About Heroes

At first sight the 12” figure is pretty tight looking. The isn’t a sculpt of Brandon Roath’s head but it does resemble him a little bit and looks like an acceptable version of Superman. There are things about this figure that I like, as there is also a balance of things I don’t like. So with this figure appearance was very important since it is a larger version, and I think that overall the figure looks very nice. The second big thing is the voice activation and interaction. I like the button placement, first on the big shield and then the little shield on his belt very good and expected places. There is another button on the back near the middle of the cape which would be good for flying noises since your hand would be there anyway but instead it activates the heat vision eyes. I like the heat vision eyes, they come with a sound too, and they don’t make the figure look like he is possessed because the light comes through behind the plastic and through the pupils only. Then there is the main switch on the back that turns the figures sounds on to the point of annoyingness, but this is also the only way to activate the belt button and the cape button.

The audio has its good and its bad also, it says things like “I’m the Man of Steel” and “Crime doesn’t pay” but it says “Up, up and away” WAY to often and it also says, “Turn left” and “Turn right.” When I opened the figure and started to play the audio Omar, Dan and I were both like “What?” We really hope he doesn’t say that shit in the movie, but its clear that it is intended to give commands to the child who is holding him. This may have made since to the manufactures but it doesn’t to any of us, why would Superman, while going after Lex Luthor have to tell the child who controls him to turn certain directions, and out of no where I might add so that the child has no warning that he mist “Turn Right” it’s just strange.

So now that the two biggest things are out of the way, I can talk about articulation (the figure to the left will NOT help explain my position as this is a promo piece for the figure and does not represent the actual abilities of the figure as you’ll soon find out) and a little bit more about the detail of the figure. I’ll start with the head and work my way down. The head is a tricky thing with figures these days, this is a Superman figure so of course it would be beneficial if he could look up (foreword in the case of horizontal flying) so that he could see where he is going and not down at all the little people of Metropolis…but he can’t. He can only move his head side to side, and very bobbleheadish I might add, he can keep his head foreword but with a quick flick of the wrist his head is then to the left or right. So this was a failed attempt at getting the head movement right. Now to the arms, the arms have a button that activates a punching motion, I think. I say that without confidence because in all my time trying to play with it I could never get the arms to function normally. This is going to be a bit tricky to explain so just hang in there (again the pic is wrong), the best potion for his arms is pointed up as if he were taking off (Up, up, and away style) if you do this then the mechanics of the arms prevent you from having both arms fully extended, one is extended while the other is at a right angle (bent at the elbow). This mechanical oddity along with the fact that the head can’t move up leaves Superman in a constant state of “Ra, Ra, Ra, lets root for the Home Team.” Now you can bend the figure at the shoulders to point the first to the front or down, I do not recommend pointing them down because it looks like he is skiing or jacking off two guys bigger then him, lets say Doomsday and Amazo. If you point them in front then it looks like he is punching someone and this goes well with the punching audio accept Superman never looked so stupid punching someone. The worst part about the arms is that try as you might they always go back to that one arm extended and one at a right angle look, annoying.

The next joints are the hip/leg joints, which are the best damn joints of the whole figure. Down at the knees there isn’t much to say other then that they don’t move much at all. Then there are the ankle joints; I’ve never seen joints like this on a figure. They naturally stay in a flying arched back look, the figure stands up great but as soon as he leaves the object he’s standing on then he’s got those ankles arched. Now I know why they did this, every time Superman would want to fly the kid would need to stop and fix right ankle and then left ankle, but not really because kids don’t notice things like that adults do, so now we know who the toy is really made for (still have no answer for the turn signals though). While on the subject of the legs still I have to point out the detail on the boots, it’s like they left all the detail for the boots because they knew that people wouldn’t be checking there. The boots look like those track shoes that Nike put out few years ago, with the crazy swirl pattern and S shields galore! There are two S shields on each boot, one on the back where you might find a check or an N and underneath the shoe, so when Superman is about to kick a guy in the face they can say, “hey that’s Superman Brand Shoes” which paints this horrible picture of Ma Kent slaving away making thousands of red boots while Superman says dick things to her like “you owe me money for letting you work for me mom!” What a dick! Although I’m pretty sure Batman figures had bat signals on his shoes and that explains the real reason he recruited Robin.

So back to the figure, I really don’t hat the figure though you might not know it from all the problems I had, I was just being honest. The detail work is really nice and the figure would be fun to play with as a kid. There are the little diamond pieces on the figure which go well with the movie having the actual printed S shields on the fabric. The color looks dead on to the movie costume and the cape is a nice subtle touch. The sounds are cool for a while but it’s not made to replace the TV, and the variety of things he says are good enough, I don’t need ten thousand different phrases because once a new one starts I’ve forgotten the last one. This figure gets a C+ from me, average and decent but a little more thought could have made the articulation a whole lot better.