ROBIN

BATMAN (HASBRO)

“The son of gifted circus acrobats, DICK GRAYSON was left an orphan when a two-bit extortionist sabotaged his parents’ high-wire act.  Bruce Wayne, who lost his own family to a senseless crime, felt an instant connection to the boy and took him in.  Eventually, Wayne revealed his secret identity to the talented young man and made him his crime-fighting apprentice.  Now, as Robin, Grayson is a skilled and quick-minded fighter in his own right, and Batman’s most trusted comrade in justice.”

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve reviewed a proper figure of Dick Grayson as Robin.  Nightwing sure, but for Robin, we’re going back to 2021.  Heck of a jump.  For specifically the animated version, we’re talking about 2016.  Whole decade.  Anyway, 15 years before *that*, the DC license was still held by Hasbro, who were really just largely running on the remnants of what Kenner had done before, more or less just focussing on the Batman side of things until handing off the license to Mattel.  On the animated side, they did a lot of boxed sets, revisiting old molds and themes.  While predominantly focussed on the New Adventures era, there were a few The Animated Series figure mixed in as well, including today’s Robin figure.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Robin was released in the 2001 “Revenge of the Penguin” boxed set, under Hasbro’s wider Batman banner.  At this point, the bulk of the line was Mission Masters, but the boxed sets didn’t sport that title, rather just sticking with a rather generic “Batman.”  “Revenge of the Penguin” was a totally BTAS themed set, which was rare, sporting Robin, a Penguin I previously reviewed, Catwoman, and a wonky Batman variant.  The figure stands 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  He’s a total mold re-use of the Kenner animated Robin from 1992 (which had previously been used by Hasbro a year prior in their Spectrum of the Bat line), itself a neck-down re-use of the Batman Returns Robin figure from 1991.  At the time of this release, most of the mold was a decade old, which, honestly?  It’s not bad.  In part, it fits in fine due to how much Hasbro stagnated with the license, of course.  When you’re aiming to do as few new molds as possible, you aim to make them work match the ones you’ve already got.  It’s…well, it’s fine for its original intended use, as a realistic take on what would become the comics Tim Drake costume. It’s less ideal for an animated Dick Grayson, whose outfit was streamlined a bit, and who never sported anything close to the musculature detailed on this figure.  The head was at least an okay take on Dick’s original animation model, if perhaps a bit flattened and soft on detailing.  It did fit well with the other figures from the Kenner line, though.  He keeps the original’s two-tone cloth cape, which remains a pretty impressive piece for the scale.  A little unnatural in how it hangs, but generally very cool.  His paint marks the main change-up here.  In a general sense, it’s not drastically different, but the colors lean more toward the Mission Masters palette, where the flesh tones were very pale, the greens were more neon, and the “warm” colors were colder.  The actual application’s generally fine (though the black paint was really prone to wear), and he even gets an additional paint app on the neck, under the cape.  There’s a sculpted spot there that’s clearly meant to be a different shade than the rest of the torso, and the original just left it red.  This one…makes it green?  Still not a match for the cape, but points for effort.  Robin was packed with a missile launcher and missile.  It was originally packed with the Legends of Batman Crusader Batman, and it was one of Hasbro’s favorite accessories of this era, no matter how illogical or ill-suited it was to the figure it was packed with.  At least it’s in colors that match?

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Since I missed the main runs of the Animated figures, the boxed sets were really my personal jumping on point for the style, and served as my earliest versions of a lot of the characters.  They were almost always birthday or Christmas gift fodder from family members, and this particular set was the latter, given to me by my Nanna.  Robin was my main interest.  I’d been making do with the Total Justice Robin as a stand-in for this look for far too long at this point, and was happy to get a better approximation.  He’s got some quirks of this era, but given how lazy and odd most of the late-run Hasbro DC product was, he’s honestly not bad.  He may be little more than a re-issue, but he was at least a decent choice for one, and one I definitely was glad to have then, and am still glad to have now.