Should Elites start evolving into Ultimates?

I hate toe articulation I hope they don’t implement that going forward but I fear it’s already being put on all forthcoming elites

This post has opened my eyes. I now love giant noticeable hinges on the side of the figure and poorly engineered torso cuts that don’t flow into each other. How could I have been so blind?

That’s fine. I was mostly commenting on your statement that saying they’re ugly is wrong. They *are* ugly. They break up the sculpt and look unnatural. You can like them, but it’s not factually wrong to think they’re ugly.

The problem is they’re going halfway with it. They’re trying to make these modern torsos but they’re also making them the same way as the old ones to save costs and be able to reuse parts on elites if needed. The AEW torso works, imo, because the two pieces are not connected and one sits on top the other, allowing them to be designed to have the ab movement flow nicely from one piece to the next (with a few exceptions there’s a few ugly ones but for the most part). The AEW torsos (not all but some) also have indents in the shoulder area to allow the shoulder joints to move slightly further even without butterflies

I don’t know how you make butterfly joints better than they already are, but they’re slowly (painfully slowly, TNA had them in 2006) going to become the standard on action figures

I’ll chime in and say that it’s just Mattel’s poor execution. The problem that I find is that the mid section where the ultimate edition torsos meet are too thin on the sides. Instead they should be wider. Look at the UE Undertaker for example, first Ultimate Warrior etc. They look really odd and unproportionate. These torsos can look good and some prime examples are Storm Collectibles Hogan or their Street Fighter line. I also think some of the interchangeable hands look off too as far as scale goes. Rey’s hands are too big etc. As far as butterfly joints go, I think Macfarlane and Marvel do good jobs too. I’ll give it to Mattel they’ve fixed some of their ultimate edition torsos like Austin, Flair, Kane, Hogan. Those all look decent imo. What does bother me are these pinless joints. There’s absolutely no benefit to them besides the look. You can’t swap them or even fix a loose joint.

Yeah, I’m not against the type of torso joint. I think the way Mattel did it is bad. Now they’re pretty much stuck with it because they invested in the tooling.

The way I’d like companies to do “butterfly joints” is even simpler than the way they all do. The peg that goes from the shoulder ball into the torso could be a ball and socket joint. They could increase the cavity the shoulder goes into to allow for more motion and not only would you get forward and back motion, but you’d get it in all directions. Arm swapping would also be easier in this instance.

I know this method would work because it’s already been done. If anyone is familiar with the Shodo Dragonball Z line, they have this style on 1/18ish figures and it works great. I’m still surprised no one has done it in a larger scale yet, especially since it cuts down on parts and engineering.

I have to agree here. I recently saw some Marvel figs with the butterfly joints and it looked far more natural on a torso with sculpted clothing. The butterflies on the bare chest Ultimates look objectively goofy compared to most of the chest molds of the elites. It's a huge step forward for play and pose-ability but a substantial step backwards on aesthetics. They have grown on me though and they do feel more premium in-hand compared to Elites. I do think Ultimates as a line are a much better value now with the butterflies. The Ultimates prior to the switch feel pretty underwhelming compared to Elites at the time and they haven't held up as well imo.

I'm still not a big fan of the torso mechanic. It looks alright but the mobility and pose-ability is closer to a basic than the ab-crunch of the elites. I see a lot of people say this is much better executed in the AEW figs so that gives me some hope for the tech. It's a little embarrassing that Mattel is getting outworked by Jazzwares on issues of quality such as this. And I don't mean that as any knock to Steve or the guys on the WWE license over there. It's sad the penny pinching for higher profit margin constraints they have to work around inside a global corporation. You'd think the deep resources of a company that's been at the top of the toy business for 5+ decades would provide its teams with every advantage they could in order to properly execute a AAA merch license such as the WWE.

Then what would be the point of ultimates

I think so yes

Hasbro has so many unique bodys for marvel legends and even gi joe classifieds and they do the butterfly joints on regular figures so i dont see why not