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.