SAND

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (MATTEL)

After Robin made kid sidekicks all the range, a lot of other heroes dabbled in the concept.  In house at DC, they even reworked their pulp/mystery hero Sandman into a more conventional hero (complete with a yellow and purple spandex costume) and gave him his own sidekick, Sandy Hawkins, aka Sandy the Golden Boy.  Sandy stuck with Sandman until the end of his original Golden Age run, but was curiously absent when Sandman returned in the ’60s.  To explain what happened to Sandy, writer Len Wein crafted “The Creature in the Velvet Cage”, which revealed that Sandy had been turned into a silicon monster when one of Westley Dodds’ experiments went awry.  He would eventually be returned to his human form, and years later was added to the relaunched JSA book in the early ’00s, where he manifested sand-based powers, and took on the identity of “Sand.”  Sand wound up being one of the background filler characters in Justice League Unlimited, which netted him an action figure for all his trouble.  Silver lining, right?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Sand was released in 2007 under the third iteration of Mattel’s Justice League Unlimited tie-in line, after they’d moved it under the larger DC Universe banner.  He was part of the seventh series of products under the set-up, which was also the first one to sport the purple packaging.  He was packed in a three-pack, alongside Star Sapphire and a re-pack of the more posable Superman figure.  Sand was based on his show design, of course, which was itself patterned on his first proper costume under the “Sand” name, which he’d gotten early into the ’00s JSA run.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  Sand was built on the slightly larger mid-sized base body, which was patterned on the original Batman body.  It’s honestly the weakest on the male base bodies, due to how oddly posed it is, but it’s not terrible, and it does slightly break up the monotony of putting every one on the Amazo body.  He got a new head sculpt, as well as re-using the shoulder harness from the Injustice Gang Luthor and the legs from Mirror Master, both of which had been added to the line the prior year.  The new head is actually a really nice recreation of his animation model, and the other parts make for a respectable match as well, translating to a figure that’s really one of the more accurate JLU figures sculpturally.  His paint work does alright, too, covering all of the important details that aren’t sculpted, as well as adding the proper coloring to the parts that are sculpted.  His paint is a little thick, and definitely on the shiny side, but overall not bad.  Sand was packed with no accessories, unless you count the other two figures, I suppose.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Sand’s one of those characters I have this weird affinity for.  I was starting to get more into comics reading on my own when JSA was really hitting its stride, and Sand had this really cool look and was also getting a lot of focus.  I was honestly pretty thrilled when he was added to this line.  I got this set, as well as the one with Obsidian from the same assortment, on my way back from my family vacation, at a Walmart that served as the mid-way stop on most of our return trips.  He’s a pretty nifty little figure, and he’s the only version of Sand out there, so he’s also the best version of Sand out there.  He wins on a technicality!