McFarlane Collector Edition Kite-Man review (2025)
Kite-Man is a character who was largely written off as a lame, joke character until Tom King managed the impossible — he made Kite-Man cool. King’s Batman run ended on a disappointing note, but one of the highlights was The War of Jokes and Riddles, which included a fresh origin for Kite-Man. It stuck, along with his “Hell Yeah” catchphrase, and he’s been an unlikely fan favorite ever since.
McFarlane Toys’ run with the DC license is ending, but they are taking some inspired shots in the final months with the DC characters including making an actual Kite-Man figure for the Collector Edition line.
Let’s see if this figure flies high or gets stuck in a tree.
Packaging: Kite-Man has the standard Collector Edition packaging with the silver foil accents instead of white. This is also the chase version, so he’s got a gold foil ‘Gold Label’ tag as well.
The side notes that the base version of the figure is based on his appearance in Batman: Rogues. I’m pretty sure the art on the back is from The War of Jokes and Riddles (available in trade paperback format at Amazon).
Likeness: Rather than just give him a classic paint scheme, McFarlane Toys went the extra route and added a new head sculpt to accommodate his helmet. That’s a cool extra bonus that was definitely not expected.
For the grief McFarlane Toys gets — and it’s warranted sometimes — this really helps to make this classic version stand out from the standard figure especially if you were interested in both versions. He’s got a slight smirk, which makes sense for the character as well.
The details weren’t spared on the helmet sculpt either as the kite in the center was included. Kite-Man doesn’t have a fully classic costume as the sculpted harness pieces for his kite rig setup are carry overs from the modern figure. It’s a decent trade-off for getting an accurate helmet.
For the rest of the body, it’s the far too commonly used Blue Beetle mold, which means Kite-Man has those goofy boot cuffs. His default hand sculpts are a right-hand thumbs up and open left hand.
Scale: Kite-Man normally is taking to the skies, so his height isn’t as key as it is for some other characters. The important thing is he’s shorter than Batman.
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Paint: Kite-Man’s classic color scheme naturally is a lot brighter than his more muted modern costume. That of course drew me to the old school costume.
The colors definitely pop with the green, light green and yellow combination. McFarlane will occasionally screw up the shades for colors, which they did here as well as add in an incorrect color. For his classic costume, Kite-Man only has green and a yellow green color scheme. So, the minty, light green section should be yellow green as well as the gloves and boots.
His belt was yellow, but it should be painted higher to stop at the yellow green torso instead of having more of the regular green peeking through.
For his goggles, the modern figure has a really cool paint job reflecting a skyline in the distance. The classic one is transparent, so his eyes are visible. Instead of going that route, McFarlane went with a thicker white line along the goggles’ brim and a fading white line in the middle. The effect doesn’t really work and looks like a sloppy paintjob.
Articulation: This Blue Beetle mold is mostly fine though it does have some imbalance with the legs so they’re slight uneven.
Beyond that mold issue, Kite-Man is very fun to pose. He’s mostly an aerial character anyway so it’s not like he needs to be going toe to toe with Batman and Hawkman in every battle.
Kite-Man has:
- neck
- ball-jointed shoulders [with pop up/down point]
- elbow
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hip
- thigh
- knee
- ankle
- toe
Accessories: Collector Edition figures tend to have a lot more accessories or at least some major one compared to the standard Multiverse figure. Kite-Man comes with two sets of hands – trigger and fists.
He also has a removable harness with an additional front to store his kite.
When you want to attach the kite, it plugs into the harness.
The big accessory, of course, is his kite. It’s not fully to scale naturally, but it’s large enough to convey the general idea that he could use this to fly/glide through the Gotham skies.
Finally, he’s got the usual accessory kit of a black stand and a trading card with bio information.
Worth it? McFarlane Toys figures have seen a noticeable price increase this year. At one point the Collector Edition figures were $29.99. Now they’re $34.99 so the price crunch is definitely real. He doesn’t have enough to justify the old price point, but he’s going to be a harder figure to track down later so pay this amount now or pay more later.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
The value isn’t exactly great, and the kite could be bigger, but this was a really fun, unexpected addition to the line and absolutely worth picking up.
Where to Get It? Kite-Man is exclusive to Target. If you can’t find him in stores, you can always try Target.com.
As an Amazon and Target affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.