McFarlane Toys/DC Direct Batman: The Animated Series Condiment King wave Review and Images

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means: ToyFarce review!

This week, we're having a look at the Batman: The Animated Series Condiment King wave from McFarlane Toys/DC Direct, or basically, the Condiment King figure with its 4 'other figures' accessories. Spoiler: this is not going to be a nice review, those figures are not great. Sadly, they look and feel like bootleg versions of the original ones.

The packaging is pretty nice, has a very retro feel, with drawings from the series on the side (which look nothing like the figures in the packaging, but I digress...). The whole point of that wave was the build-a-figure, which is the only new release. As an completist (or in other words, an idiot), I got the wave because I wanted the new figure. They were fairly easy to get, I ordered them on Target's website and they arrived a few weeks later.



First, the caped crusader himself, Batman. Honestly, this figure is quite terrible. The shiny plastic and the look of it make it feel like a bootleg version of the original DC Collectibles figures. They used the body of the Batman figure that came with the Batcycle (and sold the figure and the Batcycle separately this time around... Yay!), which has a god awful ab-crunch, and used a different head, I believe (which looks more like the New Adventures of Batman head sculpt). It looks clunky, doesn't articulate well, and the right leg broke as I got it out of the box (it's holding up with blutac on the pictures). It comes with 5 extra hands, his grapnel launcher, a batarang, and the Condiment King's arms. I understand that we need Batman on the shelves for people to get in the line, but we've already had 4 re-issues of that one from DC Collectibles (+ the Batcycle one), so this mash-up of all figures doesn't really make sense. Also, the cel shading looks very bad.








Robin, the boy wonder, also feels like an unofficial version of the original DC Collectibles figure. Shiny plastic, the cape is not even painted yellow on the inside... What is going on, McFarlane Toys? Robin comes with 5 extra hands, a rubber bola and the Condiment King's legs. Just like the old figure, he has articulations but doesn't move well. This figure was already released twice (and DC Direct did the cel shading a lot better), so apart from getting the Condiment King parts, there is also no point for it.








Mr Freeze is another figure that was released a few times before. It wasn't the best figure in the old Batman: the Animated series line, and it still isn't today. The colors are a bit off, and very shiny. They used the same rubber parts on the joints like the old figure, which disintegrate fast, sadly. Mr Freeze was first released in the GCPD Rogue's Gallery set, and was available later as an individual release, so this one is the third one. He comes with 8 extra hands, his freeze gun and the Condiment's King backpack with ketchup and mustard guns.








Finally, the Scarecrow. Well, it's not the worst of the wave, I guess. He still does look like a very shiny copy of the original one. He comes with 2 hands, an unmasked head and a scythe, just like the old figure did, as well as the whole bust and head of the Condiment King (who separated the build-a-figure? I feel like it's really uneven. One gets a backpack, the other gets half a body). The Jonathan Crane head has less paint on it than the original release.








Alright, so... after going through so much, you'd think the Condiment King figure will be worth it, right? Well... eh. The figure looks cool, despite the bad cel shading, but the legs on mine were really loose (nothing that a drop of super glue before moving the joints in every direction didn't fix, but still...). It's slightly bigger than the other figures in the line too, so it doesn't scale really well. I guess there can't only be great figures. Sometimes, you're gonna pick something and gonna be disappointed. That's the life of a collector!








Comparison pics with older releases:







More news at 11:00... "Ah, the big bad Bat-guy. I knew you'd ketchup to me sooner or later! How I've relished this meeting!"