Toy Review: DCD Nightwing & Flamebird

DC Direct Armory:
Nightwing & Flamebird

One of these days maybe I’ll actually pick up a DC comic and read it. I mean I keep picking up the toys and I know nothing about any of these characters, save for what I’m able to cull from various wikis. It’s a sad state of affairs, but until I win the lottery or become the Supreme Ultimate Potentate of the Universe (S’UP Universe for short), I can’t afford to look over decades and decades of retconed story arcs.

Still, just like in the movies and in television, DC properties seem to upstage Marvel properties every time they go head to head. Anyone remember the old Batman show? Sure, Adam West in silly tights. Anyone remember the Spider-Man show? Of course you don’t. It sucked. Sucked hard. Same goes for most of the movies into the late 90’s when Marvel started getting it’s shit together with Hulk and X-men.

In the toy industry, Marvel fared a little better, being the first to realize that ultra-articulated toys were the way to go. They of courses messed this up by giving the license to Hasbro, thus seeing the de-evolution of the Legends toyline. DC however has been slow to catch on, only recently getting into the 6″ articulated super hero game with the DCUC figures. Before those came along however there was DC Direct.

I don’t have many DC Direct figures. In fact, these two are the only ones I own. Like McFarlane Toys, DC Direct thinks of articulation as an afterthought. Their toys tend to be made to look good in one pose and one pose only. Articulation is rarely functional, which you can see in the picture below:

The articulation is basically your basic 9-point scheme. Head, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. The heads are ball joints, but the rest is pretty limited. The shoulders are post/hinge deals, but the sculpt limits the range severly on both the figures. The remaining joints are hinges. The whole thing adds up to zip. You can not do anything with any of them, except perhaps this:

Aside from the extra head, each of the figures come with a figure stand, which you will absolutely need. There is no way that these figures are going to stand on their own for any length of time on your shelft. Though the joints out of the package are pretty tight, the fact that the wings are so heavy, and that unnatural superheroine pose means that they’re going to fall over. A lot.

The wings themsleves aren’t articulated, except at the ball joint at the back. Again, it’s very limited and you won’t see a lot of play with them. In fact, if you try and bring it to an extreme end of it’s range, they’ll fall out. Not to much of a problem, but you’ll need to be careful. Somehow, I don’t thing they’re as sturdy as the figures from Mattel.

So why buy these?

Well for one thing, they ARE beautiful sculpts. If you’re one of those guys who likes his superheroines on the busty side (an lets face it, any guy who grew up on comics is likely to fall into this category) then you can’t go wrong here. Both Kara (Flamebird) and Power Girl (Nightwing) enjoy the oldest and best super heroine power. In fact they may have a little too much of it, at least in Supergirl’s cases. Isn’t she supposed to be like 16?

The rest of them is pretty fantastic if you’re ok with the chest out, stomach in static kind of stance. If you’re a stickler for canon, and like the body-builder Power Girl and the jailbait Supergirl, you might be dissapointed. Ed Benes (who is the artist whose designs the two figures are based on) is one of those guys who doesn’t really differentiate his female body types. You’re gonna get a super slim, unbelivably busty woman with a butt and like it.

The armor itself isn’t really all that. From what I gather,the arc that they appeared in wasn’t one for the books. Both figures show a good representation of the design, with a few inconsistencies. I don’t know what they are since I’ve never seen the comic.

The second reason you want to get these is the current price in Toy Kingdom; p500.00. I found these at the recent Toy Kingdom Mega Warehouse sale. They’re decent collector figures for a cheap price. How can you go wrong?