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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Retro-Action Black Manta - 2010

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As I mentioned yesterday, this and the Retro-Action Aquaman dolls...er, action figures--were a little Christmas present to myself. There's a lot of Aqua-merch out there and I can't get it all, but these were too good to pass up.

In terms of Black Manta (and Two-Face, also part of this wave), this is where manufacturer Mattel diverges a bit from Mego Orthodoxy (I love putting those two words next to each other), since Mego never made a Black Manta doll during their production of the World's Greatest Super Heroes line. Considering how relatively simple Manta would have been, I think we can assume it would have looked pretty similar to what we see here (although you never know; sometimes Mego went waaaay off script with their licensed characters).
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I have no idea how popular these babies are, and if there are plans for more. I would really love to see Mattel try their hand at a Mera in this line, since she too never got any Mego "love" (poor bored, lonely Mego Aquaman). Considering her super-high-profile nowadays, that seems like a perfect choice to this Aqua-Fan!

4 comments:

David J. Cutler said...

There's another series, Rob, with Captain Marvel and Black Adam, and Flash and Captain Cold. Makes 12 figures in all, but I doubt we'll ever see a Mera in this line (fun as that'd be) as she'd need a villain to pair with and I can't imagine they'll go that crazy with the Aqualove.

Bubbashelby said...

I have the Two-Face dolly and he's tops!

Joe Huber said...

My local stores never got these in. They still have Sinestro and Luthor clogging the shelves. I had to order them from TRU.com to get them. Well worth it though. I always open everything, but I still haven't opened these. I can't decide if I want to yet.

JasonMotesBowles said...

This line bombed. It's a complete peg warmer. The Aquaman wave is currently half price at TJ Maxx stores right now. The price point was too high for casual fans, there are quality issues (the torsos are kind of screwed up, so they are all hunched over), and overall, they're too goofy for younger fans who never knew the innocent joy of owning Megos.

There are two more waves in the pipeline, Wonder Woman, Cheetah, Flash and Capt. Cold, followed by Martian Manhunter, Darkseid, Shazam and Black Adam. There's also a Matty exclusive Guy Gardner. I wouldn't hold my breath on anything past that, which is too bad for those of us that LIKE it! I was really anxious to see how they'd handle Hawkman! I was at least hoping for a Robin.