REVIEW: DC Superhero Girls Hawkgirl

It's been awhile since I've had a DCSG review to do! I was pretty excited for Hawkgirl's arrival. I ended up cancelling my regular pre-order and pre-ordering two warehouse deals, one of which arrived today. I saved a few bucks and the doll is fine. The back of the box was just dented, so I didn't take a pic of it, but they don't even use doll images on the back anyway.

I have mixed feelings on this doll. While I'm not nearly as negative and picky as a lot of collectors who have voiced their complaints, it is obvious that poor Hawkgirl is not up to the regular quality of the $19.99 signature dolls.

However, she's an awesome Latina powerhouse of a superhero, so I'm glad to have her in my collection. Better to exist as an imperfect doll than not to exist at all!

First thing's first, this is NOT her stock hair. I was not pleased with her stock hair at all. It had a huge wave in it from being in the box and it was a complete mess. I tried a conditioning treatment, but when I returned from work, there was no change, so I went straight to boil treatment. Now I'm quite pleased with it, but don't think yours is going to have hair like this! The stock hairstyle is partially pulled back anyway. But it is easy to achieve this simple look by boil treating, so her hair isn't a complete loss. The hair quality on this line is so mixed.

Her face and newly-fixed hair are lovely.

She comes with her wings, mask, harness, belt, gauntlets, pants and boots. I do wish she had her mace, but she has a buttload of plastic pieces already, so yeah, that didn't happen.

I didn't take a fully undressed picture, because I didn't think it was necessary. She has a yellow torso so it's not that hard to imagine.

I, for one, am not bothered by the torso. I hate trying to velcro shirts around wings and move the fabric away from the attachment place. It sucks and it doesn't always work well. The yellow torso seems an easy way out of that.

The thing that does bother me is the lack of the torso joint. I figured this might be to accommodate the heaviness of her wings, thinking they had a mechanism that would make them move.

They don't.

Her wings just plug into the hole on her back and that's it. They're all one piece.

There is absolutely no reason they had to take the torso joint away. The harness would have even covered a lot of it.

Maybe they thought it would mess with the harness staying in place? It does do that really well, even not held down with the clear plastic band. I would actually think a joint there would have helped the harness stay in place.

Here are the giant, one-piece wings. They're nicely sculpted and properly huge, but I wish they moved. I mean, I am glad they're one solid piece instead of two, because one of the two inevitably likes to fall out, but movement. I wanted movement. She's an action doll! Even my childhood Princess of Power Angella and Flutterina had moving wings.

The harness is neat though. I like the emblem on it and 80s me gets Thundercats vibes from it.

Her mask though. They're my other main nitpick. First is the lack of wing movement and if we're not getting that then why is there no torso joint? The second is the mask. Their arms are angled down. They're designed to sit on top of her head.

While that's where you see them in the show most often, it would not have been hard to design them like typical glasses.

If you put them on her face where they sit right, the arms fit too low for her ears to help hold them in place. Which is the entire point of arms on glasses. They will sit there, but not easily.

Put the arms resting on top of the ears where they should be and this is what you get.

Sigh.

So yes, that is Hawkgirl. Overall, I'm glad to have her. She was a notable missing piece from my DCSG collection and now that's filled. I do like her overall design, but I feel like they shorted her on a lot of things. If she'd come out at the beginning, she would have had more detail.

I'm just crossing my fingers at this point that they keep on with DCSG. Cheetah has been found in stores, so that's a good sign, but I want at least Miss Martian and preferably also Star Sapphire. And Big Barda and Lady Shiva. Perfect two-pack waiting to happen. Just keep giving me more characters, please, Mattel, but remember to make your older characters before the brand new ones!

PHOTO CREDITS: Mine.