Mattel's Ultra Humanite Review

Today we reach the last in our series of reviews on the Wal-Mart exclusive wave as we take a look at the collect and connect figure of the Ultra Humanite. I couldn’t wait to get this figure when it was announced and was a little disappointed to find out that the wave was going to be exclusive to Wal-Mart. The distribution to the stores of past waves has been terrible and made finding the waves incredibly hard. You would think that with having a Wal-Mart on nearly every corner this would not be a problem but it has been for many collectors. In fact the distribution has been so bad causing so many complaints to Mattel, I wondered why Mattel keeps rewarding Wal-Mart for this behavior with exclusive waves since it doesn’t really encourage then to fix them problem. Money talks I suppose. I lucked out this time as my Wal-Mart got the wave for Black Friday and nobody seemed interesting in them besides me so I was able to put together the entire wave needed for the Collect and Connect of the Ultra Humanite.

What a great choice this was in my opinion. I’ve loved the Ultra Humanite since the day I first saw him on the cover of Justice League America issue 196. This issue was another in a series of annual crossovers between the Justice League and the Justice Society then of Earth 2 where the teams fought the Secret Society of Super Villains. The first issue of this three-part story had this fantastic cover by George Perez shown here with the giant Ultra Humanite standing over the fallen members of both teams. George Perez certainly knows how to draw you into buying the issue with the dynamic pose of the giant white gorilla standing victorious. I had never seen this character before but he looked awesome and he soon grew to be one of my favorite villains. The great thing about this obscure villain is that the Justice League cartoon chose to use him prominently in the Legion of Doom season so more people recognize him now than you would think. I think that played into him being chosen for this wave along with some other factors we will discuss.

For those of you not familiar with the character, The Ultra Humanite is long time foe of the Justice Society who is basically a evil genius type who has transferred his mind from body to body to prolong his life. Due his vast mental powers such as telepathy he was forced to change bodies often since no one body could be found to contain him for long. He had many different bodies before settling on the super strong body of giant white gorilla including for a while an actress named Delores Winters. The Gorilla body has been his home for the last thirty years and gives us this incredible Collect and Connect from Mattel. The Ultra Humanite reuses a couple of parts to save Wal-Mart some money on the tooling since they insist on a lower cost for their waves. The arms are straight from the first Collect and Connect of Gorilla Grodd except that they have added a small remote control device in his right hand that probably does something nasty when activated. Since I have mentioned Grodd let’s take a look at the comparison shots next although I’ll warn you that I have converted him into a custom of Congorilla for my current Justice League display. I believe you will get a good enough idea of how he will look with Grodd from these pictures.

The rest of the Ultra Humanite body is completely new parts and original sculpts right down to his exposed brain on the top of his head. I thought perhaps the legs were recycled from Grodd also but as you can see they are longer and have articulation in the knees that the Grodd figure doesn’t. The feet seem to be the same though again to save money. I thought about Mattel doing this figure long before they had but I ruled it out since I didn’t think that they would do two giant talking Gorillas as Collect and Connects. Wal-mart’s cheapness paid off for this collector.  

Next we take a look at his fellow members of the Secret Society of Super Villains or Legion of Doom if you prefer that have also made it to Collect and Connect status. One of my favorite Collect and Connects and still the largest from Mattel is Giganta. She is quite an imposing figure and looks great with her fellow bad guy the Humanite. This is makes the third collect and connect from simians since in Giganta’s origin has her evolving from an ape into the red haired size changing strong woman. How this was done or even makes sense is beyond me but I thought it amusing to mention.

Here’s a shot with fellow Legion of Doom member Solomon Grundy. As you can see Grundy is still one of the most massive Collect and Connects that Mattel has attempted. His bulk far out weighs our new pal the Humanite. I did a combined shot to show you how the three members look together.

I don’t have a Chemo to show you with him since I decide to pass on that particular figure but I do have the animated version from the Justice League Unlimited line that I included for fun.

Lastly here’s a comparison shot with Alan Scott from the wave so you can get an idea of the scale with the other basic figures from line.

I’ll follow that up with a shot of the Legion of Doom or Secret Society of Super Villains shelf. We gotten a pretty good mix of characters from the various incarnation of the bad guy team. I still need to get a better Lex Luthor that is in the purple jumpsuit than the Ross one and I know the Joker isn’t exactly a team player but I needed to put the Ross version somewhere. This is a great addition to the overall look of the team and one my favorite Collect and Connects to date. It might not be my favorite since there have been so many good ones but it is certainly one of the top three.