WWE Ultimate Edition Doink the Clown review
Doink the Clown was one of the more ingenious creations of the New Generation era. Vince McMahon crafted a gem and found the ideal man to play the role in Matt Borne. Doink was the second of three figures that were tiers for the WWE Ultimate Edition New Generation Arena.
For a lot of collectors, I think Doink was more of a selling point than his fellow incentive tier mate Diesel. Let’s see if this clown is a joke or worthy of our respect.
Packaging: As with the normal UE packaging, it’s mostly red with white accents.
In a fun twist with Doink, both the top and bottom inner packaging has various laughs as the text.
The side portrait features a great heel Doink reference photo. The rear has the figure action shot and an in-action reference photo.
Along the side, we get a classic Doink portrait. As usual, the back features an action shot of the figure and a reference photo. I still fully appreciate the stat breakdown and the bio is superb as always.
Likeness: Doink has an amazing head sculpt. It’s full of disdain and disgust. The sculpt also captures the sock hood nature of his costume with the opening for the face paint. That’s a nice additional effort to make this as authentic as possible.
Doink was a little thick and this figure reflects his wider torso. I love this as I’ve been anticipating Mattel introducing some new body parts into the UE line. The lower half is a reuse of the previous Doink figure, which did a nice job of capturing his physique properly.
Scale: At 5’10” Doink was hardly a giant of this era. He was looking up at most stars from the 6′ Bret Hart, 6’1″ Macho Man Randy Savage and the 6’3″ Mr. Perfect. He’s definitely towered by the 6’10” Diesel.
Paint: Doink has a very intricate outfit with spandex tights painted like a clown suit. Mattel’s first Doink skewed closer to his stint as a face while this one features a darker color palette with Doink’s green color scheme.
The green could be even darker as Doink’s outfit had a grimy look to it. Getting the paint right on an online only figure is pivotal in earning customer trust so it was great to see Doink didn’t suffer from any major problems.
Naturally, the yellow paint against the green is somewhat weak. Yellow almost always needs an additional coat of paint or two from the base paint underneath to properly stand out without some bleeding.
The tie area was the only somewhat troublesome portion with some sloppiness. Doink’s facepaint had no issues, which helps to sell his perturbed, demented state.
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Articulation: Doink might have the gimmick of a clown, but Matt Borne was a skilled wrestler capable of going toe to toe with some of the best grapplers of his era from Bret Hart, Mr. Perfect, Shawn Michaels and the 1-2-3 Kid.
You won’t have a problem pulling off his moves thanks to the addition of the butterfly shoulders, which helps with grappling holds.
Doink can get a very effective Boston Crab and of course, his signature Whoopie Cushion finisher.
Ultimate Edition Doink the Clown has:
- neck
- bicep
- ball-jointed shoulders
- butterfly shoulders
- elbows (double-jointed)
- wrists
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double-jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: Mattel really went all out with Doink’s accessories and he definitely feels like an Ultimate figure.
He’s got his cloth jacket. This is the first time we’ve gotten this as a removable accessory, and it’s really well done.
There’s some great detail right down to the sculpted flower and buttons and long coat tails.
Mattel even went the extra route and put plastic around Doink’s arms to ensure the coat didn’t bleed the red dye onto his arms.
Doink’s also got two additional head sculpts. One is a reuse of the fantastic Elite head sculpt tuned up a bit with True FX work with a default fluffed out hair. The other is a creepy mid-laugh expression with more of a clown-fro that is also tremendous.
The Elite Doink came with a bucket and a very clever setup with swappable wigs. While you’re gonna have to reuse the bucket, the UE Doink does have the swappable hair gimmick again, which further adds to the display options. And Doink rarely wore his hair the same way in consecutive appearances, so this is very accurate.
Doink gets two sets of swappable hands. One is the open-handed ones to play up his clown shtick and the others are grabbing hands for his final accessory — his mallet.
As far as I remember, Doink didn’t actually bring this to ringside with him and it was his gimmick weapon from WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game. Either way, it’s an awesome inclusion and is painted crisply with red & yellow and blue & white stripes.
Worth it? Like any crowd funding effort, Doink is more or less a freebie to help offset the cost of the project. These days a standard Ultimate Edition figure costs $32.99 and I don’t have a problem with that price for Doink when factoring in the cloth jacket and the creative, innovative work on him.
Rating: 10 out of 10
While I might have been slightly underwhelmed with Doink’s set mate, Diesel, I’ve got no such issues with Doink — a terrific figure and one that should be in the running for Best of the Year honors.
Where to get it? The only way you’re getting Doink is through resellers. Mattel execs have already said Doink is not getting another Ultimate Edition release so you might have to bite the bullet on this one.