Venture into the world of Mattel

So, here I am, out of the figure world for the longest time, thinking Ruthless Aggression is on about series 98, when I was extremely shocked to find out that Mattel had been granted the rights to do WWE figs. While I had mixed emotions, because I've seen Mattel's work, I went in with an open mind. I'm from the old school, LJN, Hasbro's, BCA, TTL, those are all standards to me. Then the RA and DA were absolutely welcome editions into my collection. Jakks seemingly could do no wrong in my eyes. The playability was great, most of the scans were dead on, it just seemed like a perfect match, granted Jakks did a lot of work with leaving detail off some of it's figs, but that's give and take. On some figs they went the extra mile, on some they couldn't care less.

So! to explore this strange new world of Mattel, I picked up a few over the past few weeks and now I think I'm ready to weight in. At my local target, I made claim to an Elite Undertaker, Elite CM Punk, and at my local Wal-Mart, I grabbed a series whatever Shawn Michaels, and here are my impressions:

Initially I loved the real scale. It makes sense, and it's really cool to stand an HBK up to a taker and see the size comparison that you didn't get with RAs or DAs. Love that. I also love some of the detail. I say some because, I look at Taker and CM Punk's tattoos and I'm just so ecstatic there's at least some attention to minut details going on over there at Mattel. Good job, however...look at Undertaker's eyes! With all the tattoo detail, you'd think they could make his face look more realistic. Punk and HBK don't seem to have this problem, and maybe it's just me...but it looks extremely plain. Also, the playability is very limited to me. Punk's knee pads stop him from even slightly moving his knees, and it's not like you can just slip them off. Same with Taker's elbow pad, so what's the point? HBK is even a notch lower than this. While I love how solid these bad boys are, you can't really do poses or play with them, and that really defeats the purpose for me, I know some people are MOC collector's and what not, but while the look and detail seems sleek, it just feels like a level below Ruthless Aggression. Not that RA was extremely playable, but my HBK looks so damn awkward going for that Superkick...it just doesn't look natural, and that's why I'm in love with my DA HBK. The Elite HBK coming out looks gangely and just...wierd.

Anyone else feel this way?