I’d resigned myself that Mattel wasn’t going to step up the articulation of its Elite line and I’d just have to deal with it — but in 2019, they went to an ultimate new direction with its Ultimate Edition line. I wasn’t ecstatic about the first two figure choices — Ultimate Warrior and Ronda Rousey — but had to have the legend from Series 2 with Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart.
The Ultimate Edition figure checks a lot of boxes on my ideal wrestling figure list. For starters, swappable arms allow for an actual easy transition from entrance gear to ring wear. Bret’s had a few figures with cloth ‘leather’ jackets or hard plastic ones, but this is the best of both worlds. The engineering of the swappable arms is simple without losing any tightness of the joints.
This figure also comes with three heads, which is such an overdue feature for wrestlers whose looks change over the course of a match. Having the added options allows for some welcome variety to shooting matches without one expression that doesn’t work for every situation.
Another big plus was the addition of double-jointed elbows. It’s crazy that Mattel went this long without implementing that joint. It allows for more convincing submission moves. There’s still some work to be done with the ‘floating’ torso, but the potential is there for even better move poses.
Bret’s had some good figures over the years, but this one felt like a significant upgrade over the others and now I’m awaiting ultimate updates on all of my favorite wrestlers thanks to The Hitman – my favorite WWE figure of 2019.
