“Sorry I’m late, I was saving the world. You know how it is.” – Ant-Man, Marvel’s Ant-Man. (Cause even the movie’s gotta make fun of itself…)

My wife is not a big POP! Fan. She marvels the same as I do about the scope & breadth of the various lines. She thinks the overall design is cool too. For her, it’s the black, beady eyes that turns her off. As a result, I haven’t bought very many. She’s never forbade me from buying any, our relationship isn’t like that, but if she’s into it, it helps me enjoy it. For example, she’s amazed by Hot Toys and I don’t question my luck.

I have snagged a few here and there like the Joker-Batman (hypnotic eyes), the Hulkbuster (white eyes), and so when I intended to grab the Ant-Man & Yellow Jacket (lenses over their eyes) – noticing a theme there?! Then Funko went and sent me the Ant-Man Collector Corps box for June and I got my first taste of Ant-Man stuff and I was hooked. I snagged the two regular edition POPs that weekend.

The basic Ant-Man & Yellowjacket are available at multiple outlets. I snagged mine at Toys R Us for $10 each. The sculpts on these pops are again really detailed despite by their chibi nature. Ant-Man is the better of the two, with the tech on the helmet contrasting great with the details of the more old school suit below. Nearly all the details appear to be there and you can actually use the POP to see what paint apps Hasbro skipped on their regular figures. The Yellowjacket sculpt is solid too, but the nature of the desigs, lots of panels, and the necessary yellow paint make for a little sloppier figure. He still looks good, but just not as nice as Ant-Man (and if you have YJ, you probably will have Ant-Man).

The unique aspect to these two is the translucent lenses on their helmets. I actually love this. I’ll talk about the GITD versions here a minute, but these two steal the show for me. Those “beady little eyes”, as my wife calls them, really come alive under the translucent lenses. It’s a cool look that the others don’t quite match.

So why didn’t I like the others? I have to give props to Funko for going the GITD route on the exclusives. Ant-Man is available at Hot Topic while Yellowjacket is available on Amazon. I love the idea and I loved them even more when I first got them. The promo pics didn’t really reveal anything about the POPs themselves, the figures were just the regular figures outlined in a diffused color. Ant-Man actually glows in the dark red – both his lenses and his suit and Yellowjacket does the same in yellow! I love GITD and getting in different colors is even better. But the problem here is that it’s extraordinarily weak. I couldn’t even get a picture after long exposure and had to go the blacklight route to get the pic in the Page 2 Gallery. I think it’s great for Funko to do these types of exclusives, but they need to up their game on the GITD. I want these guys to stare back at me when it’s lights out at my office. Continue to Page 2…