3B's Toy Hive

Christian
WWE Elite Collection series 20 - Flashback
Mattel
$16.99 (TRU)

I'll come right out and say it: this is "Figure-of-the-year" material, ladies and gents. Christian's FB release edges out his buddy's figure as the better of the two. The reason is the head sculpt. It's vastly superior to what Edge received. His hair is a separate, soft plastic piece that's been glued on. His face features a lightly sculpted beard, but it's been painted blond to bring out some.

Christian is built on the slimmer torso with sculpted tights on the lower body. He comes with medium-sized elbow pads, which I feel are more accurate to his later and current look. I ended up switching the pads on mine for the smaller, Triple H type pads and I think it improves the figure.

The paintwork on this figure is fantastic. I expected no less since FB Edge's own attire turned out awesomely, too! Christian has single tattoo, which honestly isn't that impressive as it's rather simplistic.

The awesomeness begins when you get to his forearms. His three-tone wrist wraps are applied with gold, red and yellow paint and are sharply applied (another reason I prefer the smaller pads, they space out nicely from the wraps). The first FB Christian I picked up had a large chip on his right wrist wrap in the package. I was lucky enough to find a replacement a couple of weeks later. That was clearly a production error and not an across the board QC issue.

Moving on, the design on his tights incorporates black, red and purple paint to create the intricate flaming cross logos. Each logo is tampographed across four body parts (hip, thigh, knee & lower leg) and Mattel made it a point to paint the upper leg pin to make each design appear seamless. Kudos to them!

Finally, Christian's black boots feature a stylized "C" on the right side of each foot. These logos only required gold paint, but the they look great and to be honest is a detail I probably would have overlooked if they had been omitted.

Not counting the removable elbow pads, Christian includes two accessories: sunglasses and his ring shirt. You should be aware there was running change during production and some Christians went out with painted lenses, while the rest (mine included) feature transparent lenses. The glasses are molded in clear (but cloudy) yellow plastic with a silver-painted frame.

His ring shirt is very tight-fitting and is removable via the velcro strip down the back. It's hard to consider this an "accessory", at least in the way Mattel describes it on the package, because it's completely necessary in order to complete his ring attire. Basically, I equate the shirt to the elbow or knee pads on other figures. It would have been nice if Mattel tossed in a folding chair, though.

Of course, that would mean that Edge should have come with one, too...