LEGION TOYS: Colossal Boy (Mattel 12-Pack)

by Derek William Crabbe
Gim Allon a.k.a. Colossal Boy was dating and marrying shape-shifting aliens way before Johnny Storm made it cool. He was towering over his fellow Legionaries and wrecking shop as a Giant, long before Hank Pym took the moniker Giant-Man. If you need someone to fight a Gi-Normus Purple Sea Creature in the depths of the Atlantean Gap, Gim is your man!

Sculpt:
Colossal Boy is on the large scale 9-1/2 inch "Collect-and-Connect" buck. Typically in a standard assortment of DC Universe Classics figures, each 6 inch (ish) figure came with a piece to assemble a larger scale figure. Taking a page from Marvel Legend's Build-A-Figures, DC Universe Classics Series 7 featured Atom Smasher and Series 18 featured Apache Chief. Had the Legion of Super-Heroes not come out as an exclusive 12-pack, Colossal Boy may have very well been released as a "Collect-and-Connect" with his fellow buck-brothers. However, Colossal Boy does come fully assembled at the outset. His Overlay features a belt with fairly rigid plastic (which makes the waist swivel problematic to articulate) and then a fairly soft plastic for the shoulder pads and tunic (which tends to look the best when Gim's standing up straight with his chest puffed out). His hair that pops out of his head dress and the blue, circular, ear and forehead pieces are the most original portions of the sculpt along with the clever overlay.

Articulation:
There are 24-points of articulation that I count on Colossal Boy. Head moves from left to right, and slightly up and down, Arms can move up and down, as well as rotate in a circular fashion. There are bicep cuts that swivel, joints at the elbow and the fists can rotate as well. He has an ab-crunch that moves in an approximately 30/70 ratio. He has a waist swivel. His legs move up and he can also do the splits. Swivels are just above the knee. Knee joints and ankle rockers complete the standard articulation.

Paint:
The paint application continues to be well done on this set of figures.There's virtually no paint bleed between the red and blue tones of the piece. If you get really nit-picky, the brown of the hair has some very feint bleed into his red head piece. The Blues on the overlay have a base layer of silver paint so that the blues pop with shine. However, I can see a portion where the paint has chipped on the back of the overlay.

Overall:
Gim Allon a.k.a. Colossal Boy is a fun figure to give a sense of scale and wonder to any situation. 9-1/2 inches might not cut the mustard compared to the 14 inch Marvel Legends Toy Biz era Giant-Man for some collectors, but these 9-1/2 inch DC Universe Classics up-scales were fairly consistent across the line and it's always fun to grab smaller scale figures like the DC Universe Infinite Heroes or DC Multiverse to give the illusion that the 9-1/2 inches goes a long way.