I went to TRU looking for Predators series 3 figures yesterday and was surprised to find this TRU exclusive 2 pack on the shelves. Click through for some more pics of the DCUC ‘Mad Love’ two pack of the Joker and Harley Quinn.
At the beginning of DCUC (wave 2!) Mattel released a Harley Quinn figure that many felt had too much blue shading on her face. There was supposed to be a re-release with less blue shading at some point, but it hasn’t materialized until now in this Alex Ross inspired repaint set of the Joker and Harley Quinn.
Packaging
I don’t normally cover packaging in reviews of figures because it doesn’t often make it home with me. It’s useless garbage, impeding enjoyment of my latest action figure aquisition. I can’t emphasize enough how much I don’t care about packaging. That said, this set looked pretty cool on the shelf, the figures posed packaged to resemble the ‘Tango with Evil’ painting by Alex Ross that inspired this set. The little hearts in the tray are a nice touch, I thought. Another nice thing about their tango pose is that it didn’t warp the limbs on my figures like packaging often can.
Accessories
One of the nice things about this two pack is that it includes all the accessories that previously came with wave 2 Harley and wave 10 Joker (minus the collect and connect pieces, of course) so if this is your first Joker and Harley figures you get all the cool stuff you would have got the first time around including; Harley’s mallet and pop gun, Joker’s Super Powers inspired mallet, his cane, a deck of cards and the joker fish.
The accessories are all well sculpted and detailed with simple, but effective paint jobs. It’s a lot of fun stuff that gives you tons of options for interesting poses.
Sculpt
These two figures are the same sculpts as their original releases and they both work great for me. Both head sculpts are perfectly unhinged as you would expect from these characters and the Joker has the requisite lanky build and dapper suit. Joker doesn’t look much like he does in the Ross painting, but that’s fine with me. This Joker head sculpt is my Joker. This is what he looked like in books I read as a kid and I love that. The only odd thing I noticed from the set is that my Harley’s ab section doesn’t mesh with her crotch piece as smoothly as it did on my wave 2 Harley. I’m not sure if that’s unique to my figure or a production issue across the set, though.
Articulation
This is where this set takes a bit of a hit as Joker’s neck articulation doesn’t move as well on this figure as my wave 10 Joker did. I noticed his coat is made of a stiffer plastic this time around and that hinders the ab movement a bit. Also, wave 10 joker had rocker ankles and this version does not which makes for a bit stiffer stance for this one.
Paint
The paint on these two is nice and clean and we finally get that bright white Harley face so many wanted. I do notice she still has a bit of blue wash around the eyes, but it’s pretty subtle and hard to notice. Joker is also a bit brighter white. I also like the pinstripes painted onto Joker’s pants. It’s a nice subtle effect.
This is a pretty cool set. The repaints make sense as Joker is a cool variant to have and Harley fixes a long standing fan complaint. Even though you don’t get a lower price per figure ( I don’t know when companies stopped giving you a price break on two packs, but they all seem to want to charge full freight on these now ) you at least get all the accessories from the originals.
Turnarounds/Comparisons
