McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Gold Label Edition Merciless Patina Edition 2023 Exclusive
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00:00Not only did the Ares armor affect Batman, but also oxidization. Here's a
00:05look at McFarlane toys, the gold label collection Earth-12's Merciless, the
00:09patina edition.
00:12From Earth-12 comes the bloodthirsty Merciless, a nightmarish fusion of Batman
00:30and Ares. Clad in blazing blue armor and wielding the Godkiller sword, this
00:35member of the Dark Knights is a supremely powerful warmonger, taking all
00:39the best tactical skills of Batman and pairing them with the might of Ares.
00:43While Batman gets ready for battle in bronze, let's take the tape measure and
00:47see how tall the patina edition version of Merciless stands. Originally released
00:51as a C&C, that's a collect and connect for you not in the know, now Merciless is
00:55released as one figure and it's available over on McFarlane's site. It
00:59was a 2023 site exclusive and it was limited to only 5,700 pieces worldwide.
01:04Unfortunately though, it has since sold out, so if you guys want to get your
01:08hands on this version of Merciless, you might have to look online. The figure
01:11though is going to stand quite tall in fact, he's actually about eight and a
01:15half inches in height, where the patina edition of Merciless is 22 centimeters
01:19tall. That original OG Merciless by the way, here's what the figure looks like
01:23with this. Unlike though the patina edition where you essentially can buy
01:26the figure complete, the original version of Merciless had to be a collect and
01:30connect figure, in other words you had to buy multiple figures in order to snap
01:32everything together to build him. He is still though my favorite, probably top
01:36five favorite build-a-figure figures that we've gotten from McFarlane's team.
01:39Comparing him though with a Batman, obviously this would have been Batman
01:42wielding the Ares armor. A good candidate for that, at least for a regular
01:46size standing Batman. Here's what the figure though looks like with the
01:49Nightfall Batman. Everything from a circular display stand, to the Godkiller
01:53sword, to the podium standee that stores currently the trading card for
01:56Merciless, are all done in a patina finish. Patina essentially is a bronze or
02:01a similar metal that over time with oxidization develops a green or brown
02:05film, as you can probably already see from some of the green accents. The
02:09circular display stand is really no different than the circular stands that
02:12we always get with DC multiverse releases. Couldn't help but then notice
02:15that there's a little bit of marbling, perhaps just the type of plastic they're
02:18deciding to use. This is by the way gold plastic. If you were familiar with like
02:22old Transformers back in the early, like what late 90s early 2000s, there was
02:26something known as gold plastic syndrome, where gold plastic at the time, just by
02:29the way that they were curing it, was known for being brittle. There's nothing
02:33at all about this circular stand. There's also as well a Wonder Woman Batman
02:38kind of combination logo down below. That's pretty cool, but again like this
02:41will just go somewhat similar in color to Merciless, and again that's just gonna
02:45plug into either one of his boots. The figure also as well comes included with
02:48the podium stand. The stand, if you have been collecting any of these kind of
02:52deluxe or gold label edition release figures, they tend to always come with
02:55the exact same display stand. It's different this time though, is that we
02:59get now again that kind of brown color that we got with the circular stand. We
03:02now get a little bit of that patina off green like oxidization here. We get a
03:07little bit of green there on the sides as well. The top of the trading card can
03:11be easily slid off as you saw right there. On the side we got patina edition
03:14down below here. If I get my blasted finger out of the way, you got Merciless
03:17and a decent enough image there of Merciless featured on the front with the
03:20Godkiller sword in his hand. On the back of it, you're not getting in a read up
03:23though this time around. You're gonna get what instead? A certificate of
03:26authenticity. Just to say that this certifies that the limited edition
03:29worldwide product, the Merciless figure is an authentic and officially licensed
03:33by McFarlane toys. The figure was created, developed and designed by Todd McFarlane
03:37and his award-winning design group. Out of the 5700 limited release, the one that
03:41I happen to have right now is P45 and again this display stand is, well this
03:46trading card is just gonna slide into the display stand. Tends to be the case
03:49when we look at these deluxe figures like this. I don't usually put these in
03:53trading cards. I usually do for regular releases but when it comes to these like
03:56this, if they're gonna come included with a podium standee then I tend to
03:59display them as such on the actual standee itself. The figure also comes
04:04included with the Godkiller sword. I'm just gonna move this all out of the way.
04:07It's really no different than the original Godkiller sword that we did get
04:10only other than the fact that it's obviously here cast now and kind of
04:13again this bronze colored plastic. They've done best to
04:18try to add a little bit of a patina finish to it. The thing about it
04:21though is I feel like the coloring and this is something I'm gonna say quite a
04:24lot when we look at the Merciless himself. I feel like the coloring there
04:28needs to be or it needed to be at least a secondary color added. It's fine and
04:32good to maybe use the brown that they've used or this bronze color at the
04:35equivalent of bronze and then adding the green finish like this. It doesn't look
04:38as bad I feel on the sword because there's a whole lot more green added
04:41here. When we get to the actual figure I just don't feel like there's nearly
04:45enough contrasting darker colors. It's really all more just that brown color
04:49instead. This does by the way fit into his hands. It's not the easiest thing to
04:53do unfortunately. Let's just move the podium out of the way here. The figure's
04:56hands and the original Merciless also had this problem as well is that the
04:59plastic gets really hard. You could also heat this up in hot water if you wanted
05:04to but even like just the ends of his fingers you'll be finding your own
05:07fingers will begin pricked every single time you try to open up the hands. What
05:10you can do though instead is if you take the end of the of the hilt here just
05:15kind of angle it in as opposed to putting it down straight like this. If
05:17you angle it in sideways a lot of times you can kind of just dowel it as I'm
05:21doing right now. Dowel the hilt of the sword straight through his hand and he
05:25holds it fine that way. You can have him holding on this side or dare I say as
05:29well you can also have him holding it with this hand as well but you're gonna
05:32have the same problem either way. Getting the sword though out of his hands we're
05:36gonna probably come back to the sword and final looks of the figure. Just put
05:39it off to the side. By the way though all that twisting I was doing
05:45I just want to quickly show you guys so far has not flaked off the paint. One of
05:49my biggest worries I was having is putting this in his hand the way I was
05:53doing. I was worried that the paint was gonna come off. So far so good.
05:56Knock on wood and put that off to the side. Getting though a closer look at
05:59Merciless here. Now with the patina edition one of the neat things about the
06:02figures is that you can kind of put them on your shelf as if they were statues. I
06:06think with something like an Ares armor it would be a fitful kind of statute
06:10character. Something you can just kind of display in a hall of armor so to speak.
06:14Something like for example if you depending on really if you want to play
06:17out your scenarios when it comes to your dioramas you can kind of just depict the
06:20idea that the Ares armor was originally a statue and then Batman somehow
06:23acquired the armor that way. We all know though it wasn't really the case. The
06:27Ares armor is actually wielded by Ares himself and then essentially Batman by
06:30taking the armor became Merciless as you see right here. The original armor though
06:34would have all been done here in metallic blue. It does also lose some of
06:38the blue obviously now when we switch over to patina colors. The thing again
06:42about this is looking at the two figures I'll just pick them up so you guys can
06:45get a closer look at them. They haven't at least robbed his eyes. Had they only
06:49just painted this in the same coloring of the bronze as the rest of his body
06:52his eyes would not have had any personality whatsoever. The original
06:56version of Merciless as you can see does have the red eyes. The patina edition
07:00still manages to have the red eyes and I'm glad that they did because if not
07:03for that the eyes would certainly have been lost in the mix. Now of course
07:07when you're looking at two figures they are identical to one another. The only
07:10thing that would have been different is with Merciless he would have had to
07:12take the arms and obviously snap them in place. The head and you know again all
07:15that goes along with building these figures over a series of collecting four
07:19or five different figures that all have the different parts. Again with this you
07:23don't have to worry as much with this but the only problem with I have to say
07:26though when it comes to this Merciless armor the patina works really well but I
07:30feel like there's not nearly enough of it. You get the majority of this by only
07:33just the bronze that they get by essentially molding the figure all in
07:37that coloring of plastic. You only get a few suggestions though of the patina. You
07:41get it more in his face as you can see as they've airbrushed the green around
07:44his eyes down the front though of his kind of grill that he has on his mask
07:47and then the side of the helmet as well he's got again the wings of the bat
07:51which one of my favorite aspects of Merciless is the fact that he retained
07:54the idea of a bat with the wings on the sides of his helmet. There's a little bit
07:57of patina there. The thing about it though again is when you're looking at
08:00the rest of the body short of maybe a few areas like the shoulder pads for
08:04example the gauntlets mostly here in its lower skirting and only just a few
08:08suggested areas there on the front of his legs he doesn't really have a
08:11whole lot of patina. I would have almost even said as well like taking some
08:16elements maybe perhaps from the card you can see like the card goes with the
08:19approach much darker. I mean obviously this is just an illustration of what the
08:23patina version of Merciless would have been looked like but just to take this
08:26as a cue you can see there's a lot more browns added in there something that I
08:30feel like the figure really rightfully deserved and without really adding extra
08:34any bit of that extra paint the figure kind of just feels like he's missing a
08:38whole lot of it. Adding maybe just a little bit of darker brown or maybe
08:41taking even like the coloring of the bronze that he has now just taking one
08:45color darker than that and airbrushing some of that I think would have just
08:48added a really nice contrast. Now if you are a talented artist, I'm not a talented
08:53artist, you could probably just take yourself like an airbrushing or just a
08:55washing of black and fill in some of those details. I really think the figure
08:59would look so much nicer had he only just had a little bit of a dark wash
09:03added to him because if you look at the way they just sculpted the armor
09:06there's nothing really from a complaint standpoint from the way they've molded
09:09the figure. The figure looks good but it just doesn't feel like it has a chance
09:13to shine that much because there's so much of the same color. Yeah
09:17you get the green but you don't get much of anything else really on the figure
09:20other than just the casting of the plastic. Some of the other details also
09:23as well as the fact he does have the little skull there motif on the front
09:27he also has some chains there on the side these are all done in hard plastic
09:30and he's got the torn kind of ripped off like loincloth or skirting that he has
09:35on the front of his body as well. The figure looks good I mean no complaints
09:38at all this is still one of my favorite molds for a C&C figure, collect and
09:41connect for those not in the know, but I just feel like again like the paint
09:45from the paint standpoint the green does work good because of course for a
09:48patina it has to oxidize and then the green and the brown starts to settle on
09:52the on the actual metal but there needed to be a whole lot more brown. The bronze
09:56works from the coloring that it is but I feel like this only needed to be the
09:59starting point and they need to add a lot more darker colors just to kind of
10:02make a lot of those features in the figure pop a lot better. Now for the
10:06figures articulation if you are familiar with Merciless his head sculpt
10:09and everything below that is gonna have all still the same retained pose
10:12ability. The head's gonna rotate back and forth but it's gonna be limited by the
10:16fact he does have now the collar piece there. The original Merciless would have
10:19had this as well so it really only means that you can move his head up down
10:22slightly back and forth rotating and just forget about it. I mean you can only
10:26rotate about that far back and forth because obviously he's gonna have the
10:29collar just in the way of things. He's also gonna have things in the way when
10:32it comes to his shoulders. Luckily though the shoulders are attached as you guys
10:36can see if they're attached by ball joints on the tops of his torso rather
10:40than his arms. So what you can actually do too which is nice is that there's
10:44also some pose ability at play here for shoulders. They can rotate back and
10:47forth they can rotate up and down sometimes though periodically you'll
10:50notice this does happen they pop off their ball joints you just pop them back
10:54in place. With them being able to move though you can easily move his arms then
10:57probably beyond the point of 90 degrees you can take the arms and move them
11:00forward you can move them back somewhat realistically you can also rotate them
11:05all the way around just the shoulders are gonna get in the way of things he
11:08does have no swivel here in his bicep necessarily not like not here necessarily
11:13but he does have a swivel just below that more at the elbow he does have a
11:17bend in the elbow which was really tight I noticed here on this figure there you
11:20can see it's a ratcheted joint and the hands do rotate all the way around just
11:23a little bit harder because obviously he's got the gauntlets there in the way
11:26his upper torso I'll just get his other arm down here his upper torso is gonna
11:30be on a ball joint lower from that just above the skirts he actually does have
11:34an abdomen ball joint to the skirt on the side is all soft plastic the
11:39skirting that he has on the front is also soft plastic so the legs split
11:42fairly easy out you can take them and move them forward you can move them back
11:46there's a swivel there at the top of the thigh there's a double hinge on the knee
11:50which again is really tight in this figure and again there's the art ankle
11:53articulation not only back and forth but you can also rock it back and forth
11:56as well and of course the figure despite being a bill a build a figure or
12:00collecting connect does manage still to pull off toe articulation as well right
12:03the figure as a whole though again looks good was one that I definitely wanted to
12:08get to my collection again bringing back in the original merciless merciless
12:12still top 5 top 5 for me the figure looks good like the idea that you could
12:16depict this guy on your on your shelf as a statue less as a character the thing
12:22only that's really missing though unfortunately on him is probably still
12:24the same things you guys were noticing yourself mold looks good it just feels
12:28like it doesn't give as much of a chance to shine because there's not enough
12:31darker colors the green works well from a patina standpoint but it just really
12:35needed a lot more darker colors to be honestly fair though the original
12:39merciless never really had dark colors either they essentially just wash the
12:42figure from top to bottom in that metallic blue or essentially cast the
12:45figure in that coloring of plastic but while casting it though in the bronze
12:49works well it really definitely needed though like taking some cues from the
12:52card it needed to have so much darker colors added in there as well just take
12:56I mean imagine if you will close your eyes might be don't close your eyes look
12:59at the figure look at the card and then just think for yourself had they taken
13:04the Godkiller sword have they added like a darker finish that they've added here
13:07again I know this is only an illustration but again like to look at
13:10this seeing some of the darker colors they had here on the arm seeing the way
13:14they've added a darker color for the front of his torso take that core idea
13:17and then just throw it on to the actual plastic figure just think of how much
13:21better merciless would have looked as a result of it so far what I've done with
13:24the patinas that collected is I put them on the shelf with the idea that they're
13:27either tributes or monuments that not necessarily Batman or Superman would
13:31ever be cast in bronze or even for that matter have oxidized green rusting on
13:35them but as a statue it always thought it made more sense to me for Ares
13:39actually one of the things I had an idea for for merciless was that Batman never
13:42really had to beat Ares in order to acquire the powers of merciless what he
13:46did though instead was that he went to this statue and I'm using that in bunny
13:50ears either using incantation or the statue inadvertently broke and Batman
13:54got the powers of Ares that way to be therefore become merciless obviously
13:58from a mold standpoint merciless is gonna be using the same one as the
14:02collect-and-connect merciless we did get from before stripping away again all the
14:05metallic blues in favor though of bronze the bronze works okay the oxidized green
14:10also works okay but I don't feel like there's nearly enough of it there's not
14:14enough maybe for example greens that they probably could have added more to
14:17like the torso maybe the back of his body maybe to his arms and there's
14:21definitely as I mentioned in this review there's not nearly enough darker colors
14:24maybe perhaps taking some of the colors of the bronze and just dropping it down
14:28a notch airbrushing some slightly darker shades of that I think would have added
14:32nice light and dark contrast to the statue short of that maybe something
14:36that either as a customizer if you had the talented skills to go in there with
14:40even just a dark wash of black paint probably could really jazz up this
14:43statue and give it much more of a rusted aged look than it is looking like
14:47right now if you guys are interested again to get this one for yourself
14:50originally it was released as a 2023 McFarland store site exclusive since
14:55then though unfortunately it has sold out so if you guys are interested get
14:58this one for yourself you're probably gonna have to check around to places
15:00like eBay and hope that you're not gonna have to pay through the roof what do
15:04you guys think of this let me know down below in the comment section have you
15:06first of all collected any other patinas and if you have you treat them like the
15:10characters or do you kind of do what I do and treat them more like statues let
15:13me know what you think of them down below in the meantime if you guys did
15:16enjoy this video do it a solid throw it a like if you want to stick around more
15:19for more haha well first of all you can hit that subscribe second you can turn
15:23on the bell but the most important thing and always the most important thing is
15:26that you're coming back on a regular basis as always guys thanks for watching
15:29see you guys next time