Toy Review: DC Universe Classics Wonder Woman

DC Universe Classics
Wonder Woman

In total, I own 2 DC figures, this one and Hawkman. Most would assume that it is because DC Universe Classics figures are so expensive (1,300 Php at retail), but there are options available for the thrifty collector. Despite the recent price hike (or perhaps because of it), many collectors are letting go of their DCUC collections, so you’ll often find entire waves for about half of what they were available for when they were released.

There are also a ton of “surplus” figures flooding the market from factories in China. Word is that these figures are almost indistinguishable from the originals distributed by Bankee (local distributor of Mattel merchandise here in the Philippines). The biggest diffrence is that the packaging is flimsy, which is a moot point for most loose collectors. They cost about 100-300 Php if you can catch them before the wholesalers get their hands on them. Even if you don’t, they soon show up everywhere else at something like 500 Php a pop, which is still a good deal. You’ll have to be careful that you get one with a nice paint scheme and any accessories that the figure’s supposed to come with (but seeing as how the early quality control on the DCUC line was crap, that isn’t as big an issue as it would be).

This flood of “quality” product at knockoff prices coupled with a price hike for all Mattel figures has ensured that bankee won’t be bringing in succeeding waves of these figures. Already DCUC shelves in Toy Kingdom are packed with product that isn’t moving at all. 1,300 Php is alot to ask, considering in order to assemble the “Collect-and-Connect” figure, you’ll need to buy 5 or 6 of these things at the very least.

Which is why I was happy to find Wonder Woman before the end. I was lucky enough to score this one at Rustans Department Store in Shangri-La. There were a few figures available at 500 Php there which looked to have come in with a shipment of surplus goods or something. Their pacakges were all banged up, but the figures were alright. This one is from the filler wave that didn’t have the CNC piece. Instead it has a stand that is less than useless.

Since there was only one Wonder Woman figure and I was saving 800 Php with this purchase, I wasn’t going to quibble about quality issues, but I’ll enumerate what there is of them here. First and biggest problem was her shoulders. I don’t know how Mattel molded these, but the inner “wheel” portion that allows her arm to move outward is smaller than the “ball”. This makes the entire construction look decidedly odd and unfinished, or down right sloppy. There’s also a lot of flashing (excess plastic that squeezes out from between two halves of a mold) around on various parts. From what I observed at Toy Kingdom, the problems are common to all these figures as well as the Artemis variant.

Paint is decent however. I didn’t notice anything blatantly wrong on my figure nor on the ones on the shelves. Most of the body is cast in flesh tones, so we don’t have to worry much there, and the rest of her is mostly flat tones. There aren’t too many problems with register lines despite there being a lot of opportunity for it. Consider her panties (sir, yes, sir!). The stars are printed on the blue plastic, but the lines are crisp. The only problem areas you’ll need to look at are the boots and the top of her corset, since those are the ones with multiple paint aps over cast plastic. Both parts on mine don’t have a lot of spillover. Her face is pretty good, with nice clean applications on lips, eyes, and brows, and a clean black for the hair.

Accessories wise, she comes with some nice ones; a sheild and an axe. The sheild fits perfectly on her arm via a clip. It’s got her star motif sculpted and painted around the edge of the disc, and some other nice sculpted details. The axe is kind of a let down, though. It’s a nice looking piece in the shape of an eagle, but it doesn’t fit in her hand very well. The weapon is so loose that it’ll fall out at the slightest touch.

Her lasso and bracelets are there, but neither are removable, so are more features of her sculpt rather than accessories.

I really like this figure and it goes well with the little sub-collection I have of gladiators/warriors/barbarians. Despite the control issues Mattel has, their DC Universe Classics line is a very fun line to collect, with nice accessories, the Collect-and-Connect parts, and sturdy constuction. Plus they’ve got this great selection of characters. At most they’ve given us maybe 4 supermen, and 2 of those were variants. How many Wolverines and Iron Men have we gotten in the last few waves of Marvel Legends?

But all things considered I can’t recommend it. 1,300 Php is insane for a mass market figure. If Mattel had the kind of sculpt quality that NECA, McFarlane, or Mezco had, or was imported like Revoltechs, that might have swayed my vote, but these are hardly better than Hasbros efforts and none of their lines have passed the 1000 Php mark for a single figure.