METAMORPHO

SUPER POWERS (MCFARLANE)

One of the neat things the Kenner’s Super Powers did was pull the occasional oddball character for no reason other than “they’d make a cool toy.” While he wasn’t on the docket of what got cancelled when Kenner packed up the line, Metamorpho, Ramona Fradon and Bob Haney’s oddball element man from the ’60s, sure does feel like he would be right up the line’s alley. McFarlane seems to have agreed on this point, since he’s in the latest assortment of their revival line.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Metamorpho is part of Series 8 of McFarlane’s Super Powers, released under their DC Direct banner. He’s another all-new character for the line.  The figure stands right over the 5 inch mark and he has 7 points of articulation.  The height puts him taller than even the standard figures from when the line launched, which did initially surprise me, but it comes across more as an intentional thing than a “just got the scale wrong” thing.  While I myself tend to think of Metamorpho as being a more average height, there have been depictions with all sorts of ranges of size to them, and adding a little bit of variety to the heights isn’t the worst thing. Metamorpho has an all-new sculpt, and it’s generally a pretty decent one. The build feels right, and he’s got a pose that’s similar to the original Martian Manhunter and Shazam figures. The texturing is also quite nice, giving each of his four “quadrants” its own feel. The only thing I’m not crazy about is the head, which feels strangely lacking in detail. Maybe it’s just the more reserved expression, but this is the first of the more recent figures that feels like one of the earlier figures to me. I almost have to wonder if this was a sculpt that was prepared earlier and just didn’t make it out until now. It’s not bad, though; just off. Metamorpho’s paint work is alright. The biggest issue he faces is matching molded plastic with painted colors, but honestly it doesn’t wind up looking that bad. Metamorpho is sans accessories. It would have been cool to maybe get some clip-on element parts, but ultimately it’s not the end of the world.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Going into Series 8, there were two figures I knew I wanted for certain. The first was Booster, and the second was this one. Metamorpho is the last of the batch I ordered from GameStop, and also the last to arrive, because he got shipped on his own for whatever reason. Booster is one of my favorites from the line in general, while Metamorpho? Well, he gets the job done. I won’t lie, after the swing for the rafters on the last few I got, I was a tad disappointed by this guy. It’s not really his fault. He’s honestly not bad, he just suffers from not being quite as good as the others.