When I concluded my review of wave 1 of The Simpsons Ultimates! from Super7 I was thinking that I’d be back with more reviews later in the year. That was in February of 2023. We are now in April of 2024 and finally wave two has arrived (my original order was place January 5th, 2022). I don’t know what the deal was, but for whatever reason The Simpsons got really backed up at Super7. Some of it was probably due to the licensor in Disney which we know forced the company to remove a cigarette smoking head from the Krusty figure. My understanding is the head was approved by The Simpsons team at 20th Century Television, but once it got to Disney it had to go. They have a strict no smoking policy when it comes to merchandise and while it was disappointing, I get it. Did that one alteration cause this line to get so severely delayed? Maybe, because waves 3 and 4 shipped right behind it. Unfortunately, there were more issues.
Super7’s co-founder Brian Flynn announced in an interview on the Robo Don’t Know YouTube channel earlier this year that Simpsons (and their relationship with Disney) was dead. He didn’t elaborate except to say that the two companies didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Disney didn’t “get it” when it came to the Super7 business model. And maybe that’s because no one can figure that out? I thought about making a post about that interview here and the line’s cancellation, but realized it would just be a rant and I don’t really do rants. Super7’s approach to The Simpsons has been asinine. I’ve been a defender of the episode-specific approach of the company’s figures, but I’m also not dense. I can see all over social media and on YouTube the response to the line which has been “Where’s the regular family?” In that very same interview the line was announced as cancelled, Flynn talks about the importance of heavy hitters and recognizable characters to a wave of action figures. The reference is to ThunderCats, but for whatever reason that logic wasn’t applied to The Simpsons. Super7 figured that out way too late because they revealed a fifth wave which was going to include Marge (with Maggie), Lisa, and Groundskeeper Wily all in their normal, everyday, attire. Too little, too late, because the line is ending with the fourth wave.
Bartman is in some respects an action figure I really like. It’s pretty well made and looks like the character it’s supposed to. It’s also a terrific encapsulation for why this line is a failure. Before we get into that, let’s just talk about Bartman the action figure. It comes in the standard Ultimates! box with cloud-covered slipcover with an image of Bartman on the back and a note on which episode he first appeared in. Removing the slipcover reveals the figure inside behind a window box. These slipcovers are supposed to be going away soon, but at least it’s uniform for now with the first wave of The Simpsons.
Out of the box, Bartman stands at approximately four and a half inches. This puts the top of his spiky hair right at about chest level when compared with wave one’s Deep Space Homer. Bartman is probably a little too big for perfect scale, but it seems okay enough. As this is Bartman, it’s Bart Simpson with a cape and cowl mimicking Batman. This was mostly a licensing thing back in the early 90s, but Bartman did appear in the Season Three episode “Three Men and a Comic Book” which is where most of the inspiration for this figure comes from. The cowl is part of the sculpt and painted a dark purple. The shirt is Bart’s traditional orange which is in keeping with the episode, though most Bartman depictions outside of the show featured a light blue shirt. That would have made for an obvious variant, but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen now. Bartman has his blue shorts and blue sneakers and most of the figure appears to be colored plastic, but with a matte finish to reduce that shiny, plastic, look. The yellow parts of the limbs lack that finish, unfortunately, but it stands out less with a small figure.
The paint on the head is pretty crisp. There will likely be minor imperfections around the eyes of most figures, but nothing egregious. Unfortunately, the pupils on mine are not aligned properly giving him a side-eye portrait. This appears to be uncommon based on images I’ve seen online. The cowl helps lessen the need for more of an outline on those eyes, something I felt Homer and Moe from wave one would have benefitted from. His default portrait features a toothy smile and it looks fine. There’s no black linework on his teeth, but that might have been overkill if present. Bartman does feature a cape, but for some reason it’s blue. His cape and cowl should match, and I don’t know if the shade of the cowl is even the right purple, but it’s close enough to the show. It also has a bow on it for some reason, which also doesn’t match the show. The bow matches the licensing art, but the shirt doesn’t – pick a lane, Super7! Bartman features a utility belt and I think it came from a video game. For a second, I thought it might be from “The Homer They Fall,” but that episode features a completely different belt. It’s thankfully easily removable and just slides right off the figure. The factory also missed (or whoever approved the paint sample missed it) the white circles on the inner half of Bart’s shoes. The circle is sculpted on his feet, but they were left blue like the rest of the foot.
Bartman comes with a whole bunch of accessories from that episode I mentioned earlier. He has four sets of hands: fists, relaxed, style posed, gripping. He also has a ninth hand clutching a wad of money. For head portraits, we get two extra: stoic and worried. The stoic head is bizarre in that his mouth is in a smile position, but his eyelids are partially closed. I don’t know what Super7 was going for, he just looks high. The worried look is fine and it pairs well with another accessory, or if paired with the money hand it can make him look desperate to purchase Radioactive Man number 1, but why no angry portrait? Most Bartman images feature an angry, or determined, expression and that’s even true of a lot of the episode. Hell, just look at the reference art on the damn box. It’s an odd omission.
For the rest of the stuff, we get Bart’s green skateboard. It features working wheels and has the familiar orange stripe down the center and a single peg for one of Bart’s feet. There’s the issue of Radioactive Man number 1 and the printing of the cover looks okay. It’s not a perfect recreation, and the back is blank, but it’s okay. There’s a bird’s nest which features a lone, white, bird and the remnants of the comic inside it. It’s an impressive paint job, but what the hell am I going to do with this? Bartman also has his trusty slingshot. He doesn’t have a back pocket to store it in, but it’s sculpted like it’s being drawn and the figure can do an okay job of simulating such a pose. Lastly, we get Santa’s Little Helper with Radioactive Man number 1 in his maw. The front legs and head swivel so it’s not a slug figure and overall he looks good. I wish he had an action pose head simulating him shaking it back and forth like how we see swirling effects for characters that have weapons they swing (think Thor’s hammer accessory from Hasbro, or Michelangelo’s whirling nunchaku effect) in circular motions. Or just a regular Santa’s Little Helper head to swap, but that would make too much sense.
The articulation for Bartman is nothing we haven’t seen before. A double ball-pegged head lets him look around reasonably well with little room to look up and down. Ball-hinged shoulders let his arms rotate and go out to the side while the single jointed elbows swivel and bend about ninety degrees. Wrists rotate and hinge and all of the hinges are horizontal in nature. There’s a ball joint at the waist for swivel and some tilt, though the t-shirt restricts a lot of that. The legs won’t go out to the side for full splits or kick forward all the way, but the range is probably enough for Bartman. The knees bend less than ninety degrees and the ankles feature hinges with limited range and acceptable ankle rockers. The cape is wired, so it has some pose-ability as well. It’s not big enough to do anything crazy, but it will work to simulate motion if you put Bartman on his skateboard or in a flight stand.
Objectively speaking, this is a solid action figure. It moves well enough and it looks pretty good, though some of the flaws feel inexcusable at this price range. As a Simpsons fan though, I am so annoyed by this release. The cape is the wrong color and has a stupid bow on it that shouldn’t be there. The belt is useless and not from the episode this figure is drawing inspiration from and it along with the bird’s nest could have been scrapped for something better. How about, oh I don’t know, a plain Bart Simpson head?! Would that have been so hard? And if you’re thinking of painting one of the existing heads, the cowl is part of the sculpt and it will look awful if you were to do that. We don’t even get the most suitable Bartman portrait nor do we get a normal Santa’s Little Helper. Super7 went out of their way to deny us a regular Bart figure with a bunch of useless junk in the box and then they go on YouTube and act surprised that sales weren’t as good as they expected and can’t understand why Disney won’t just let them do what they want. I don’t normally do this, but whoever was in charge of this line at Super7 should be demoted or outright fired. It is the most asinine, stubborn, absurd approach to marketing a toy line that I have ever seen. At some point during these years of development Super7 could have added a Bart head to the package. “We hear you, we screwed up, here’s the thing you’re asking for,” but instead they dug in their heals, didn’t even bother putting a Simpson in Wave 3, stuck another Homer variant in Wave 4, then threw their hands in the air when it all went to shit.
If you want a Bartman figure, this is fine. If the imperfections are going to ruin it for you, then by all means give it a pass. And if you’re on the fence, considering that the line is dead you will probably save yourself some money if you wait. I preordered all of Wave Two from Super7 directly as a show of good faith and to tell them I want more Simpsons. How did that work out for me?
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