Harley Quinn

We're back again with toys from The Mopey Avengers Go to Hot Topic - or you may know it by its alternate title, Suicide Squad! Harley Quinn, aka Dr. Harleen Quinzel, is a beautiful young psychiatrist who treats the criminally insane patients at Arkham Asylum, including The Joker... until he turns the tables on her. As crazy as she is desirable, Harley views life as one big, chaotic joke. "Desirable"? That's an odd word choice. Out of all the words available in the dictionary, out of every possible term you could use to describe Harley, why would you go with "desirable"? Her point, as a character, is not to be desired. Poison Ivy's point is to be desired. Harley's point is to be solely obsessed with Joker and not care about anyone else - right up until the point where she recognizes she's in an abusive relationship and reclaims her own power. That is her echoing arc, much like Wolverine's is overcoming his berserker nature. Using "desirable" as an adjective to describe Harley would be like a toy bio calling Batman "jovial." In Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn is played by Margot Robbie, aka "why wouldn't they just get Community's Gillian Jacobs?" The two look exactly alike, and Britta was pretty much a pre-Harley anyway. The toy's face is just weird enough to not have a great likeness: the eyes are painted too far apart, and the entire shape of her head seems slightly "off." Harley's movie costume is pretty white-trashy. She wears a white choker with gold letters that read "PUDDIN," a white and red raglan with ¾-length sleeves, a shoulder holster, gold bracelets, a black belt with golden studs, blue and red booty shorts, fishnets, and these weird hybrids between sneakers and stripper shoes. The shirt is wrinkled and torn, but the paint is incomplete. It has the "Daddy's Lil Monster" slogan on the front, but the red on the shoulders should go out wider, and there should be blue on the left elbow. The fishnet stockings are sculpted, rather than an attempt to make them for real or just paint them on. Speaking of paint, Mattel made a game effort at Harl's tattoos. There's the heart below her eye; "Rotten" on her jawline; "HA HA HA" over some tally marks, a jester head, Puddin, a heart with an arrow and P+H in the center, and "I'll wait foerever" on her left thigh; and "Let me tell you a sekret" [sic], hearts and diamonds, "I ♥ Puddin" and "Harley + Puddin" on her right thigh. The ones on her legs are all upside down, making it clear she did them herself (though compared to on-set photos, they appear to be rotated a little too far to the outside). We are missing the diamond pattern on her right forearm, though, and they didn't paint her fingernails. Similarly, her bat is missing a lot of its details. It has the big letters that read "GOOD NIGHT," but is missing the harlequin pattern above the tape, and the manic scrawling all over the rest of it. Yes, that would be complex to do, but if they can handle her tattoos, they could handle this, as well. The articulation is not great. She has the same joints Mattel gives everything - balljointed head, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, swivel/hinged elbows, swivel wrists, a hinged torso, swivel waist, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, hinged knees, and hinged ankles - but the neck is barely a swivel, and the chest and ankle hinges move only a few millimeters at best. Harleen Quinzel went to college on a gymnastics scholarship, she needs to be able to move! It's already hard enough to get her to stand, since she's wearing high heels; being unable to do anything with the ankles is not helping her cause at all. Harley comes with a piece of this series' Killer Croc Build-A-Figure, the left leg. Croc is wearing pants and sneakers, and apparently has spurs on his heels? Why? Also, the leg will plug onto the pelvis not at the hips, like almost every other BAF you could name, but rather at the thigh joint. Movie Harley seems like a decent interpretation of comicbook Harley, even with her "hey fangirls, you can make this yourself real easily" costume. But this toy is kind of disappointing. Of course, with the way Mattel is running the line, you're going to have a lot more chances to find a version you like. -- 07/27/16

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