Harley Quinn

I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ve barely kept up with anything as far as DC Comics goes. I’m more of a Marvel guy myself. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love the characters though. The DC animated movies are all pretty good and almost all of the cartoons that have been on TV have been excellent as well. So of course, I’d want some nice toys of a lot of these characters too. Well we all know I’m not gonna get that out of a Mattel, so I figured I was pretty much left with no options really. That was, until I took note of DC Collectibles.

Formerly DC Direct, DC Collectibles is DC Comics’ in-house merchandising brand. They do all sorts of things that range from figures and statues, to oddities like wooden toys and pool cues. In the past these figures were pretty notorious as being glorified statues with joints, and as I do have some of their older works I can’t disagree with that. But recently, they have really been taking strides to make better toys.

Harley Quinn is one of those characters that can really annoy me. Or at least the character design aspect can. I mostly cite her design in Arkham City, which to me doesn’t seem like a jester in any way and just looks really trashy instead. Harley needs to be cute, a little bit crazy, and weird! And I have to say that her appearance in the New 52 Suicide Squad really struck a chord with me.

Harley’s new appearance has a lot more blue than black, but still carries forward a lot of the similar elements to the character from previous iterations. The whacky symmetry in her color pattern really does it for me and actually reminds me a lot of what the Announcer in Team Fortress 2 was supposed to originally look like. There’s a lot of nice sculpted detail, like the knives attached to her bustier, or the bullets lining her belt. Her tiny cape is actually made of a softer plastic, similar to what Figma uses for skirts and clothing.

I suppose her outfit is actually kind of skimpy, but I just think it looks really cute. Her small smile and bubbly cheeks probably aren’t helping me think otherwise either.

The articulation on Harley is better than previous offerings, but not great. She has a ball jointed head, ball jointed pigtails, swivel hinge shoulders, a bicep swivel, elbows, a very well hidden wrist swivel, a T-crotch, and thigh swivels that are hidden in the sculpt of her socks. It sounds pretty limited, but you can still manage to strike a few pretty good poses with her.

Harley comes with a few different weapons as well. She comes with two pistols along with a simple but brutal looking sledgehammer. The guns are a little bit big but they fit into her hands still without too much trouble. They can also store in the pouches on her legs although they don’t stay in there snug.

Thanks to the wrist swivels which were sometimes absent on other figures, you can actually have her hold the sledgehammer with two hands, and even have her swinging it overhead as well.

It might seem weird for me to like something like this, which is at a higher price point with lower articulation count than most 6 inch figures In fact you would think I’d hate this kind of thing! But I think there are some valid reason for me to like this style of figure. For one I think their sculpting is pretty excellent, given that each figure is done individually without sharing a base body or anything of the sort. And despite the limited articulation, they do look very natural in certain poses and it is enough to keep me satisfied as a physical representation of a character I like.

Plus the other major thing is, this doesn’t even compare to what DC Collectibles is up to right now…