SUPERMAN — POWER FLIGHT

MAN OF STEEL (TOY BIZ)

When is the standard version of a character not the standard version of a character?  When it’s the ‘90s!  Or at least that’s the case when it comes to Superman, who spent a decent chunk of the decade moving between rather off-brand designs.  Following his death and return, he kept the same general suit as before, but one of the apparent side effects of coming back from the dead was getting a sick mullet, so that’s what he had going on (at least until he went all electric blue for a bit).  DC made a big splash of keeping this updated look as his evergreen appearance for a while, so it served as his primary look for his first proper toyline under Kenner, Man of Steel.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Power Flight Superman was the second of the two Superman variants in Series 1 of Man of Steel.  He served as the line’s basic Superman, and was the heaviest packed figure in both standard assortments of the line.  The figure stands 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  Due to his action feature, his articulation is kind of wonky.  He doesn’t get any side-to-side movement on the neck, instead having the slightest, tiniest, almost imperceptible up and down motion.  The shoulders are also tied into the whole thing, so there’s a mechanism that moves them in tandem.  You can pose the separately, but it’s a little more work.  His sculpt was totally unique to him (he was, notably, one of the few Supermen in the line not to use the “standard” head sculpt introduced on Laser Superman), and it’s fine.  It feels very skinny, and very stiff.  The head doesn’t feel as true to the character as Laser Superman; there’s something about it that just feels kind of pinched.  Otherwise, things are pretty basic, and the details generally work well.  The cape is removable, and is a softer rubber piece, which plugs into the back.  His color work is generally very basic.  It does what you’d expect.  The torso is prone to some discoloring over time, but it’s not as bad as some figures I’ve encountered.  He’s packed with a weird sort of chain thing, which clips over his wrists.  It’s meant to be used to capture bad guys, but it’s awkward at best, and his very narrow stance makes it a struggle to get him to use it at all.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

In 1995, while I was busy giving away and replacing Batman figures, and my dad was rediscovering Iron Man, my mom, not one to be left out, got her own action figure of Superman, a character who had been her favorite since the first Christopher Reeve Superman.  She’d never had a figure of him, and this was the only standard one available at the time, so he fit the bill.  And then *someone* borrowed said figure, and lost his cape, so a replacement was purchased for my mom, and the now capeless figure became mine (alongside the Laser Superman specifically purchased for me alongside the replacement).  Over the years, the cape turned back up, so, hey that worked out okay.  He’s not a great figure, but he’s what we had, and that was good for me.