ROBIN

SUPER POWERS (KENNER)

What good’s Batman without his trusty sidekick?  Well, classically, a very lonely, lonely hero indeed.  So, in an effort to not let him be too lonely, toy companies do tend to produce at least one Robin to go along with most Batmen.  Such was the case with Kenner’s Super Powers, which took advantage of Robin’s placement amongst the pseudo Justice League line-up of the Super Friends in order to include him early on in the line’s run, with a figure I’m taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Robin was part of the first series of Super Powers in 1984.  Dick Grayson had given up the mantle in the comics at this point, and with his successor Jason Todd taking up the title the prior year.  Dick even took on his Nightwing name the same year as this figure’s release.  However, all of this was still a recent enough development that Dick was still more clearly associated with the identity, hence the figure’s bio still identifying him as Dick, and him very clearly being based on a slightly later career Grayson.  The figure stands just under 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  He’s got that same articulation set-up as the other figures; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Like last week’s Flash figure, Robin marks another really noticeable change in build, being demonstrably smaller and less built up than the other heroes featured in the first series.  It actually makes him look a bit more like a teenager (albeit a very athletic one), which is definitely a plus.  The overall design for the character looks pretty decent; the face definitely follows the Super Friends look for him, which certainly works well for the character.  His outfit is nicely detailed as well, with some rather nice work on the scaled shorts in particular.  Robin’s cape is, like the rest of the line, cloth, though he’s also got the collar to his cape sculpted onto his torso.  It makes him look  a little bit goofy, I suppose, with the plastic clip in the cape sitting above it, but it’s not terrible.  Robin’s paint work is pretty straight forward for Robin.  All of the basics are covered, and he’s bright and eye-catching.  The hair and the tips of the feet are definitely the most prone to wear on this guy, but not quite as bad as, say, Flash’s nose.  Robin’s action feature is his “Power Action Karate Chop.”  Squeezing his legs brings his right arm down.  It works well with the sculpted pose on the hand, and feels pretty well-matched to the character.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Robin, like Flash and Superman before him, was a character who went through an upgrade in my Super Powers collection, since my first one was actually the Toy Biz release, which is probably one of the closest matches, honestly.  That one, which I got from a Balticon dealer’s table during a trip with my dad, was ultimately replaced by the proper Kenner release I reviewed here, when I fished him out of a loose figure bin at Baltimore Comic Con a few years later.  Whichever figure you’re looking at, this is really the best Dick Grayson Robin figure out there, and fits with Super Powers’ overall quintessential feel once again.