Welcome back to another edition of Demanded Characters. This week we will have another discussion on to connect or not to connect. The focus of this week’s poll is a character who is big and small, and the resident hero who gets no respect, Eel O’Brian, Plastic Man.
Plastic Man is a figure which can go either way- he can be either a Collect & Connect or a regular figure. It is all about "flexibillity".
Regular:
Plastic Man has been shown to be a moderate sized Superhero standing at 6’1” (DCU Encyclopedia). He is able to change his shape and size depending on the situation, but for the most part he is a normal sized guy. With Mattel being able to pack multiple accessories with each figure, like in the case of Deathstroke, I’m sure we could see some interchangeable hands, allowing him to take other shapes, or a few pack in shapes like a ball or a spring. I would really like to see the Four Horsemen tweak the detail of this simple character and make him a killer regular figure. I don’t think design-wise there would be too much debate, so a classic figure in regular scale would work.
Collect and Connect:
Plastic Man is one character that can take any shape or size. His only limitation is that he seems to only take on the colors of red and yellow, you can almost always tell where he is by those colors. While he has the stretching abilities of several other characters in comicdom, Eel stands out due his prevailing penchant toward shape mimicry. Plastic Man has shown that his shapes can be as small as a fire hydrant, as thin as a dress on Big Barda, or as large as a skyscraper (as seen fighting Fernus in JLA). He can change the shape of his hands to items like Metamorpho and the lower half of his body into shapes like a spring. I think this figure would benefit from being a C&C so that we could get more accessories. The figure itself would be thin and normal size but we may get hand attachments, a spring-like bottom or different red shapes to pose as Plastic Man. Like our series one Collect and connect, I think this character would benefit from this option.
This is a storied character with a rich history deserving to be made during Mattel’s run with the DCU. I think whatever comes out of this discussion we should also consider the other stretchy character, Elongated Man, because of their similar abilities. Should it be a C&C or a regular figure is up for discussion, so have at it.
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