The last of the Justice League Unlimited three-packs went up last month, and with that I think the JLU toyline is actually over this time, no take-backsies!  And it's not a bad set to go out on, either, as it's got Toyman, Firefly, and Dr. Destiny.  Dr. Destiny is a guy I've wanted forever because his episode rules.  Also, he's the only supervillain who's ever been defeated by Batman singing "Frère Jacques," which is apparently played on Gotham radio stations.  Also also, he's basically Skeletor.

Firefly's not a bad guy to have, either.  He, um, sets things on fire sometimes.  He coasts by on being a Batman villain.

But everyone's draw to this set seems to be Toyman, for obvious reasons.  The DCAU Toyman design is one of those great makeovers that I really think should have caught on in the comics long-term.  (I guess at some point there was Toyboy, who looks to play on those same visuals.)  There's something inherently creepy in DCAU Toyman that some old dude in glasses and a giant bowtie doesn't manage.  It was one of many things that Superman: The Animated Series got amazingly right.

He also finishes up my Superman Revenge Squad, who showed up in the opening act of "Hereafter," aka The One Where Superman Dies But Really He Goes To The Future And Meets Vandal Savage, aka one of the best hours of television of all time, thank you Dwayne McDuffie.  I rewatched "Hereafter" this evening before writing this, and Toyman's inclusion caused something to pop out at me.  I have all of the superhero/supervillains in this episode now except one:  Volcana.  Her three-pack never really reached many stores, and so she's always been super rare, and then Mattel promised she'd hit stores again in a single pack but then she never did and now she costs $300 on eBay.  Man, I remember when she cost $30 on eBay.  Geez, I was stupid.

And now I don't have anybody to make my Firefly feel subtextually sexually inadequate.

Ah well.  Toyman.  He's good!  He's an entirely new sculpt, obviously, which is why it took so long to get to him.  I remember Mattel saying it was either him or Granny Goodness, and I think they chose well.  All of Mattel's new JLU sculpts are great, and Toyman is no exception.

So, hey.  JLU is over now, for reals.

Dammit, I was putting off setting up my huge display until I was done.  So now I have to do it.  This is gonna suck.

Vandal Savage is one of my favorite characters, and that's almost entirely due to his appearance in the Justice League episode "Hereafter."  It was an episode in which the parts where Toyman kills Superman and there's a funeral for him and Lobo tries to force himself into the Justice League as a replacement... are not the most interesting parts of the episode.  No, Superman has actually been transported into the future!  And despite losing all his powers because of the deyellowification of the Sun's rays, he steals a car, siphons gas into it, grows a beard, fights some future dogs, slays their leader and wears him, and becomes their master.  Oh, and the world's that way because Vandal Savage kind of destroyed it a few days after Superman "died," but since he's immortal he's still around thousands of years later.  And kind of sad and crazy.

(My god, Phil Morris is awesome.  He's even awesome when he's Martian Manhunter on Smallville.  That is how awesome he is.)

And so I've reeeeeally been wanting a Vandal Savage toy, but I had no idea how much I also wanted a Future Beardy Superman toy until I saw that he would exist.  And  yet both of them almost didn't when their wave never reached retail. However, I am more than happy to get them belatedly and at a markup from MattyCollector.com.  "Hereafter" was one of my favorite episodes, and that's saying a lot considering half of it's about friggin' Superman.

They also came with Batman.  You probably don't need photos of him.  They didn't come with stands, but I used some in the photos anyway.  They also didn't come with an Atmosphere Destroying Missile Launcher, but, well, you know how it is.

Whee, my Aquagirl/Static/Micron set arrived in the mail today!  Not only are there no Batmen or Supermen in this three-pack, but there are, amazingly, absolutely no white dudes in it.  This is actually a set of two black guys and the Little Mermaid.  Obama's America, folks.

The big draw here, obviously, is Future Static.  Seriously, eff yeah, man.

Aquagirl would be a closer second if she didn't look weird or have unpainted sculpted Justice Lord Wonder Woman high heels because she's supposed to be barefoot.  She's a great companion to Hawkgirl and her flesh belt.  I have a rubber band wrapped around her ankles because her legs came all warped.

Micron's okay.

This leaves us with only Green Lantern and Future Barda as the only members without toys.  S'too bad.  Green Lantern would be an entirely new sculpt, though, so I can see why he was avoided.  Barda... is probably a just new head on the standard female body?  But since this is the Last Of The Last of JLU, they obviously ain't happening.

MattyCollector's started putting the last few remaining JLU three-packs up in their store!  Y'know, the ones that were gonna be at retail, but Young Justice toys kind of swooped in and took their spot on the pegs, and also nobody was buying JLU anyway, and then nobody bought Young Justice either.  And so you're gonna be paying online exclusive markup for them, but I find that preferable to the alternative of NOT GETTING VANDAL SAVAGE OH MY GOD GIVE HIM TO ME.

The first set released was Batman/Mongul/Wonder Woman.  Obviously, you're buying this one for Mongul.  At least he's a 100% new sculpt to make up for the repeat WW/Batman guys.  (Again, these were supposed to be at retail, which is why those two are in there.)  The JLU new sculpts are always fantastic, and Mongul is no exception.  These toys really shine when they're sharp and individualized rather than being a decades-old Superman body with a new head.  And so Mongul's great.  And sufficiently huge.

I can't say all that much about Mongul himself.  He was in a really boring episode about a gladiator pit planet, and I tend to skip over that one a lot when I watch through my JLU DVDs.  No, Mongul got lucky by being written into Alan Moore's "For the Man Who Has Everything," which everyone loves and was then made into an episode of the JLU cartoon.  And I feel a little off by saying that, yeah, that episode is why Mongul is awesome, when really it could have been anygoddamnedbody in his role in that story and nothing would have changed.  Well, any of the 30 different outer space dictator dudes the Justice League fights, anyway.  Jervis Tetch (aka the Mad Hatter) pulled off a similar scheme in "Perchance to Dream," but I doubt he could have held off Wonder Woman.

I'm just saying, there's not a lot to Mongul.  He's the guy you go to when Darkseid and Despero are busy.

UPDATE: Decided to watch rewatch Mongul's episodes, and I hadn't noticed before that he had a character model tweak, probably because "War World" parts 1 and 2 put me to sleep.  When he shows up again in "For the Man Who Has Everything," he's a darker purple, some of his silver has been changed to black, and his hat is now purple.  He's also drawn a whole lot better, but that may have just been the animation studio.  Anyway, the toy is of his appearance from the Good Episode.  Surprise!

Here's the guys from that final Justice League Unlimited seven-pack I mentioned a few days ago.

I was very excited to receive them.

Or something.

I have some brief comments.  First of all, man, the scale for these guys is all over the place.  I'm not sure who The Creeper can plausibly stand next to without looking like a pinhead, but it sure ain't Johnny Thunder, human titan.  And who the hell is that sea monkey he comes with?

Ah well.

At least Speedy has a fish face.

Hey, Shortpacked! Book 4 is now available for purchase in the store!

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I got my JLU 7-pack in the mail today, signifying the end of that toyline.  Which means it’s time to finally take stock of all of the duplicate Batmen, Supermen, and whoevers that I amassed in the past decade in the quest to get dudes they were packed with.

When I am done, I plan to just sell them all on eBay for probably five dollars. In the meantime, some preliminary photography.  For example:

1) Man, I am surprised I can only find one extra Martian Manhunter.  Clearly I must have more somewhere!  Did I really only ever end up with just one extra of him?  It seems impossible.

2) My original bin of extras was packed in SUPER TIGHT.  Like, creating-diamonds-out-of-coal-tight.  Related to this tidbit is an observation on how soft and goopy Giganta’s dress is.  Whoops.

2a) (Not entirely limited to Giganta’s dress.  I had one Superman’s cape embedded in the neck of another.)

3) Woo, “I can breathe in space” Batman!

4) Woo, “Atmosphere-destroying missile” Superman!

5) A sweet ass Scuba Flash.  I have a whole team of scuba guys, probably came with an Aquaman, but Flash is the sharpest of those.

There's a chance there might be more JLU stuff, but only because some of their 3-packs (*coughcoughcoughVandalSavagecoughcough*) never made it to retail and Matty's hinted at maybe offering those online maybe.  Maybe.

But meh.  It happens, it happens.  Stick a fork in this toyline.

Fun fact: Angle Man's real name is Angelo Bend.  This is hilarious.

Matty's "Collector's Appreciation Whatever" booth was selling three JLU three-packs that I guess they figured weren't gonna make it to stores.  Instead of doing each set one by one, I figgered I'd just throw the new guys from each set into one big blog post.  It's not like I have a lot to say about each individual guy here anyway.

Except for Heat Wave, that is!  I had no idea that I'd like him this much.  As a character, he's barely on my radar, since he's "That Other Major Flash Villain That Doesn't Show Up Quite As Much As The Others," so I figgered he'd be just another guy to throw on the shelf.  But the unique tooling done for him really causes him to go above and beyond my expectations.  He of course has a new head, like all new JLU guys.  He also has a new flamethrower backpack thing, unsurprisingly.  But what impresses me are his new arms.  I guess Mattel decided to give him new arms ... for some reason.  I thought at first that it might be because they wanted to give him a flame gun, but they sculpted Angle Man a little triangle to hold in one of his arms and his arms are otherwise unaltered.

Regardless, the new arms make me very happy.  There's detail sculpted into them that would otherwise be just paint, and both handsculpts are deliciously new and crisp.  You can really tell that the standard JLU handsculpts are ten years old.  They're kind of blobby and lack the crisp edges that the newer handsculpts have.  Even though Heat Wave's torso and legs are recycled, he really feels like a whole new figure, like the special one-off guys like Gorilla Grodd or Lobo that get all-new sculpts.  And it's entirely the hands that do it.

The rest of the guys are all right.  I was excited for Evil-Star for no real reason, and I'm pretty content to own Angle Man and Goldface as well.  And Killer Frost was a frequently-appearing villain, so she fills a very conspicuous hole in my collection.  But their tooling is mostly recycled, so they're less exciting than Heat Wave.

It's kind of insane that we got all these obscure villains, even late in the game.  Good work, Mattel.

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.