54 thoughts on “Site Update: DCUC Wave
17, Panthor, & King Hssss”

1. I have no interest in any of those Blackest Night figures except Sinestro Corps Scarecrow, but hoooo boy do I have an interest in him. I’ve sort of fallen out of collecting DCUCs aside from a few favorites, but with Scarecrow being my favorite Bat-villain and his brief stint as a Sinestro Corps member being my favorite rendition of him, I’ll be getting this as soon as he hits shelves!

   1. What’re are your thoughts on the mask? I’ve heard love and hate for it, but I think it’s a pretty cool rendition.

2. That screaming Hal head gives me hope that we’re getting a Parallax, but I already have a custom one, so meh 😛

   Also, looking forward to people trading me LEGOS to repaint those Hal heads with a green mask.

   1. Parallax! Parallax!

      Don’t tease me. I still can’t beleive we’ve got seven Hal Jordans and DON’T have Parallax…

3. Oh yeah, and I hope I’m not just out of the loop, but is that new articulation on Wonder Woman or is that just exclusive to the prototype?

4. @DrNightmare

   The GL Classics Star Sapphire proto has the same joint, so I think they are finally addressing the useless ab crunch the ladies tend to have!

   I think this wave looks fantastic and fun. My only fear is that a whole lot of these costume details are painted onto bare sculpts. Looks great here, but Matty’s QC hasn’t had the greatest year.

   1. The Wonder Woman has gotten some new pieces at least, so that’s a plus in her favor, but I’m not sure is this new torso joint is an improvement or not.

5. Alright! Another release of Barry Allen, with Wally West, the Flash that I (and I suspect many persons of the toy-buying age) grew up with, still totally ignored except for one weird, undersized Kid Flash figure!

   And… are they finally releasing a Hal Jordan? It’s about time!

   Not to be a hater, but is there a single character/figure in this wave that hasn’t been released at least once before? Instead of working to complete any teams, we’re getting issue-specific rehashes from what was honestly a pretty terrible crossover that will be a couple of years old by the time this wave hits? I suppose, then, I should be thanking Mattel for saving my wallet some abuse.

   1. I was thinking the same thing, where is our Wally West figure??!?!

      1. I’m going to catalog these for the site, so my wallet must suffer the abuse. LOL

         The best part of this wave might be that Hal Jordan will now have 3 different sculpted heads.

6. I’m with you, Noisy. This just seems like an unnecessary stop in a line that was moving forward in many different directions at once.

   I can’t imagine that this line won’t be confusing as hell on the pegs for the average buyer (“Why isn’t Green Lantern green, Dad?”), never mind the negativity it’s engendered on the collector boards. And, for that audience, also odd that Mattel chose to announce this on the very day that DCD was beginning to put out their own versions. In a few months, Blackest Night is going to be that much farther away and the general public is going to be looking for movie-connected merchandise, not a pink swimsuit lady called “Something-or-Other Wonder Woman”.

   And yes, these are good-looking figures, but did we really need seven of them at once? It’s still not a complete set, and even three of them at once would’ve made the point without potentially jeopardizing the momentum the line currently has.

   Well, it’s a calculated risk on Mattel’s, and I’m on the fence whether I want the wave to do well so as not to ‘kill the lien’, or whether a poor reception might shock them back to the GA/SA/BA/MA mixture we’d come to expect, that characterized the first 16 waves.

   1. You hit on the main two tenets that bother me…

      1) Announcing the day the DC Direct versions hit.

      2) Not doing the entire team.

      There’s a post on the Matty forums where TG talks about the wave. He defends the decision a bit and dangles a GA wave out there to keep us quiet. LOL

7. i don’t get the 5 millenia reference… how are they converting centuries to millenia? i mean, that’s a HUGE disparity in time… even motuc would have a tough time embracing that big a canonical change.

   1. Yeah Noisy, I didn’t understand your comment on this either. What was said about this that made you aware of it? Was there something in 5 Questions around the net that I missed?

      1. Mattel is apparently saying the time gap is now 5,000 years. Poe also mentions the change on his site.

         1. Yep. There will now be 5000 years between Grayskull’s death and Adam’s transformation into He-Man.

            It’s a crazy change to me, but most fans seem to like it.

8. OK, color me stupid. Doesn’t Mattel realize that the world runs on internet time now? Blackest Night is dead and over. It’s ‘last year’ (and will be literary by the time these ship I wager), and the general public who’ll see these in the few chains that carry them will go “Uhhhh?”, esp. if they’re next to a 4-foot licensed section of Green Lantern the Movie toys.

   So this wave dogs out at the mass retailers, which then tell Mattel “hey, keep your damn DC figures they’re poison!” and what does that do for Wave 18? Well, probably nothing as that’s been committed to at around the same time due to…say it with me now, logistics. I’ll just say that 2012 may be slim pickings in the DCUC vein.

   I mean, seriously, don’t you think the main mainstream buyers are guys who had Super Powers figures as a kid and they’re revisiting that, returning to their youth? That and Super Friends nostalgia. As much as I LONG for the complete Metal Men or Doom Patrol or (please please please) Forever People subsets, it’s ‘as seen on TV!’ that’s still going to rule the sales numbers.

   It’s like in the anime world. You can sell a bazillion Voltron DVD sets (at least the Lion one) but you have to just about put a gun to the head of that same market to get someone to buy the originator series GoLion. ’80s Nostalgia for the mainstream, cult stuff for the uber niche market.

   Holy crud, it’s almost Jan. already! Toyfair ’11 is right around the corner!

   1. Maybe “War of the Green Lanterns” will work some of these decos back in. LOL

9. DCUC wave 17 looks kinda weak.Violent Lantern Wonder Woman,Black Hal Jordan and Scrarecrow looks worth getting.Anti-Montitor looks good C&C.We are already getting most of theses characters from DC Direct!

   1. The funny thing is that DCUC had stayed away from DCD for the most part – the GL line is two waves and doesn’t give us any of the alien lanterns that DCD did. And there’s more money to be had in Larfleeze & Atrocitus than in some of the choices they made. Then this wave comes along.

10. Ugh. That makes two straight waves I’ll be skipping and four out of six. With 12, 14 and 16, I couldn’t rightly complain. The character selection was fine (and mostly original), I just didn’t happen to care for the lineups. 17 makes about as much sense as a Bloodlines tribute wave.

    What’s the point of having a separate GL line if you’re going to stuff the main line with figures that would barely be justifiable as GLC filler? Do they really think the market will bear GL movie figures and two lines of GL comic figures at once? Especially when so few figures fit anyone’s definition of “essential” for a GLC collection. But then, if they made the likes of Brother Warth, Saint Walker, Atrocitus, Salaak… each wave would consist of two figures.

    “The only way to do her right is with a 100% tool and for that cost we can do 4 other figures.”

    Paint is more expensive than I thought.

    FakeEyes22“The GL Classics Star Sapphire proto has the same joint, so I think they are finally addressing the useless ab crunch the ladies tend to have!”

    By making it more useless? Following Hasbro’s example in articulation is never a good idea, and that’s what they’re doing here by replacing the torso and waist joints with what will likely be a poorly-implemented balljoint that breaks up the sculpt worse than any ab crunch. The sculpt flows smoothly until you get to that hideous hiccup. If it offered much in the way of poseability, I might welcome it, but those joints never do.

    1. Toy Guru has said that he doesn’t consider this a “Green Lantern” wave. He also considers Blackest Night to have been a DC crossover and not a GL event.

       And I share your concerns on that new joint. It might be more useless, we’ll have to see.

       1. That… is mindboggling. In strictly technical terms, TG is right. There are no Green Lanterns in this wave and Blackest Night was a company-wide crossover. Really, though, this wave and DC’s Event have little relevance to characters outside of the GL subsection of the universe, which is as insular as it is cosmically vast. I know Lex is following up on his Orange Lantern experience, and there might be others handwaving at the non-story, but Wonder Woman might as well have never been there. Like her “role” in Final Crisis, it had little bearing on the Event and none on her solo title.

          Getting Barry and Ray again is just annoying. Wally’s a better character, and any Ray/Ryan debate is moot since the postmortem premodern Atom is such a simple repaint. We could get them, a full-fledged Yellow Lantern, Miri Riam, Munk and anyone but Hal. All simple, all new characters, and any minor Lantern is more relevant than all the deputies put together.

11. not gonna comment on MOTUC stuff…
    ON DCUC Rainbow Lantern wave… MAssive meh!
    Only interested in Flash and Scarecrow.
    Predictions: Lex is gonna break a lot.

    1. If Lex breaks a lot, I’ll be ticked. I know clear plastic is generally more brittle, but the Goddess was a joke.

12. King Hsss & Panthor–March & April needs to speed up RIGHT NOW!! 2 Thumbs Up!!

    1. We’ve got a few good (but expensive) MOTU months coming up!

13. My thoughts:

    BL Flash: New ring hand. Mostly a repaint

    SS Wonder Woman: New head, chest, waist, forearms, ring hand, and lantern. Rest is reuse. She also features a new “abs crunch” joint which may become standard for female figures.

    IT Atom: New head, necklace, neck piece, shoulder armour, forearms, ring hand, waist piece, shins, and feet. Missing his Indigo Tribe staff/lantern.

    SC Scarecrow: Though this version has more articulation, the DC dicect figure is comic accurate (lose fitting black shirt and pants with black shoes). New head and hat, arms, forearms, hands, and jacket piece. Looks like he will have double jointed elbows. This means we will see a new Scarecrow figure in the future, possibly in the Batman Classics line (if the rumours are true).

    OL Luthor: New head, chest piece, skirt armour, and ring hand. Lantern should be solid instead of see-through. May become brittle given what happened with green goddess.

    WL Jordan: New head and possibly ring hand.

    BL Jordan: New head and ring hand. Head should be painted gray for a decayed look if they’re not going to sculpt rotting flesh.

    Anti-Monitor: Entirely new sculpt. Has a cloth cape.

    For a “repaint” wave there seems to be a fair amount of new tooling, not really different than usual DCUC waves. I’m disappointed that mattel cheaped out on RL Mera. She could have been a great figure.

    Overall I like them and will get them when I see them. Maybe I’ll find them in the big box stores up here.

    1. SS WW – that’s a LOY of “new tooling” for a one-off character, which they then admit in the same release that a MERA figure tooling is equal to FOUR other figures!
       I’m guessing they want to ‘scallop’ her entire costume, much like Aquaman’s shirt?

       (also, saw a thumbnail of this wave from EE listing earlier tonight, mistook WW for a NEW STARFIRE. HINT, HINT! I grabbed an extra Kory during the clearance sale for her sister, Kom.)

       IT Atom – I can only hope this will be the predecessor to a “Sword/Power of the Atom” figure! If not, blue and red paint are fairly cheap…besides the bottles I’ve already got on hand….

       rest of these I could care less about, esp as I already have most of the DC DIRECT versions, or will soon. put me in the “these should be GLC w3!” camp.
       (still no Scarecrow for the LoD, so might get him and throw some more brown on this one.)

       oh, and while White Hal has been teased as appearing in the (very) near future, this is actually a SPOILER! for Black Hal, esp in this new Black Lantern costume. He and Barry managed to outrace the Black ring in BN, so he has yet to be affected by either polarity ring, yet. Meanwhile, we have yet to see any other color of Hal, too, or has DCD gotten those “locked” with their SDCC exclusives?

       1. A Sword of the Atom would almost excuse that figure for me.

          White Hal did appear for a handful of panels in BN and I can’t remember if they flashed us a Black Hal in a panel or not. If they didn’t, then yeah this figure is a copy of a DCD figure that doesn’t exist in the comics.

    2. I didn’t notice the cloth cape… RAGE! LOL.

       If that is attached to a hard plastic piece, I’m cutting it off.

14. OK! The figures are very cool and DCUC collection really needs a Scarecrow…but why a Sinestro Corps one? Why not that classic Super Friends look?
    I think I’m gonna throw away my Blackest Night Collection.
    I do love Green Lantern figures, but I think Mattel is exaggerating a little bit on them. Why they don’t release those figures on Green Lantern Classics as a Wave 3? Enough of Hal Jordan!!!
    My only hope now is to believe that the rumors about Wave 18, based on Super Friends characters would be true (I don’t understand why most people don’t like Super Friends), because I truly need Black Vulcan, El Dorado, Samurai and Chief Apache…
    But that’s just my opinion!

    1. TG somewhat confirmed the rumors that 19 would be JSAish, so now I’m putting more stock in 18 being Super Friends. They really locked up the leaks this year, we usually have a rough list by now.

       1. I need to catch up on the rumor mill. Guess it’s safe to assume every 2011 wave will be themed, which is awful. One of the things I always lauded Mattel for was the diversity of their character selection. If I wanted no one from a wave, it was only because I didn’t read enough DC, not because I didn’t enjoy one particular section of the DCU.

          Wave 17 is the first time I’ve thought I might prefer to see Super Powers/Friends than something else. Even then it’s a toss-up. Given the history of rumors with this line, I’m going to assume 18 is another skip wave for me. Feels like I’m not collecting the line at this point.

          JSA could be OK. They have a big enough, era-spanning roster that a themed wave could offer something for everyone, more or less. If it’s all GA, I’ll probably pass. Jay Garrick would make me want Wally that much more. Wesley Dodds would be cool, though.

          If they’re doing themes anyways, I wonder if Metal Men/Doom Patrol would work. I tend to think it would pegwarm pretty hard, but that wouldn’t be a first. Platinum, Lead, Tin, Doc Magnus, Chief, Mento and BAF Elasti-Girl. Two guys in suits might be too much, but there’s plenty of room for the spandex crowd.

15. Wow, I feel like i’m on crazy pills. This is the first DCUC wave i’ve seen where I immediately want to buy every single figure. I LOVED Blackest Night, I love variations on iconic characters, and I love that we’re getting a modern Anti-Monitor.

    People are actually looking forward to the Superfriends wave? Are you kidding me? There isn’t a single figure there, except maybe Superman, that I want to even go near. I find them all to be pretty offensives actually. All these JSA/Metal Men/Doom Patrol figures we’ve been getting have been lame as well.

    I will agree that we’re long overdue for a Wally West figure.

    And I have a VERY strong feeling that this wave is going to do gangbusters on toy shelves.

    1. Something you may want to consider is that most customers (sadly, that’s all we are here) who can afford to pay for these luxury figures are older readers. Although some of us may have enjoyed BLACKEST NIGHT, it is but a mere blip in the overall history of characters some of us would like to see in plastic. Sure, I may not care for SUPER FRIENDS either, but I would rather see a full SUICIDE SQUAD wave with Vixen, Nightshade, Captain Boomerang, etc. than this.

    2. I enjoyed Blackest Night up until the lame ending. It had it’s problems, but it was fun.

       I think you’ll find that most fans aren’t so much annoyed that they are getting made as they are doing them in an entire wave. We’ve got sixteen waves of “healthy mix” and that’s suddenly on it’s ear for a wave of figures that appeared in only a handful of panels in a couple comics a year before the figures came out.

       Look at it oppositely, Wave 19 is said to be very JSA/Golden Age and you might not find anything you like there. After a bunch of waves of at least liking one or two, it kinda blows to not liking/wanting any.

16. I want Super Friends characters in wave 18… and Samurai MUST be there! 😉

    1. If there is a SF wave, Samurai is a given. I imagine Black Vulcan and Apache Chief are too.

17. Having the entire wave be deputies is… unwise to say the least. Before people could want 3 or 4 figures and be drawn in by the BAF to get the rest of a wave, but with this set, buyers are either going to want the whole set or none of them anyway. What happenned to the matty that would make people buy the whole package for one tiny thing?

    1. I could at least deal with it if we got ALL the deputies, but having to dump Mera sucks.

       And replacing her with two Hals sucks even more.

18. I Want Super Friends in wave 18 too…
    People forget DCUC were first based on Super Powers characters(wich was based on Super Friends)…

    1. The SP vibe is a big reason of why I like the basic buck so much, so I definitely agree. I do wish they would go back to jumbling things up though. I remember back when Toy Guru openly said that the waves were mixed to give a little something for everyone.

19. “And to answer the inevitable question, we did look into Red Lantern Mera. The only way to do her right is with a 100% tool and for that cost we can do 4 other figures. So while she did not make the cut this time around, we do know fans want complete sets and we are committed to one day getting her out there!”

    If that’s the kind of attitude you are going to take with this, then I don’t think I’ll put in the effort to buy these figures, which are mostly just repaints. I don’t consider a new head and hands to be a substantial effort into a new figure.

    1. I didn’t notice that qualifier before. that “Only way to do her right” bit. Can I get some oxygen, I think I’m going to pass out from laughing.
       🙂

       See, I’m probably spoiled by reading the reviews here, I don’t see that much concern to ‘do it right’ over many figs in this line, I see a LOT of “what’s the very bare minimum that must be done to get close to this?” going on.

       I mean, instead of sculpting the scales they could do full body tampo printing…Yeah, let’s not put that idea in Mattel’s head, the execution would likely be frightful. 🙂

       So, Mera, why NOT do the RL tooling, then release a normal figure later? Would it ruin some vast cosmic plan to do an Aquaman and Mera 2-pack for some reason or another? (Famous married superheros! I’d groove on a Ralph and Sue Dibny set)

       Also, doesn’t Luthor’s armor give the potential for a ‘Kingdom Come’ Hal?

       1. Please don’t give Mattel any more ideas. KINGDOM COME wave 19 — Repaint Superman. Repaint WW. Grey/black Batman with minor outer remolding for body braces. Alan Scott head on Luthor body a la BLACKEST NIGHT. Starfire repaint for older Jade. (Mind you, there is still no classic Jade.) C&C Magog. Blurry, future Flash too much retooling = nixed.

          Ugh.

          1. I wonder if we can get a classic Jade anymore. The rumor of “modern” takes on the characters being req’d/preferred by DC gets more creedance with each passing announcement. Just look at the Anti-Monitor.

             1. Ugh. I think you could be right!

       2. Kingdom Come Alan!

20. I’ll be passing on King Hiss, but Panthor rocks. A definite must buy.

    DCUC wave 17 looks great. I normally cherry pick the line, only buying Apocalyptian characters, the Metal Men, and hot chicks like Zatanna. However wave 17 looks great. I’m really digging WW, Atom, and Scarecrow. Barry Allen’s ressurection really pisses me off, and I wish that was a BL Wally West. Hopefully Hal will just come with the stand so I can skip him. Hal’s ressurection is tolerable since GL Corps has it’s own title.

    I”m really liking wave 17 and am looking forward to additional rainbow ring characters

    1. Why no love for Hssss? (And Panthor does rock).

       They do look great! That’s those danged 4H again. If Mattel gets Mera out reasonably and gives me a Warth in 2011, I’ll take this wave and like it.

21. Y’know, as much as I loved Blackest Night and even the slightly more lackluster Brightest Day, I can’t ever seeing myself buy a figure of a Black Lantern. They’re just way too one-shot to me, even if some of the designs were really awesome and iconic (Wonder Woman in particular, and I really liked Arkkis Chummuck for his panel and a half, but he’s my favorite GL so I’m bias.) it’s not like purchasing a figure of a dead character, they’ll always come back, we will most likely never see a permanent return of a Black Lantern character as a Black Lantern, at least not while being the same individual (for instance, Deathstorm is now a totally separate character from Black Lantern Firestorm, for obvious reasons.)

    However, in an odd bit of personal conflict, I cannot help but find my inner-Larfleeze dying to possess Lex Luthor in all his fantastic citric goodness.

    He was without a doubt the best part of the entire story arc, he gained unimaginable power and had to spend it like Barbara in Night of The Living Dead, because he is just such a jerk.

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23. Pingback: Ask Matty January 15th Edition « It'sAllTrue.Net

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