Out of the Box: DC Super Hero Girls Bumblebee

The DC Super Hero Girls are a cartoon that involves teenaged versions of heroes and villains from DC comics in a high school setting.  Full disclosure: I haven't watched it, but even so it's been hard to miss the merchandise.  Mattel has put out two versions of the six main characters (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn) - an action figure and a fashion doll (which is being branded as an action doll).

This line seems to be bringing up a lot of the old discussions about the line between dolls and action figures (and about gendered toy marketing), which I'm thinking about making a separate post about, since it's such a huge topic.  But in the meantime, let's take a look at the action figure version of Bumblebee. I'd actually planned on picking up Batgirl, but they'd actually sold out of every other figure at my local store - although they still had all the dolls, which makes me wonder if the figures are benefiting from more of a crossover market.

Out of the Box: Justice League Dark John Constantine (DC Collectibles)

Being unboxed today is the action figure counterpart to the John Constantine statue that I opened a couple of weeks ago.  As mentioned in that post, I do own the old DC Direct figure, but as he's in storage back in Canada I won't be able to compare the two directly.  That said, I can confirm that this new figure has much more detailed sculpting and much more impressive articulation.

As far as I can tell, this wasn't a terribly popular release: I first noticed this guy at my local comic book shop about a year ago with an asking price of $25USD, and he seems to have languished there ever since.  Every now and then I'd consider picking him up, but having been disappointed in the quality of DC's figures before I held off, until I noticed an online sale that had him listed for a 66% discount.  Even then I waited a week before clicking the buy button - but in the end I gave in and this review is the result!