2007? Does anyone remember 2007? That’s the year Hal Jordan, Green Lantern made his first appearance in Mattel’s DC Universe Classics. Yeah that long ago. Wait, what is DC Universe Classics?
Hal Jordan was my favorite Green Lantern growing up. My introduction to him was through Super Friends and the Neal Adams comics that were hip at the time. I’m pretty certain that I was getting reprints or hand me downs since I wasn’t born when Dennis O’Neil and Adams worked on the Green Lantern/Green Arrow titles. Nonetheless that was my early comic introduction to the character. Along with appearances in Super Friends and then Super Powers, Hal became my favorite Green Lantern.
Thankfully the figure lived up to the myth in my head for Green Lantern. Mattel and Four Horsemen Studios nailed Hal, using the medium-sized buck Hal storms into our collection with clean paint apps, great articulation and a perfect head sculpt. Granted, I am writing that as though I just got the figure, as though I have that magic of first getting my hands on this figure, a relatively unused buck and enjoying some of the top sculpting for that time.
The figure sports a lot of great articulation, all of it useful and allowing for a ton of posing. The buck does use the signature “hippy-hinge” instead of a ball-jointed hip, but the result is the same range of motion. The bonus is that “vanilla” poses look better and less broken up than if the figure had ToyBiz-styled ball-and-socket hips. The one thing that I always wanted from DC Universe Classics was the double-jointed elbow and knees; it’s a small thing and not really needed as most of these figures can strike a fair amount of decent poses.
Hal doesn’t come with a lot of accessories, just a power battery lantern and Solomon Grundy’s left leg. Lantern constructs were not a part of the thinking at the time. The power battery is a good addition. It is green, comes with a handle, and has a good sculpt. However, the articulation can make the “powering up” pose a bit challenging. Makes me realize that I also want ball-jointed wrists.
Doing this review reminded me of all of the great figures that came out, and it reminded me of some of the figures that I still need to get. Yeah, I don’t have a complete collection and that has to be fixed. Luckily I can find these figures here:
Man I miss DCUC, the “DC Multiverse” line is good but since it incorporates film/TV versions to it takes longer to get classic comic versions (very excited for Batman: Year 2 Reaper though!)
Great figure. Suffers from a bit of powdery white residue build up on the black parts but cleans up fine. I see your figure suffers from this too.
it was 2008! Just saying. That was a fun year, I remember getting this guy, Deathstroke and Sinestro. It was a big deal.
This was my very first DC Universe Classics figure. Love this Hal Jordan!
I really wish Mattel would start releasing these again. In stores. No clubs. No digitalriver. We still need quite a few characters in this line. Vixen, Miss Martian, Vandal Savage, Liberty Belle, Earth 2 Superman and Robin… yeah.
DC Icons are just too short.
Thank you so much for bringing these DCUC Retro-reviews back.