Mattel's Gold

I have an admission to make in today’s installment of the reviews for The Wal-Mart exclusive wave. It might surprise some of you or it might not. I don’t really dig the Metal Men. While I know there are a considerable number of people who just love them, I really don’t have any feeling one way or another. I don’t hate them but I’m not very interested in them either. My exposure to them as been limited and I’ve never really read any of their stories nor do I feel compelled to do so. In fact my only real exposure to them was in the Wednesday’s comic weekly oversized newspaper format that was written by Dan Didio. I have another admission to make. I enjoyed Didio’s writing on that and I realize that is heresy but I found to be a fun story that fit that format perfectly. Whistle! Wait where did this Referee come from?

We have a Personal Foul! Un-Fan-Boy like Conduct!
Loss of Nerd Credibility. Repeat Second Down.

I knew I shouldn’t have written that about Didio. Let’s get to the review.

I think the most impressive thing about Mattel’s figure of Gold is that despite me not liking the Metal Men I still loved this figure. In fact I liked it so much I decided I needed to go back and pick up the first member of the team they released Iron. They threw in enough accessories in make it interesting and clever that I actually felt I needed to add this team to my collection or at least that what my sickness of needing a new action figure every month told me was the reason. (I really do need to seek professional help on this). Fortunately another Wal-mart had the Iron figure I was looking for so it’s already been purchased.

Gold comes with the other arm of Ultra Humanite and a couple of add on pieces to make it appear that he is changing his shape. One is a pickaxe and the other is a giant saw blade. I got them reversed in the photo I took with the Collect and Connect piece and they were on the wrong hands. I fixed this in the other pictures that follow. These extra pieces are really what sold this figure to me and made me want to track down the Iron figure. Well that and the fact I needed the piece for the Ultra Humanite and the bonus fact that Gold is on the Crisis on Infinite Earth poster that I am trying to recreate with my Crisis shelf. I’ve been working steadily on making the poster come to life in three dimensions by picking up old figures that I passed on that happen to be in it like Jonah Hex. The Crisis shelf and working on the JLA shelves are the only things that make me happy right now. I know, I need I life and a job.

Here’s a picture of Gold with his teammate Iron that I picked up and as you can see they make quite of an impressive display. Iron has a giant wrench and a wrecking ball accessory for his hands. Mercury is the next figure that has been shown in the series and he looked pretty cool also with a giant scissor accessory for his hand. They should make a fun display when the team is finally complete. The gold color that the chose for him looks like he is made of actual gold and the iron paint job also appears realistic and reminds me of piping you would have in your basement for water.

I noticed that Gold's head appears to be a little larger than the other standard figure from this line so I took a picture with Alan Scott for comparison. I’m not sure if it is an optical illusion or not. It could be because of the tooling that Mattel uses, which have I seen mentioned on line causing this phenomenon or maybe that is the way he appears in the comics. I can’t say for sure since my exposure to these characters is limited. I can’t really imagine any fan of the Metal Men not being happy with these. I doubt DC direct will ever do these figure and I think in fact that they should not even bother to now since these will be hard to top. I’m going to sprinkle the rest of the Metal Men throughout the Crisis display and be happy. Another great release from Mattel and I’m beginning to see a pattern here. You need to raise your game DC Direct, you are starting to get left behind.



Comments

[Skott]

It really does suck that I gave up on DCUC right when I did. Just as they were starting the Metal Men and the Doom Patrol. Shame, they really do seem so nice.

[fishmilkshake]

You like DiDio? Max I'm shocked :)