The Flash III

Blue Beetle III

The Character
When the Rock of Eternity exploded, Jaime Reyes found the mystical blue beetle scarab that had belonged to Dan Garret and Ted Kord (Blue Beetle I and II) and it fused to his spine, giving him fantastic abilities. After helping Booster Gold, Batman, and others find and destroy the Brother Eye, Jaime has learned that the scarab was an advance agent of the Reach, an expansionist alien species. Eventually, Jaime joins the Teen Titans and is continually pursued by the Reach, who wish to retrieve the scarab, which has developed its own identity and bonded with Jaime. The scarab forms armor and allows flight, super-strength, and generation of various forms of weaponry.

Presentation
Blue Beetle III is the first DCUC character to incorporate double jointed knees and ankles, and a hinged wrist. To be honest, it works very well for this character, one that is slender in build and armored. The blue paint is slightly metallic and the cut lines between the blue and black are very sharp. Overall, it’s a very cool-looking figure.

Accessories
Blue Beetle III comes with detachable wings and an alien/insect-looking weapon that fits over his wrist, in addition to a collector pin.

C&C parts
Trigon’s left leg

What I like
The overall design and paintwork make this an appealing figure. I like the extra articulation, which allows a variety of dynamic posing. The wing assembly fits neatly into 3 holes in the figure’s back and is a nice technology-meets-insect design that is made of sturdy plastic.

What I don’t
Remember what I said about sturdy plastic? Well, unfortunately, it doesn’t apply to the weapon that goes on his wrist, or the rest of the figure for that matter. The insect-like sword is made of extremely soft plastic, even on the clip that is “supposed” to hold it on his wrist. Yes, I mean the parentheses; I couldn barely get the weapon to stay on due to its softness and the narrowness of the figure’s wrist. I’m not sure if there are regulations that forced Mattel to use this softer plastic on “sharp” objects (like this and green Steppenwolf’s sword), but, as a collector, it’s disappointing to say the least. The soft plastic also created other problems (see the next section).

Issues/Problems
For some reason, Mattel keeps packaging DCUC with “action poses.”

Though it hasn’t affected a lot of them, females and other thin figures seem to suffer because of it. My Blue Beetle III had a severely warped left leg, that would not stay straight, even with surgery.

Also, after testing out the nifty hinged wrist, his left hand broke off. Actually, it might be a more accurate to say that the super-soft plastic was incapable of breakage and simply "tore."

Darth Vader not included.

After an initial attempt with Mattel customer service where 2 different people couldn’t find the product and kept sending me to Mattycollector.com customer service (even though I didn’t buy it there), I was able to get a $15 Mattel voucher 2 weeks later.

Summary
To me, Ted Kord will always be the Blue Beetle, and I’m not alone. That said, this incarnation of the character could’ve been an exceptionally cool action figure with awesomely appropriate extra articulation, if not for the terrible quality and soft plastic.

Tidbit
My apologies for poor quality and missing pictures—I traded my defective Beetle for another figure and am waiting to get a new one. I'll update this review when I can take new pics.

Grade: D