in the biceps, wrists, thighs, and waist; And the ab crunch hinge is present in the torso.

Weapons, weapons, weapons! Deathstroke comes loaded for bear and ready to mess you up. He comes with so many weapons, he almost makes up for the fact that most DCUC figures come with bubkis. You get his assault rifle, polearm, sword, and an automatic pistol. What’s better is that every weapon he comes with can be stored on his person in some fashion. The sword fits into his scabbard, the polearm clips onto his back, the pistol fits in his holster, and the rifle has a strap so that you can sling it behind his back or over his shoulder. Alas, the rifle is made of some really soft rubbery plastic and the stock tends to bend pretty easy when its in up against his bicep.

There’s no doubt that Deathstroke stands among the ranks of my favorite DCUC figures. He looks great, has a ton of accessories, and he’s fun to play around with, and that’s everything I’m looking for in my action figures. He’s also a great addition to my Teen Titans shelf, although when I first opened him, he spent a fair amount of time standing on my computer desk so I could grab him and play around with him on my down time. Obviously, he was a great choice for the All-Stars line and a great pick-up for any DCUC collection. I seriously think I’m going to have to hunt down the unmasked version now.

Aug 1 2011

Masters of the Universe Classics: Clawful by Mattel

There’s only about a week left to subscribe to Matty Collector’s Clubs. I was quick to pull the trigger on Club Lion Force, but I’m still waffling over Club Eternia. Maybe checking out last month’s figure will help me decide one way or the other. July gave us another one of Skeletor’s minions of freakish bastards in the guise of Clawful. He’s part man, part crab, and all action, baby. Let’s see what we got.

It’s the MOTU Classics packaging and it never gets old, even if I no longer have a lot to say about it. You should be familiar with it by now. Clawful fills out the bubble nicely and the back panel of the card includes the ubiquitous bio blurb. Oh, look… for once, I actually own all the figures pictured on the back.

And there he is, Clawful. Let’s start with his head sculpt, because he’s got the dead, soulless eyes of a killer. Ok, maybe not. In fact, Clawful easily has the most goofy and cartoony looking head of any of the MOTUC figures released thus far, and in the freakish world of Eternia, that’s saying quite a bit. His combination of googly eyes, Groucho Marx eyebrows and, Gamara tusks really are quite a site to behold. You have to be pretty comfortable with your MOTU fan status to accept this guy’s head sculpt. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have appreciated a second head, but I’m still perfectly fine with Clawful’s goofy looking head.

The rest of the figure is plenty cool. You may recognize the legs and feet as a reuse of Buzz-Off and Whiplash. Clawful also has Buzz-Off’s left hand. His front shell, on the other hand, is a new sculpt, as is the back one which attaches onto him via four pegs, just like Buzz-Off’s wings or Whiplash’s back/tail piece. His giant pincer claw looks good enough to eat with drawn butter, and despite Mattel’s insistance on outlawing “action gimmicks,” the claw still snaps shut when you open it and let it go. The coloring on the figure is pretty great, although I would have preferred his feet be the same color as his shell. As it is, it looks way too close to the color used on Whiplash’s feet.

Whiplash comes with two accessories: A mace and a shield. I guess maybe you could count his back plate as an accessory, since it comes off the figure in the package and you need to attach it. The mace is simple enough and cast in bright green plastic. The shield was actually a complete surprise for me. I knew he came with the mace, but not the shield. It’s a very nice piece, with a sculpt that continues the crustacean theme, and clips onto his wrist. Very cool!

Clawful wasn’t high on my list of MOTUC must-haves, but he looked like a pretty fun figure, and that’s exactly what I got. I think the biggest issue some collectors may have with him is the cartoon he has for a noggin. Most figures in the Classics line have gotten some degree of realistic update to their sculpts, but it seems as if Clawful missed the memo. Still, he’s just another example of how even the back-benchers in this figure lineup usually wind up winning me over in the end. As for that Club Eternia subscription? Well, I’ve still some days left to think it over.

Jul 27 2011

DC Universe Classics Wave 16: Jonah Hex by Mattel

We’re at the last of the regular figures from Wave 16, with only the Collect & Connect and the two All Stars left to go. I saved Jonah Hex for last because he inexplicably turned out to be my favorite among the regular figures of this wave. And with figures like Azrael and The Riddler in here, that’s saying quite a lot. What’s even more impressive is that I’m not even a big Jonah Hex fan. I’ve made more than a few attempts to get into his funny books, mainly because I am a HUGE fan of Westerns in both film and literature, but his books never managed to hook me and don’t even get me started on that shitty movie.

Jonah comes packaged in a fairly neutral pose. He does have each of his weapons in his hands, but there’s nothing here to mess with the figure’s joints. At this point, I don’t have much more to say about the Wave 16 packaging, although I do like the crossed revolvers Mattel used for his icon on the insert.

Even if you don’t give a crap about Jonah here, you’ve got to at least agree that Mattel put some serious love into this figure from sculpt to paint job. Let’s start with the head, since a big part of Jonah’s trademark look is his horrible disfigurement. T4H really nailed the look here, complete with the buggy eye and the few strands of flesh that cover over the exposed half of his jaw. It’s more gratuitous and comic booky than the sculpts used for the movie figues, and I love it for that. The Confederate Amy outfit is nicely sculpted onto the figue, but I think it’s the beautiful wash and paintwok that really makes it stand out. You also get a nicely crafted ammo bandalier as well as a working holster on his belt and a strap on the back to hold his shotgun.

Jonah featues the old style of DCUC articulation, minus one point. You get universal movement in the shoulders and hips; Hinges in the elbows, knees, and ankles; Swivels in the biceps and thighs; He swivels at the waist and has a ball jointed neck. What’s missing? The ab crunch hinge, which wouldn’t have worked with Jonah’s sculpted tunic.

Oh, look, accessories! Afterall, what would Jonah be without his guns? The figure comes with a revolver and a double barreled shotgun. Both are decent sculpts with good paintwork, but they’re also made of really rubbery plastic.

And there ya have it. In terms of sculpt and paintwork, Mattel really went above and beyond with Jonah. Let’s face it, this is a line where we’re used to getting a lot of figures comprised of standard bucks with a simple painted costume. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s cool to see when a really unique looking character shows up, Mattel goes the extra mile to do it right. I’m sure some of my love for this figure is inflated just because I love him as a Western themed figure, but a lot of it is just appeciating nice work when I see it.