I’m not normally a wrestling figure collector, but I am a big fan of Mr. T, so I made sure to hop online for the SDCC exclusive Mr. T figure when it was scheduled for pre-order. I’ve wanted six inch scale A-Team figures for a long time, so I was looking forward to this one. Entertainment Earth delivered him last week, so let’s take a look at the WWE Elite Collection Mr. T!
The box is fairly extensive, with a sleeve adorned with a picture of T’s gold and an inner box with a nice illustration on the front and some snazzy photos on the inside. It’s typically elaborate for an exclusive, but not anything I’ll feel bad trashing.
T comes with two alternate hands with all of his rings and removeable bracelets, belt, jacket, knee pads, and necklaces. The right bracelet is pretty large and has a big opening so it clips on the forearm. The right bracelet slides over the wrist when you pop off the hand and the necklace slides over the head with ease. I absolutely love the sculpting on his mass of chains. It’s one of Mr. T’s defining features and they capture it perfectly here.
The jacket is soft goods and has a velcro closing up the front shirt seam and hangs pretty convincingly for soft goods at this scale. The belt has two clasp settings, so it works well with the jacket on or off. The camo print is also very nice and the outfit feels totally right to me for Mr. T, even though I’m not familiar with his stint as a wrestler.
I really like the head sculpting quite a bit, though it doesn’t quite feel like a realistic likeness to me, more like an idealized likeness. Likewise the build is fairly large. Mr. T. is a big guy and buff, but wasn’t the tallest guy out there. The figure sits at seven inches tall, which is a little big, I think, even for the larger scaled WWE figures.
The build is exaggerated in the common manner of the WWE line and he seems a little too cut for Mr. T’s build, but again, I think this is fairly common for this style of figure. I don’t like how his lats keep the arms from resting fully at his sides.
T scales okay with Marvel Legends and the GI Joe Classified line, though I think he’s actually a bit more tall than he should be to really fit in with either of those lines. The articulation is fairly standard for the more articulated wrestlers from Mattel with:
- Ball and socket barbell in the head and neck
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, hips, and wrists
- Hinged ab crunch, ankle, and elbow
- Swivel waist, thigh, and boot
- Double hinged knees
- Rocker ankles
I’ve become so accustomed to the Marvel Legends style articulation that the old style ankle tilts and single elbows surprised me. He doesn’t really get much looking up range of motion, but tilting and looking down is really good. The articulation is a little more limited than what I’m used to, but he gets the job done for the most part. I did discover something fun in that all his swappable parts can be transferred to the G.I. Joe Classified Roadblock base body. The skin tones don’t quite match and the wrist pegs are a little thicker, than the Classified pegs, but they fit when I heated up the forearms a bit. The figure benefits from the more articulated body, though his right hand gauntlet bracelet thing does get warped. I first put him on the Cobra Island figure, but the gold and red of the wave one classified Roadblock is almost too perfect not to use. The below six photos are the Mr. T Parts on the Roadblock bodies.
As a kid, I always coveted those G.I. Joe compatible A-Team figures, so being able to add B.A. to my Joe team is worth the price of admission completely.
Paint is pretty sharp. I don’t think it’s faceprinting, but the face and hair details are punched in there well. I think T’s gold could be shinier, but this is about as shiny as action figure gold paint gets so I’m not going to complain too much.
I realize I come to this figure with weird expectations and want it to meet criteria that the figure was not designed to meet. This figure is meant to go with a line I don’t collect and I think it does that well. That said, it’s a pretty fun figure on it’s own merits and captures the vibe of Mr. T wonderfully. Even though he’s probably a larger scale than I would prefer and doesn’t quite capture a realistic likeness of Mr. T., it’s a fun toy and the more I play with it, the more I like it. The fact that I can fudge him into my G.I. Joe team is icing on the cake. In fact, those gold boots on the original Roadblock figure might be a better fit for Mr. T than they ever were for Roadblock.
