Battle of the Action Figures - Who Will Win?

(upbeat music)

Hey, it's Adam from Wired.

Welcome to what I am calling the Battle

of the Action Figure Battles.

I know that everybody talks about Comic-Con as being a place

where you see new movies and maybe even comic books,

but I actually have an old nerdiness for action figures.

I was the kind of person who spent a lot of money on things

like points of articulation and size relative

to other action figures and different paint decos

depending on whether they were going on an arctic mission

or not.

I''m trying really hard lately to not

call them action figures but call them dolls,

'cause you know, they're dolls.

But one of the things they do at Comic-Con is that

the companies whom make the main lines of action figures,

so like DC Comics and Marvel Comics,

will set up these incredible tableaus where the figures

are all fighting with each other,

like the kind of thing that, I dunno,

if you were someone like hypothetically, oh, me,

you would've wished you could build in your bedroom,

so what I wanna do is take a look at the Marvel Figures

and the DC figures and try to figure out maybe

who did 'em better or cooler, let's go have a look.

This is the Marvel display.

You can see that it's enormous.

They have a huge castle set up and every comic book hero

that I've read in the last 30 years plus the SHIELD

helicarrier's floating up there.

That's brand new.

Everybody keeps walking around the con bumping into people

with the giant boxes for it, but the level of detail

here is just astounding.

All of the heroes are actually fighting their arch-enemies

from the comic book.

Same thing, like the deco's great, the points

of articulation are numerous.

Everything poses like you can make them pose in any position

any person would actually be in.

But it's got these little, like, easter eggs

for old nerds like me.

Like there's a dungeon down where,

where HYDRA officers are experimenting on Captain Marvel

with flashing lights and they've got instruments of torture.

And then back here, there's like a secret hallway room

where all of the worst bad guys are having a meeting

with guns and money on the table,

and Doctor Doom is gesticulating while at the same time

up above, Captain America just threw his shield.

It's just kind of awesome, and I talked to the guys here,

and they said that there a bunch of custom pieces.

So in addition to, like, giant sentinels

walking up through the water, that you can actually buy.

They were build a figure things where you

bought all the pieces and put 'em together,

there's a giant robot Doctor Doom that they

built special for this.

So it's a huge amount of attention.

You can read this thing like you would actually

read a real comic book.

Okay, so this, I assume the central power battery on OA.

These are Green Lanterns fighting with various

other colored Lanterns.

I don't know if you knew this, but the Lanterns

come in a whole bunch of different colors

and the rings mean different emotions

and different power sets.

I won't bore you with all the details but it's kind of cool.

There's Hal Jordan fighting with, I think, Atrocitus

is the Red Lantern there.

The central power battery is where all the Green Lanterns

get their power.

The tableau, the whole backdrop isn't for sale,

although they've been saying that maybe they will

put it up for sale.

And you can see all the, and the characters like,

all the joints, those are points of articulation,

and you can see like the double-jointed knees,

so the legs bend really well.

All the green's really shiny, that's deco.

The paint's really cool.

So, it's a beautiful set, and they're all

fighting the appropriate enemies and they all have,

like, the different Lantern powers.

The green makes flames for some of 'em

and guns for other ones,

so it's just, you know, it's a cool set,

and everybody started expressing all

of their emotions, right.

And then this one, you wanna stand up.

Or should we?

Look at that move.

Look at that camera move.

And then this is all new Justice League.

So DC just rebooted the Justice League in the comics.

And the costumes are all a little bit different.

I don't know if you can see Superman back here,

but, oh, he's turned around.

Superman doesn't have the red underpants on anymore.

Batman doesn't have the black underpants,

and you can see there's kind of armor designs

on the clothes.

And that sort of design stuff is what a lot of collectors

really like about action figures is when you can

see these little design details that really pop

maybe even more than do in the comics.

Like you can see the lines on Flash's costume

or differences in scale so that the different heroes

have different bodies,

and that's Darkseid, that big guy is a big bad guy.

So, this is a really neat one, too,

and then they're all fighting on top of stuff.

Wonder Woman and Superman are fighting parademons.

Batman's up there.

And you're supposed to imagine that they're all caught

in mid-battle.

That's a nice one.

Well, I gotta say, as much as I think that the DC figures

are pretty awesome, I really like that Marvel display.

That castle, man, if they were selling that thing,

I think that my wife would have

to talk me off the credit card cliff.

Let me know what you think.

Put it in the comments.

I think this one goes to Marvel.

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