Jesus Christ, I have a buttload of Mattel to talk about. I found the most recent wave of retail JLU on my way out of Columbus to C2E2, I got three more JLU sets at the con itself, and when I got home I had Ghostbusters Louis Tully. Oh, right, and I got Action League Batman/Joker the day before I left. Will have to get around to that some time.
Let's start with the Gray Ghost 3-pack set, then, I guess?
Hey, it's the Gray Ghost! When Batman was a kid, he was super fanboy for the Gray Ghost. The Gray Ghost was like his Power Rangers. But then Batman's parents died, Batman became Batman, and then Batman met the aging actor who played the Gray Ghost and got really pissed off that the aging actor who played the Gray Ghost won't put on a costume and fight real crime. Batman, you are the world's greatest detective. Why are you so dumb?
Also, there was lots of the actor who played the Gray Ghost throwing furniture around as the musical score pleasured itself.
The toy of the Gray Ghost is of the aging actor in the Gray Ghost costume, not the actual Gray Ghost, which is fine by me. The latter is fictional, and so would look kind of weird standing in my display. (You know what I mean!) What's weird is that the Gray Ghost appears to be completely bald. There's no paint for his hair behind his ears. I remember the actor having thinning hair, not Lex Luthoring it. Ah well. Who's gonna be staring at the back of his head anyway.
It looks to me like Gray Ghost's got a new head, torso, and cape. The rest is probably The Question or something.
The rest of the three-pack is filled out with character reuses, but that's fine by me. There's the requisite Batman, and he's the JLU toy decoed like the Batman: The Animated Series design. It works well enough despite having the wrong belt. I like that the inside of his cape is blue.
The third guy is the Joker, because why the hell not. Fitting in with the BTAS theme, this is the JLU Joker toy decoed like BTAS Joker. This interested me more than I thought it would. I mean, I definitely prefer my JLU Joker, but it tickles my brain in the right areas to see that toy done up in an earlier model's colors. The purple suit's a smidge bluer, he's got the orange shirt, and his bowtie is teal. With the hair being a dark green and his face painted up just a little differently, he passes off as BTAS Joker pretty damn well. JLU Joker is just BTAS Joker with sharper lines anyway. He's certainly a better BTAS Joker toy than any of the original BTAS Joker toys, but that's what 20 years of sculpting advances will tend to do.
That's right. Twenty.