Would You Buy This Wolverine?

Hot Toys makes some gorgeous one-sixth scale action figures. They look like miniaturized human beings! This is their X-Men Origins: Wolverine Hugh Jackman figure. I'm not a big Wolverine fan. I think, like Batman, he's over-exposed. Plus, if Chris Claremont has taught us anything, it's you write one good Wolverine story and for the next twenty years or so, every Wolverine writer re-hashes it and tries to out-badass each other to the point of cliche and self-parody.

Joss Whedon had some fun with him, though, didn't he?

I much preferred Wolverine when we knew hardly anything about him. Now we know everything there is to know about him, including his favorite toilet paper brand (Charmin Ultra Soft), and he's become ridiculous with all that vein-popping berzerker rage "I'm the best there is at what I do and what I do ain't very nice" nonsense. There's no mystery, just a humiliating origin and more than a century of convoluted adventures, kind of the poster-boy for everything I think is wrong with superhero comics these days.

To his credit, Hugh Jackman plays what I believed to be essentially an unplayable role with a lot of charm, at least in the three X-Men movies, none of which are are exactly cinematic classics. In fact, he took an indestructible jerk of a character, who could've been lost in the ensemble populating these action-adventure mediocrities, and made him much more likable and vulnerable than he needed to be. He's not exactly the comic book Wolverine; he's too human for that and so much the better. I have no idea how he comes across in the Wolverine solo flick, because frankly the trailer made it look asinine and you could probably pay me to watch it but I'm not about to pay you for the privilege.

But here he is in collectible form, and looking is free. The nose appears a trifle exaggerated and the face isn't exactly screaming, "I'm Hugh Jackman, suckas!" but he's still Wolver-recognizable for those of us who are geeks and aware of such things. He actually looks more Jackmanesque on the Hot Toys website. My favorite aspect, though, is his "Newly-developed Hot Toys hirsute muscular figure body."

Hirsute. Muscular. Figure. Body.

Just how much does Hot Toys hirsute body Hugh Jackman Wolverine cost? Oh baby, if you have to ask you can't afford it! No, I don't really know. He's not listed on Amazon Japan yet. If I have to hazard a guess, I'd say he's in the $150 range, perhaps higher. Hugh Jackman probably gets one for free!