Superman

When you have super-speed, it's easy to come in just under the wire. The Man of Steel is not impervious to harm. He is weakened and will eventually die if exposed to Kryptonite radioactive remnants of his old homeworld. He has no defense against magic and his mind will succumb to sufficient psionic assault, but his real vulnerability is his dependence on yellow solar radiation. Deprived of it, he becomes a mere mortal. Oh... kay. What does that have to do with this figure? "Superman (Action Comics)," as the toy is officially named, may be a Walmart exclusive, but it's also the plainest Superman McFarlane Toys has made since they got the DC license. It's just a Superman. So why does the bio associated with it get so obsessed with the idea of his weaknesses? For whatever reason, McToys just kept making the dumbest-looking Supermen imaginable, over and over. Every single one of them, from every single continuity, looked like a bloated Richard Kind. Like, yes, I understand that the point of Superman is he's a dopey, all-American type, and that (for my money, at least) the best-looking Superman toy there's ever been is still the 2003 DC Direct one, but every single Kal-El Todd put out before now was too stupid to be worth getting. Technically this exclusive is a re-release, so this isn't really the first good-looking Superman Todd's done, but close enough; that original, based on Action Comics #1000, was released in the middle of 2020, aka "the deadzone of toys," so this is everyone's first real opportunity at owning it. The body is appropriately muscular, neither too thick nor too thin. Part of the draw of Action Comics #1000 was it saw Superman going back to his classic costume, rather than the New 52 suit, meaning this toy gets trunks and no armor plating; there are a few lines sculpted on the body, but they're closer to being seams in cloth than the eges of metal (or whatever all the DC heroes were supposed to have been wearing for those few years). The toy this exclusive is iterating on had a fully sculpted S logo on the chest, raised above the surface of the suit as though it were a thing Superman wore over his clothing; this one changes things up by simply making it a painted element; however, the paint chosen, for whatever reason, is metallic, so now you've got a flat blue suit, flat red boots and undies... and a distractingly shiny red shield on the chest. Why would you do that? The symbol is nice and big, but because it doesn't match the rest of the toy it doesn't look as good as it could have. It's not like that was the only change made to the figure, and therefore the only thing setting this exclusive apart from the regular release: the biggest switch is instead of a heavy rubber cape, Superman also gets a cloth cape with posing wires in the sides to make it more dynamic. Fun! The red of the cape matches the red of the trunks and boots, making the metallic shield look ever-worse by comparison, and it has the all-yellow S between the shoulders that so many sources forget is supposed to be there. As long as Todd was changing things about this figure, it would have been a grand opportunity to give him double-hinged elbows instead of single. Come on, every toy company, this isn't the '90s: unless your character has arms as thick as the Hulk, there's no excuse for single-hinged elbows. And it's be great if Todd someday updated the thigh swivels, because the way every figure's leg is designed now means the swivel, which is placed immediately below the hip joint, only has a few milimeters of range before it will stop moving. The figure includes and alternate pair of hands, but no personal accessories. On the plus side, we do get a flight stand to make him hover, so that's highly welcome! McFarlane Toys has had the DC license for five years, but word recently came out that it's going back to Mattel at the end of this year. We've only reviewed a handful of his figure, because the scale is wrong, and the quality on most of them wasn't enough to make up for that. But if nothing else, the toys have allowed the public at large to compare the difference between a private company and a public company: Todd McFarlane doesn't have to try to make stockholders happy, so we get larger products, with fewer reused sculpts, and things like softgoods capes and flight stands for less than a publically traded company like Hasbro (or soon Mattel) offers. There is no excuse, other than Chris Cocks' greed, why Marvel Legends consistently cost more than McToys' DC Multiverse lines. We just hope that collectors remember this next year, and are smart enough to refuse to pay Mattel more money for less toy. -- 03/26/25 Are you going to let Mattel overcharge you? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.