The Mattel 6" DC Super Heroes Comic Con2007 Exclusive
By: Daniel "Julius Marx" Pickett
The gang at Mattel continues to up the ante on specialty packaging on Comic Con exclusives. The blind boxed 6" Batman unmasking himself was fun, then we had an animated Catwoman with a rainbow of different idol accessories. Last year we had the award winning JLU Solomon Grundy packaging that had a vibrating feature and a cool manhole cover window light.
The Mattel team had been telling me for two months that the packaging for Man-Bat this year was going to blow them all away. They were right there’s a lot going on with this one.
As you saw on the previous page the outer box is made to look like a crate for a dangerous animal. There are all sorts of die-cut slashes in the outer box, more on those in just a second. Another important detail is that the outer box is much more collector friendly this year as with years past where the top and bottom flaps of the outer box were glued shut thereby making you have to damage the flaps to get them open. This year they are taped shut.
I usually make it a point not to show my big, harry package on the web site, but now Mattel has made that quite impossible as the box for Man-Bat is…well… hairy. It’s sort of appoholstered for lack of a better word. When I took my first look at it, I could see through the "tears" in the outer box that there was something… fuzzy inside. Before I got it open I thought it might just be some kind of protective sheet inside that protected the inner box from the outer box. It wasn’t until I got it open that if all became clear.
And a word of warning- it sheds a bit.
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