[BarbaraGordon]

Street Date: Officially 2021-11-10
MSRP: $20
Price I Paid: $20
Scale: 7-inch (or 1/10)

Amazon.com has been selling this since at least the last week of November 2021. Target.com still has this in pre-order status, but many Target stores received numerous copies right before Christmas 2021.

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Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) is my favorite comic book character, so I'll work my way through the Three Jokers action figures starting with her. GameStop has The Comedian Joker (purple trench coat) as an exclusive, though that character is apparently so popular that he's no longer available on their website. The other two Jokers and Red Hood have appeared in Target stores. Batman has trickled into some Walmart stores, but he's probably bought within minutes of being placed on the pegs.

In the plastic tray, there's one main plastic tie around Batgirl's torso and thinner plastic ties around her wrists and ankles. The cape fits through a slot in the plastic tray so that it's tucked behind the tray rather than underneath the figure.

In addition to an information card and a base stand, Batgirl comes with two accessories, a Batarang and a grapnel. The grapnel is comically too large for her and looks better held by the first Batgirl figure (though it's also large for that one). The grapnel isn't even comic-accurate as Batgirl uses something closer in design to the grapnel included with the Sean Murphy Batgirl. I would understand including the same grapnel as Batman to save on costs, but their grapnels are different. I really like the new Batarang, which has a nice bat shape and isn't just large chunk of plastic like the one the previous Batgirl has.



This Batgirl uses the same legs as the first Batgirl. However, she's shorter than the first Batgirl because the torso pieces are smaller and because the neck is shorter. The arms are the same length, which means that this Batgirl's wrists fall lower than the previous Batgirl's. Her overall height to the top of her head (not the Bat-ears) is about 6.6-inches tall.

I've seen people mention that the cape should be longer to match the artwork by Jason Fabok. While that's true, I think a longer cape might hinder her posability. As things are, the right shoulder has less freedom of movement than the left shoulder due to the cape placement. The upper torso can be rotated 360 degrees.



The eyes were painted so that Batgirl's looking to her left. I don't mind since in this instance Batgirl doesn't look very happy, so the overall effect gives her a bit of personality. However, the sideways glance is becoming rather common across all of the DC figures, and it does make group shots a bit tougher to compose.

This release is a little disappointing to me because the paint apps are sub-par for the line. In particular, paint apps are sloppy on the face on several of these that I've seen. Sometimes there are stray black spots, and sometimes the mask lines are poorly applied. In some cases, the dark grey paint on the leggings is applied so thickly that the bat ears on the boots disappear.



Areas of concern:
-- The head is rather loose compared to other McFarlane figures.
-- I've seen some pretty bad face paint apps when shopping at Target.
-- The paint apps between the boots and leggings could be better.

[BarbaraGordon]

[BarbaraGordon]

[BarbaraGordon]

[BarbaraGordon]

Kind of a postscript to everything:

I think much of the figure can be re-used as Batwoman (Kate Kane). The gloves, belt, and boots are very similar. McFarlane would just need to give it a new head and upper torso since she uses shoulder clasps for her cape and has a different Batsymbol.

[ghostbogey]

Great Review... ;^)

[BarbaraGordon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghostbogey

Great Review... ;^)

Thank you!