{"id":28061,"date":"2019-02-15T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T05:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=28061"},"modified":"2026-03-18T08:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:54:11","slug":"disney-afternoon-mystery-minis-darkwing-duck-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2019\/02\/disney-afternoon-mystery-minis-darkwing-duck-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Afternoon Mystery Minis - Darkwing Duck review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let's get dangerous!<\/p>\n

\"Funko<\/p>\n

In the late '80s, a team of Disney artists were working on a pitch for an updated version of Rocky and Bullwinkle, to capitalize on the success of Ducktales<\/i><\/a> and Rescue Rangers<\/i><\/a>. Everything was going fine, until they realized the lawyers had messed up when they cleared the idea: Disney owned the video distribution rights to the existing cartoons, but Universal Studios still owned the characters. So with only days left before their scheduled pitch meeting, they fell back on an idea that spun off from a Ducktales<\/i> episode where Launchpad<\/a> was mistaken for a spy: but this time they got ahead of the lawyers and, realizing that the James Bond people might take issue with a show called \"Double-O Duck,\" changed the name to the more Batman-inspired \"Darkwing.\"<\/p>\n

Darkwing's original character design<\/a> was a very plain, Donald\/Daffy look with a round head and a flat bill. Toby Sheldon tweaked that, adding big fluffy cheek feathers that seemed to owe a debt to Roger Rabbit, but also helped set Drake Mallard apart from his Duckburg cousins. This Mystery Mini<\/i> is posed in a suitably dramatic fashion, holding his own cape open and looking sternly at whomever it is he's trying to intimidate. The purples on his mask and cape, and his jacket, are different enough not to blend together, and the pink lining of the cape helps that even more. They even remembered to do his teal turtleneck!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the cape and that massive hat of his combine to make him a slightly back-heavy figure, so he'll tend to fall over easily. You might need to heat and re-shape his legs.<\/p>\n

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In the two-parter pilot episode, Darkwing Duck ends up rescuing and adopting a young girl named Gosalyn Waddlemeyer. The original \"super spy\" pitch for the series just wasn't clicking with anyone, because it was just a bunch of characters - there was no bond between them, other than happening to be in the same story. So wanting to create a sense of family, the writers began wondering \"what if Batman had to raise a little girl?\" So if there was no Gosalyn, there'd be no Darkwing Duck<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Writer Tad Stones based Gosalyn on his daughter Brenna<\/a>, who was only 2 at the time: yes, Gosalyn was seven years older than that, but her incorrigible, energetic personality was what Stones thought his daughter would be as she grew up. Like Kit<\/a> from TaleSpin<\/i>, Gosalyn wasn't an annoyance; she's bright but a bit loopy, and her bravery verges on the foolhardy, but she's not a Scrappy<\/a>. All she wants is to be a superhero like her new dad.<\/p>\n

Gosalyn is posed like she's trying to act innocent: head down, eyes up, toes turned in, and her fingers interlaced behind her back. Her red hair (yes, she's a duck who has hair in addition to feathers) is pulled up into two... wait, would the term \"pigtails\" be offensive in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals? Because Gosalyn is a raucous tomboy, she's wearing a sports jersey and sneakers, though the pastel purples make her look more feminine than her dad. And speaking of colors, I always found it interesting that Gosalyn's body is a darker shade than the white used for the other ducks - is that the Disneyverse equivalent of being a different ethnicity?<\/p>\n

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In their drive to create their own Batman, the creators of Darkwing Duck<\/i> made sure to hit all the important points: the cape, the dark colors, the cool gadgets, the sidekick, the perpetually cloudy night-shrouded city, and the cast of over-the-top villains - including one that the hero dates.<\/p>\n

Morgana Macawber is a magician who first appeared in the cartoon when she was using mutant mushrooms to rob people (she wanted to pay off her student loans quickly). By her second appearance, she seemed to have developed a soft spot for ol' DW, and by her third, they were joining a superteam together. Some girls will just do anything<\/b> for the D! (\"The D,\" of course, being \"Drake Mallard,\" Darkwing's secret identity.)<\/p>\n

Morgana is the rarest Darkwing Duck<\/i> character in the assortment, available only in a 1:72 ratio - one in every six cases. Her design is a mix of Elvira, Lily Munster, and the Bride of Frankenstein: she wears a two-tone red dress that covers everything below her throat and leaves her looking like she's gliding everywhere. A swath of fabric trails from the small of her back to her left pinky finger, and her bulbous bouffant hairdo has two grey stripes running through it. The figure is surprisingly stable, despite the big hair, thanks to the lack of separate feet. Her eyes are heavily lidded, and she seems to be smiling. You can decide for yourself whether she's happy or sinister.<\/p>\n

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Every hero needs villains, and just like his noctillionine<\/a> inspiration, Darkwing has some great ones. (In fact, long before this \"Disney Afternoon\" set of Mystery Minis<\/i> was announced, we tried to convince Funko to do a full Darkwing Duck<\/i> series, featuring him and all his most notorious baddies. No luck.) The top of the heap - though still Public Enemy #2 in St. Canard behind Dr. Slug - has to be Negaduck.<\/p>\n

Negaduck is that finest of comic tropes, the evil clone from a mirror universe. Fittingly, he uses the same mold as the Darkwing figure, just done in brighter colors: yellow jacket, red hat, black cape with red lining. Darkwing dresses darkly because he wants to blend into the shadows, Negaduck dresses brightly so you can see him when he's about to kill you with a chainsaw. That's not a joke, by the way - the villain on this comedic Disney cartoon that aired at 4 in the afternoon enjoys attacking people with chainsaws.<\/p>\n

Though he's the most famous character to use the name, that wasn't the first Negaduck. The original showed up when Darkwing was shot by a \"tronsplitter\" that could divide its target into two halves, one made purely from positrons and the other made from negatrons; so he became both Posiduck and Negaduck, with the only difference being that Negaduck had big eyebrows; then, when Negaduck got shot again, he became galvanized and supercharged, turning into a glowing black-and-white version. And again, same mold. The grayscale Negaduck is a Hot Topic exclusive, available in a 1:6 ratio, while the Negaduck anyone would want was available at the same rate at Toys \"Я\" Us.<\/p>\n

<i>And now, some more OAFEry:<\/i><\/H5>