AEW Unrivaled The Young Bucks figure review Wave 1
I loved watching The Young Bucks as the punk juniors tag team of The Bullet Club and gradually grew to buy them as heavyweight champs despite their reliance on super kicks and Sabu-esque consistency rate on hitting some of their double team moves.
One of the obvious benefits of the AEW Unrivaled line was I’d finally get a chance to add the Young Bucks to my mini-Bullet Club collection with the Mattel Finn Balor/AJ Styles, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. Now I’m hoping Tama Tonga and Bad Luck Fale will spend six months in AEW so I can complete my version of Bullet Club.
Agendas aside, Wicked Cool Toys/Jazwares have quickly made their presence known with its AEW Unrivaled series and I was very much looking forward to breaking out the Wave 1 Young Bucks to launch a super kick party. Let’s see how they turned out.
Packaging: The good — The gold foil and black base looks infinitely classy and the back features the reference attire allowing for a direct comparison on how well WCT accomplished the look in figure form.
The bad — is there really no one at WCT that wanted to tack on a few sentences for a bio? Heck, I’d do it for a figure each wave. Also, the sides seem like a lot of wasted space with the small photo in the bottom.
Likeness: WCT absolutely killed Matt’s head sculpt. The dude exudes cockiness and this likeness is dead on. I don’t think WCT will be able to top this one with any future Matt figures and it might be one of the best we see in the entire line. It’s that good. From the smirk to the sideburns, this looks like Matt Jackson.
Nick’s head sculpt isn’t nearly as good. The gritted teeth expression makes him look too intense and that’s not the Bucks’ default persona. Unless you’re including alternate head sculpts, a basic neutral one is always the best way to go.
The part choices are solid and capture their slender physiques well. With this ring gear, the Bucks are wearing their Elvis-inspired outfits with the bell bottom flares with some sculpted rhinestones and fringes.
Scale: Nick stands at 5’11” compared to Matt at 5’10”. They match up precisely height wise with the 5’10” Fenix and 5’11” Penta El Zero M. Both are looking up slightly at the 6’ Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page and 6’1” Cody.
WCT seems to be interested at scaling the figures properly as they line up close enough that I’m happy with them so far.
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Paint: This first series of Unrivaled figures features an unwelcome bonus — ghost skin tones. It’s an issue WCT exces have stated would be fixed and they’ve made good on that in subsequent waves. Thanks to the ease of disassembling the figures you could swap the torsos out with later Bucks figures if you really like this attire.
That’s not a bad solution as the attire elements are very well done. This particular attire features heavy rhinestone use, which isn’t feasible with figures. WCT did a nice job replicating that look via paint and there are no issues with the patterns being misaligned.
I don’t think this attire has the highest degree of difficulty, but it was important to get it right for that first wave impression.
Articulation: I didn’t realize how limited some of my Mattel figures really were until I started playing around with these Unrivaled figures. The extra range in motion from the tilting torso, extended torso range and wider split hips really add to the poseability.
It’s still going to be a challenge hitting some of the more complex submission moves — maybe butterfly shoulders would help? — but this is definitely an enhancement over the Mattel Elite articulation scheme.
The Young Bucks have:
- neck
- bicep
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbows (double-jointed)
- wrists
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double-jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: The big accessory here is the ring gear with leather-like material for the jacket with cloth fringes. Again, adding tiny rhinestones would have made the attire look even better, but the paintwork is more than acceptable in this case.
The fringes have a reflective material that definitely gets the job done of conveying that rhinestone type sparkle.
I’m a big fan of the execution here and the level of difficulty is pretty high for $20 figures.
Worth it? I grabbed each of the Young Bucks for $20 apiece. They’re not packed with accessories, but the jacket really adds to the value here.
Rating: 9.2 out of 10
Matt’s excellent head sculpt is offset by Nick’s extreme expression. The skin tone issue is a little lame, but I can let it pass for this first wave. The ring gear really helps sell the figures and makes them worth grabbing.
Where to get it? AEW Unrivaled was exclusive to Walmarts. The odds of finding Wave 1 — or any waves at this point — are slim, but if you do happen to see these guys and like this particular attire, grab ‘em quick.
Check out the Young Bucks’ book, Killing the Business, now on Amazon.