Articulation is mostly standard on the Anti-Monitor – ball joints at the shoulders, swivels at the neck, biceps, forearms, wrists, waist, & thighs, hinges at the elbows knees, & ankles, the ab crunch, Mattel hips, and rocker ankles. Pretty much everything you’d expect, except the gauntlets add in the forearm swivels while the unique nature of his head limits the neck to a swivel joint. Even though the swivel is present, I tend to keep him looking forward – he just looks silly with his mouth half behind his collar.
The paint was excellent on my Anti-Monitor with even the rivets being done cleanly. The metallics* are really what sell the figure for me too, so the paint and sculpt come together to make for an excellent figure. One highlight for me were the tampos used for the eyes and mouth. They really complete the figure and though he had no hand in the Anti-Monitor directly, the Kirby Crackle inside his mouth was used in the comics and is translated to the figure exceptionally well.
* – The upper portions of his “Mattel hips” are cast in a dull gray and unpainted. I suppose that may be a logistics issue, but it does end up being the only unsightly thing on an otherwise beautiful figure.
I did have one slight QC problem I wanted to address. IAT turned two over the weekend (we were busy & didn’t notice… oops) and you’d think I would’ve learned by now to document QC issues before I fix them. I haven’t. The hoses on the Anti-Monitor’s torso are additional pieces glued in place. The glue was sprayed liberally over the entire area on both the front and back, leaving the figure looking rather frosted. I cleaned most of it up without thinking – it rubs right off, but you can see it underneath the hoses in a few pics. If you get a torso like that, you may have to clean it up a bit before your figure is ready to go.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the Anti-Monitor. He’s got a great sculpt and the metallics bring out the best of it. With the cloth cape ultimately being removable should I choose, the only thing I don’t like about the figure is the two ‘dents’ in his torso armor. I’m glad the arms aren’t restricted, but I wish something a little thicker had been used instead. He’s not as big as I’d like, but I can always have him terrorize my Infinite Heroes or some Heroclix if I really have to. Plus, there’s a nice little bonus with the Anti-Monitor. With him, Arkillo, & Stel completed – I’m finally done with the Green Lantern glut that’s purveyed the line for the last six months! Bring on S.T.R.I.P.E. and… Nekron… crap.
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It’s good to see that the new larger and more wasteful packaging has had no effect of the maximum size for these C&C figures.
I’m not sure how acurate it is to the source material, but I don’t think Mattel knows how capes work. The shortness of it makes sense, since I doubt they’ve used a good fabric and dragging on the ground would only aggrovate that. However, the cape doesn’t flare out at all (Heck, if anything it seems to taper IN) and it just looks rather sad. Compare it to the capes on the Movie Thor figures, where the cape tapers upwars, drawing your eye upwards along with it
Yeah, it’s just some cheap purple cloth tagged on the back of the figure, not really much thought into it. Heck, it got purple threads all over my backdrop there. š
You can easily remove the cape. There’s an armor peg in the back of the figure that lifts off so you can remove it.
Ha! I always tend to be careful with the figures prior to review, so I didn’t give too much tug on the back peg. I’ll have to give it a try.
anti-steve… priceless sir, priceless.
and i have to agree w/ henry about the increased package size not yielding any results on the CNC scale… what a friggin rip off. i find it hilarious that mattel blames the package size on the retailers requests… so when toy biz introduced those slim packs for the LOTR figs a decade ago, what were they, vatican voodoo assassins? i sincerely doubt walmart handed out a mandate on package size, since plenty of other products are now advertising smaller, more eco-friendly packaging.
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I imagine that the package size did come from the retailers because it coincided with Target and two of our Wal-Marts moving the figures from the pegs to the shelves.
Nice review. Your comments on the Anti-Monitor cape reminded me of the Star Wars Vintage line Darth Vader figure. The Vader figure also had a hole in the cape for the neck peg which ended up with the cape chain floating and unable to get in to sit along the chest. I found that un-pegging the head and placing the cape so that the neck peg sits between the cape and the chain then pegging the head back in made much more appeasing to the eye. Also because of how the cape now sits it hides the hole very well.
Also you just gave Mattel two new C&C ideas with Sinestro Corps Anti-Monitor and BL Anti-Monitor.
Thanks. I don’t recall if Vault got a Vader or not, I’ll have to ask.
And ewww… you’re right. There goes DCUC21 and DCUC25…
Packaging had gotten really funny over the years since the 1980s. Originally it’s all about getting that eyecatch, making something stand out, but it was Coleco and the Cabbage Patch Kids that really changed the game, as the box was intentionally and specifically designed to deny space to any other product on the shelf! You had a 6 of CPK, that’s ALL you could fit on the endcap! And they didn’t stack for crap either so that was one toy taking up about 2 feet of shelf.
The Toybiz LOTR slimback was designed to get more product in a limited space, in hopes retailers wouldn’t underorder due to all the other toys out there. Making a PR move of claiming the pack was ‘green’ was a sop to try and win some attention from the greenies.
Everything is about the constant war over increasingly limited shelf space. š
Great reviews for the whole wave. It makes for a fun week.
We need to find a customizer who can make the soft plastic capes for us. I really like that Trigon and Anti-Monitor have been made as figures, but I’m not a fan of the cloth capes. They just look wrong.
Any plans when the checklist will be up-dated with new pics?
Thanks!
Yes, Vault’s got this week’s reviews and instead of having time off, I’ll be updating the checklists. (Yay… š )
Agree with you 100% on the cape. I dont have this wave yet but RickCoronel from fwoosh came up with a neat fix. He put a spare series 4 Ares cape on and it looks so much better.
Yeah, I used a Ares cape. It flows nicely but you have to mod the cape so that it’s thin enough to fit under the head.
That looks awesome! Great job!
Looks great, Rick! I don’t have a spare Ares, but I’ll have to dig around in my extra figure collection and see what I have. I think I have a few spare DC Directs, maybe one will work.
Great reviews as usual. I just go Wave 18 yesterday, when do you plan on reviewing those?
Personally, I always liked his first appearance:
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJoUFVLUNuyd4oQXLRwvGjE0ntkrdslh2z39AEXQytIV6isp1gEQ
I have no idea if that will work. google Crisis covers/A-M images or something. blue skull looking style.
I don’t see much difference between this figure and the pre-SinCorps version? only thing really changed is the piping on his torso (and a SC sigil on his chest! LOL)
I think the only problem I have with mine is the head won’t stay on. I have no problem with the cloth capes, as the plastic ones usually throw the balance off and those are the first to take a dive off the shelves.
(I was **SO** glad when I finally got DCUC J’onn! DCD’s first J’onn was back heavy due to 10lb cape!)