LEGALLY DISTINCT FROM WOLVERINE

THE UNCANNY SUPER MASTER (DTD NORFOLK)

Greetings FIQ-Fans!  It’s time for another installment of “Ethan goofs off for his increasingly elaborate April Fool’s prank.”  I keep setting the bar higher and higher for myself, and, well, I keep trying to back off, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.  I’m freakishly stubborn that way.  Today?  I’m doing a bootleg thing.  I know.  Very clever.  So, let’s look at a super goofy knock-off Wolverine, shall we?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Legally-Distinct-From Wolverine here was released in 1995 under the banner of The Uncanny Master line, which was released, at best accounts, by a company named DTD Norfolk, though they may have just been the ones to print the packaging.  And even that may be a lie, truth be told.  These are bootlegs we’re dealing with, after all.  Doesn’t make one want to be on the up and up.  There were two Legally-Distinct-From-Wolverines in the set.  This one was in the classic Legally-Distinct-From-Tiger-Stripe costume.  The figure is about 6 inches tall and has 6 points of articulation.  Honestly, pretty basic in movement, but it could be worse.  Of course, the joints aren’t really designed to hold up over time, given how cheaply made the whole thing is, but that’s not the main point.  The figures all used the same rather muscle-bound body.  It’s chunky, but not atrocious.  What is atrocious is the head that adorns it.  Yikes is this guy scary.  All bloodshot eyes and gritted teeth and an expression that would make Liefeld wince.  Boy is he frightening.  In an effort to approximate Wolverine’s costume in a true legally distinct fashion, they’ve painted the body up in sort of appropriate colors.  He’s got sleeves, which is weird looking, and the general application of the paint isn’t all that great.  The torso looks more like it’s outlining a Christmas tree than it does tiger stripes.  The application is also inconsistent, as you would expect on this sort of thing.  The paint just makes the head look even worse, truth be told, if you can believe it.  Legally-Distinct-From-Wolverine had no accessories.  Other figures got a big stupid gun, but he was not so lucky.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

These figures cropped up in all manner of dollar stores and the like back in the mid-90s.  One of them was the 99-Cent Store located at the beach where my family spent summer vacations.  I was huge into X-Men at the time, and the prospect of a new Wolverine, even such a truly bad imitation, was pretty exciting, so this guy came home with me.  He’s bad, but in one of those truly entertaining ways that’s very hard to beat.

Hey, you made it all the way through the bootleg text!  Good for you!  What a crazy fever dream that must have been.  I’m really glad April Fool’s is on the weekend next year so that I don’t have to top this one right away…

In typical April Fool’s fashion, there are multiple versions of the above review.  You have just read the slightly less goofy regular text version.  Click here for the very silly bootleg text version.