In recent years, I have dutifully purchased Mattel's WWE WrestleMania Elite sets (see reviews of 38, 39 and 40), but I was very much on the fence for this most recent offering.
Why? Because I like to create a visual representation of big WrestleMania moments on my WrestleMania Tribute Shelf, but nothing in this set really scratched me where I itched.
But once again, I still decided to make Mattel a little bit wealthier by picking up their latest Mania collection. Let's take a closer look...
All the figures in this collection are made to look like their various WrestleMania matches and, like previous WrestleMania Elite sets, each comes with part of a Build-A-Figure.
Seth Rollins is in his WrestleMania XXXIX gear (kind of), when he took on Logan Paul. I say "kind of" because the whole appeal to that gear was the huge puffy robe he wore to the ring. This figure doesn't come with that, which makes it somewhat lacking. I mean, the base figure is decent enough, but there are seemingly 15,000 other Rollins figures on the market - why is this one any different?
Hulk Hogan is straight out of WrestleMania XXX (where he opened the show and screwed up the venue, calling it the "SilverDome" instead of the "SuperDome"). While I'm not sure that warrants its own figure, I appreciate that they've made numerous Hogans in the last few years, and are probably running out of unique looks. Plus, this figure (which comes with removeable do-rag, sunglasses, T-shirt and feather boa) is far better than the Basic figure that Mattel made of the moment many years ago, during Hogan's initial run with the Mattel license.
Bret Hart features the rarely-seen black singlet over top of pink trunks look, which signifies his WrestleMania IV battle royal loss to Bad News Brown. It's definitely a different look for The Hitman (especially if you consider this is where he first turned babyface in the WWF), but I wouldn't call it a stellar figure or anything.
Like Rollins, Bianca Belair is decked out in her WrestleMania XXXIX gear (where she faced Asuka) and comes with the Raw Womens Championship and removable shades. The black and gold outfit definitely pops, but I feel as though all of Bianca's Elite figures are exactly the same, minus the outfit color.
And finally... if you purchased all four WrestleMania 41Elite figures, you have the materials to put together a Build-A-Figure of Howard Finkel. This is one fig I actually needed for my collection, and it looks great, dressed up in a black tuxedo and old-school microphone.
Unfortunately, The Fink is the only real hero of this set and if I could have just purchased that one separately, I probably would have. A rare miss by Mattel.
