I've been a fan of these little guys since they made the Marvel versions a few years back. So far, I've been able to collect a lot of the series including the two Marvel sets, the Disney sets, the BokChoyBoy toys, and a few others. I was even tempted to get the NFL sets, but I may have missed my window there.
I'm glad that didn't happen with the first wave of DC self-buildable figures.
There isn't much to these guys, really. They are capsule toys; figures that normally come in little plastic bubbles that are put into specialized vending machines that you normally see at the exit of the supermarkets in the states, and locally, in Toy Kingdom or Toys 'R' Us and in arcades. You put in a quarter or maybe fifty cents (at least that's how much it was back when I was a kid) and one capsule would fall out of the dispenser and into the hopper at the bottom of the machine. If you wanted a certain toy in that particular set, you had to keep feeding the machine until it dropped the one you wanted.
Then you were stuck with a handful of ones you didn't want and had to find some sucker to unload them onto. It was diabolical.
Now, thanks to the Internet, we can basically order the entire set on Amazon in one go. Brilliant!
This particular batch comes with Flash, Green Lantern, Joker, Robin, Batman, and Superman. Each of them is a little one piece, un-articulated body with a globe-shaped head. The head of each serves as the toy's capsule, splitting apart and housing the body until you free it from the vending machine and assemble it.
This means that the paint on the faces of the figures may suffer some scratch or transfer damage since they're making contact with all the other figures around them. And if you're ordering online and get a set, they normally aren't packaged separately.
If you're a stickler for pristine figures, you're going to have to order multiples and pray you get one that is up to your standard.
Good luck with that. Me, I'm fine with what I get.
These toys are great little desktop decorations, but really aren't much else. They've got ONE point of articulation; their necks, where the hollow globe heads meets their tiny little bodies. They basically get a swivel that allows them to turn their head around. They're perfect for what they are, but if you're an action figure junkie and need the pose-ability, look elsewhere.
The aesthetic is simple and cute, making these a great alternative to the more expensive super deformed Japanese toys of other licences. I'd prefer to pay a couple of dollars for one of these than fifty for an articulated imported figure with the same proportions.
Their simplicity makes them perfect for customs as well. If you wanted, you could by huge lots of the cheaper ones (like the transparent BokChoyBoy figures) and repaint them into all sorts of B and C-list characters that will never get a shot at plastic immortality.
Me? I'm happy with what's available.
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