Today I picked up Mister Miracle from Mattel’s sixth wave of DCU Classics figures. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while, because I love Mister Miracle and I think his colorful, Kirbytastic costume translates pretty well to toys. It’s a pretty good figure on the whole, though considering how much I was anticipating it, I can’t help but be disappointed.
Let’s start with the good stuff. The figure’s sculpt, by the Four Horsemen, is pretty freaking great. That goes without saying though, as all of the DCUC figures have had outstanding sculpts.
Mister Miracle comes with some neat accessories. First, there’s the requisite levitating foot discs (do they have an official name?) that plug-in to the bottom of the figure’s feet. In a really nice touch, both the bottom of the discs and Miracle’s feet are sculpted with Jack Kirby-flavored technology features. The extra-detailed sculpting wasn’t necessary, but it is much-appreciated. Also included are nicely sculpted manacles that fit over the figure’s forearms (Mister Miracle is an escape artist, after all), and a mini Mother Box that clips onto the back of the figure’s belt. The Mother Box is cool enough, but kind of useless since Miracle’s hands are sculpted into fists, and thus can’t actually hold it. Pity. And, of course, the right leg of the Kalibak collect-and-connect figure is also included.
And now, the bad: Mattel used a fairly hard plastic for the cape, so it isn’t very flexible. I hate hard plastic capes. DC Direct and Hasbro use softer, flexible plastic for their figures’ capes, so why can’t Mattel?
The paint applications are pretty sloppy in a lot of places on the figure, particularly in the areas where the green and the red meet. The plastic base is solid red, so the yellows and greens are painted on, and there’s a lot of overspray. There’s also some weird ash-colored paint wash on the upper thighs, which is not only completely unnecessary, but also quite unattractive since it makes Mister Miracle look like he’s been playing in mud.
I’ve read a number of complaints on line about collectors having issues with stuck or brittle joints on a number of figures in this line. I’ve bought about twenty of the suckers and this is the first time I’ve had this sort of problem. The right shoulder joint is stuck solid and restricts the arm from moving forward or backward. Boooooo! I hope this isn’t a going to be a regular occurrence for me, because the prevalence of immobile joints was the main reason I stopped buying Marvel Legends figures.
Despite my complaints, I’m still glad I bought Mister Miracle. It’s one of the better Mister Miracle figures produced over the years, though it doesn’t hold a candle to the sublime version from DC Direct’s New Gods line, which is my figure of choice for my action figure display.
