Miss Martian Young Justice Action Figure

A couple years ago I was able to find the three Young Justice two figure sets that included the BAF Amazo on deep discount at Big Lots. I blogged about Amazo but never did get around to blogging about the figures in the specific sets. Until today!

Whether or not I ever get around to the other two sets is still pure conjecture, but I am here today to take a look at the best figure of all of them: Miss Martian from the Miss Martian/Martian Manhunter two pack!

I know next to nothing about Miss Martian, aka M'gann M'orzz, except that she's actually a White Martian and not actually a Green Martian like J'onn J'onnz.

This action figure of Miss Martian beautifully recreates her Young Justice animated design. She technically has five points of articulation, but her hair prevents her head from moving and her skirt hinders her hips. The cape even limits her shoulders, so she really only has two and even those points of articulation aren't terribly articulated.

You can get her to stand on a flat surface, but fortunately she came with a base so you don't have to worry about her toppling off your shelf (which she will).

Her companion piece Martian Manhunter is also a great looking figure straight from the cartoon. Not sure if this specific costume of his occurred in any comic outing, but it's a nice blend of classic and modern.

Miss Martian hasn't taken the toy aisles by storm, in fact I'm not sure if there exists any other figures of her besides the BootLEGO minifigure I picked up a couple years ago. She's pretty prime for the current DC Girls Superhero line though, so hopefully we see more of her in the near future.

As for Young Justice, it ended far too soon, and while the toyline had a handful of hits it suffered from many of the issues that tend to plague Mattel toylines, the specifics of which I will spare you from reliving.

Young Justice LEGO Bootleg Minifgures by ShengYuan

While perusing eBay to see what those crazy awesome Chinese LEGO bootleggers have to offer I came across a full series of Young Justice minifigures by ShengYuan (the same company that made the bootleg Batgirl I blogged about a few weeks ago.) Having seen the quality of their Batgirl, I knew it was worth the less-than-a-dollar-each risk to order this set of eight minifigures, especially because LEGO will never make a series of minifigures for a long cancelled cartoon!

The set includes:
Aqualad
Artemis
Robin
Nightwing
Superboy
Clone Containment Suit Superboy
Miss Martian
Kid Flash

Each minifigure includes accessories and a weird minibuild to accompany them on their base. A ton of toy for less than a buck!

Aqualad comes with two hard-water swords. Awesome!

Artemis is one of my favorites from this set. She comes with a compound bow and a quiver, and a perfectly passable piece of Kryptonite!

Kid Flash comes with a couple red sticks to emulate speedlines I suppose.

The wild red hair is just perfect!

Miss Martian. What can I say? Did you ever think in a million years you would see a LEGO(esque) Miss Martian minifigure? She also has a lasso(?) and a green thingy that I suppose could be put on her hand and emulate some mid-form shape-shifting.

I would have preferred her hair a bit more on the ginger side, but come on! Miss Martian! This is definitely my favorite minifgure from the set, and well worth the price of admission!

Nightwing. You may be surprised to learn that this is the first Nightwing minifgure in my collection!

LEGO always gives Nightwing an idiot hairdo. It's nice to see a well coiffed Nightwing for a change.

Robin. A nice Young Justice variant on the ubiquitous Robin minifigure. With dynamite.

None of the figures from this series have multiple facial expressions, but they are all printed on their backs, and many (like Robin here) have printing on their legs - attention to detail that the bootleggers could have easily skipped (they ARE bootleggers after all!)

Clone Containment Suit Superboy. With...windmill(?) and a sweet piece of blue Kryptonite. Isn't blue Kryptonite the one that is effective against Bizarro? Did it have a role in Young Justice? I don't remember.

And finally, regular t-shirt and jeans Superboy. He came with an all white head piece - I have no idea why. It may also be relevant to the cartoon but I clearly missed that episode.

The quality of these ShengYuan bootleg minifigures is top notch. Not as top notch as LEGO but on par with Kre-O and Mega Bloks for sure. And did I mention how cheap these things are? Good lord, you're losing money by NOT buying these things!

My only quibble is that the upper arms of the minifigures aren't painted, so instead of short sleeves, you get wife-beater shirts on a few of them. But that's a MINOR issue for a bunch of non-licensed minifigures you will never see made in any official capacity. Go buy some and see if you don't agree. What do you have to lose?

Young Justice Amazo

A couple years ago, Mattel released three 2-figure sets, each with a 'Collect-and-Connect' or 'BAF' component to build the android Amazo. The three 2-packs needed to gather together the complete Amazo are: Flash and Kid Flash, Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian, and Ra's al Ghul and Cheshire.

I believe each set retailed for around $20, and I know they were plagued with the same distribution issues Mattel is famous for. I don't think I ever saw the Flash/Kid Flash set at retail, I may have seen the Ra's/Cheshire set once or twice, and ironically (to me anyways, because I would have assumed it the most popular set) I saw Manhunter/Miss Martian many times. In fact, that set might still be on the shelves at my local Toys R Us at full price right now.

I didn't buy any of these sets at retail - but stumbled onto all three at Big Lots for five dollars each last month - during a 'buy one, get one half off' sale to boot! I will blog about the main figures from these sets soon, but today I wanted to look at the Amazo figure himself.

I've always liked the ridiculous Silver Age Amazo design. I was disappointed with his 'blank slate' design in the Justice League/JLU cartoon series, but really loved his characterization and storylines.  His appearance in modern cartoons like Batman: Under the Red Hood and Young Justice have been brief but fun, and I think Amazo's Young Justice design is a nice modern take while still maintaining a lot of the original's design cues.

The action figure is very simple, five points of articulation (although his head is on a ball joint and not just a single swivel), which is consistent with the entire YJ line of action figures. He's a couple inches taller than the standard YJ figure to reflect his larger than life stance in the cartoon.

I held a grudge for years against Mattel due to the fact that Mattel made their DCUC Amazo a Wal-Mart exclusive (which put him out of my reach) and so I am glad to have found this one at such an incredible price. I'm surprised I was able to find all three sets to complete him at the same time too! I like the concept of collect-and-connect/build-a-figure parts to build a larger character, but it is flawed in actual practice when certain parts become harder to find than others due to poor case ratios and shoddy distribution (or retailer exclusivity.)

I am sure all modern action figure collectors out there have random BAF parts laying about and can attest to this frustration!

This just in: Mattel desn't hate us!

Well that's not true, I am sure Mattel still hates us - which will be revealed by the distribution, availability, quality and price of the Miss Martian action figure (which comes in a two pack with Martian Manhunter, natch.)

But the important truth is, everyone's favorite green teen Miss Martian will be getting an action figure soon in the Young Justice toyline!

Yay!

Go find out more at Action Figure Times!