Enough with this coughing. No one is covering their mouths and you're going to make the entire board sick!

too late we are all sick

Sick of MATTEL! RIGHT?!


R..right?

not me, they have issues, but I have 100s of great action figures to be thankful for b/c of Mattel

Quoted for truth. Very happy with the tons of plastic men they have provided over the years.

Me as well, but just because I have them - doesnt mean they were great-- just that they were the only ones producing figures for properties that I love...


And I have 1000's from Hasbro--

just saying..

And how many DC figures do you have from Hasbro's stint with the license? That aren't Batman?

Just saying.

Honestly when hasbro had the license- I believe they only had the show/Movie license -- Im not sure of it -- but did they have the license to the entire DC Universe.? (I forget what Total Justice consisted of-- was that from the comic book-- or did the comic book come after the figures..) And I actually forget when the transtion was from Kenner to Hasbro...

And we can be honest that the action figure industry has changed since Hasbro did have the license.. almost what- 15 years ago? .. and I trashed Hasbro at that time as well for not releasing other show characters.. (And wasnt a real big fan of the Legends 6" line- with the reimagined characters), or that other Legends line with the cards.

But that being said-- there were still 50 plus figures that werent Batman-- and still about 10 of those or so we havent gotten from mattel.

But at least all those Kenner/Hasbro figures are still standing- and not doing the limbo (with the exception of Alfred -- who never stood)

The Total Justice Comic was to promote the figures from what I understand. Like the Jack Kirby Super Powers mini-series of the 80s.

The license was for DC. They just chose to stick with Batman almost exclusively. It didn't matter whether it was Hasbro or Kenner, it was the same license. Total Justice and JLA prove it. There was no media property - only the comics - backing it up.


I can't say I feel too bad about not getting ten or so Batman characters from Mattel when they've produced probably 300 characters from the greater DCU that Hasbro would have never even thought of doing since they aren't named Batman.

What about Zauriel, the character in your avatar?

Hasbro made a Zauriel action figure in the JLA line, and he's not a Batman character.

Would you be interested in getting a Mattel version, if it happens?

I'm well aware of that. I never said that they didn't make non-Batman characters at all. But they had the DC license for something like a decade, and in that decade, the non-Batman and non-Superman characters they made were limited to...

Green Lantern, Aquaman, The Flash, Darkseid, Despero, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Parallax, Dr. Polaris, the Atom, Blue Beetle, Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado, Wonder Woman, Zauriel, Plastic Man, Reverse-Flash, and Impulse.

I could be missing a character, but that's 19 separate characters that are not Batman or Superman related, released in ten years. If you want, I'll throw in Huntress, too, and make it an even twenty. By comparison, Mattel released 17 similar characters (not counting C&Cs) in one year of having the DC license - and that was just in DCUC. That doesn't count what they released in JLU or whatever other line was running in 2008.

It's hard to say if this was because Hasbro didn't want to take a risk with much outside of Batman or if it had more to do with the property itself - thanks to the brain trusts at DC and Warner Bros., the DCU just hasn't caught on with the public like Marvel has.

And of course, I'd buy a Zauriel by Mattel. It would be a hundred times better than what Hasbro offered.

Mattel already has a Hawkman in the DCUC line, so Zauriel would be an easy figure to retool.

I read somewhere that Zauriel was meant to be a stand-in for Hawkman when he was introduced because Hawkman's storyline had gotten so convoluted.

yup, at the time, Hawkman was going through some major retconning and revisioning of the character and his history and was off limits for the JL team book.

So Grant made Azreal, and then turned him into a fairly strong character in his own right.

And now in the "New 52" we have no idea if he exists or not ...

He also admitted to creating Zauriel and adding Aztek to the JLA to be cannon fodder, killing them off in his WWIII storyline. But fans loved Zauriel so much that he came back.