An unlicensed Riddler from Argentina, a wave that barely shipped, and a playset nobody kept the box for. What is genuinely scarce in Super Powers, and why.
The Hard Ones
Every toyline has its grails. What makes Super Powers unusual is that its toughest pieces are tough for three different reasons, and if you don't sort out which reason you're dealing with, you'll waste money. Rare, expensive, and hard-to-find-nice are not the same problem, and they don't have the same solution.
- Short production. Series 3 got cut off mid-run. There just aren't many.
- Distribution. The mail-aways never hung on a peg, so they survive in different numbers and different condition than anything you could buy at a store.
- Regional and unlicensed. A few figures never shipped in the US at all. One of them Kenner never authorized in the first place.
The Argentine Riddler
The Pacipa Riddler is the big one, and it's barely a Kenner figure. Pacipa made it in Argentina without Kenner's blessing — a repainted Green Lantern mold, sold only down there. It's the rarest and priciest thing in the entire Super Powers world, usually $2,000 to $3,000 in 2026.
If you're new, know two things before you start hunting. Because it's a repaint of a common mold, it's the easiest figure in the line to fake, and fakes are everywhere. (We give that its own article: see Watch-Outs.) And McFarlane has since put out an Argentine-style Riddler on a Green Lantern-type body in its modern Super Powers line, so searching "Super Powers Riddler" now gets you two completely different things at two completely different prices.
This is the only figure here we put a dollar figure on, and only because the number has become part of the figure's reputation. Everything else below is relative on purpose — more on that at the end.
Series 3, especially Cyborg and Mister Miracle
The whole third wave is thin. Production was low, Kenner killed the line in February 1986, and the figures never got the distribution the first two waves had. Carded Series 3 is as good as a US collection gets.
Two are the real bears:
- Cyborg — the George Pérez design, Thrusting Arms, swappable drill and claw hands. Those hands are a second problem stacked on top of the first. A loose Cyborg with no hands isn't the same object as a complete one, and shouldn't cost the same either.
- Mister Miracle — one of the Kirby Fourth World sculpts, and brutal to find carded.
Rough rule: Series 1 figures are what you buy when you see them. Series 3 figures are what you wait for.
A complete, boxed Hall of Justice
The Hall of Justice was the line's only playset, and it's the piece people call "hard" when what they mean is "hard to find in one piece." It was a big cardboard-and-plastic thing that folded up into a carrying case. Which is to say it was built to be hauled around, and it was.
Completeness is the whole ballgame here: the landing pad and its ramp, the elevator, the security doors, the jail-cell trap doors, the revitalization chambers. Boxed and complete, it brings serious money. Loose and missing the ramp, you'll trip over them.
The Series 2 vehicles — scarce the other way around
The Kalibak Boulder Bomber and the Darkseid Destroyer flopped when they were new and sat on clearance racks after the cancellation. That history cuts both ways, and it's worth being clear about it. Plenty were made. They're not rare the way the Riddler is rare. What they are is condition-sensitive — clearance toys get bought cheap, opened, played with, and stored in a garage, so a boxed one in decent shape is genuinely uncommon even though the toy itself isn't.
The Batcopter came out in the same wave and did fine at retail. If you're going after the 1985 vehicles, the two Fourth World ones are where the work is.
Mail-away Clark Kent
Clark Kent never hit a store shelf. He was a mail-in during Series 2, which makes him a prize and also changes what "complete" even means — there's no card to grade, so the mailer and its packaging become the thing people argue about.
Steppenwolf was a mail-in too in some markets, and how he was distributed varies by region. But Clark is the Series 2 mail-away.
What about prototypes?
Man-Bat, Darkseid's Tower of Darkness, and the All-Terrain Trapper are the most famous Super Powers items you can't buy, because they were never made. Hardcopies and test shots turn up now and then, but they live outside the market this article is about. We handle them in Sub-Hobbies.
A note on prices
You'll notice exactly one number in this whole piece. That's on purpose. Price ranges go stale faster than anything else on a collector site, and a guide that tells you a $400 figure is a $150 figure has done real damage to whoever read it. We're going to carry rarity and value as dated fields on the records themselves rather than bury it in prose. Until then, treat this as a map of what's hard, and check completed sales for what things are actually bringing.
Where to go next
Read Condition & Completeness — that's the one that turns "I found one" into "I should buy this one." Or head straight to the Toy Database, which flags international variants and prototypes right alongside the retail releases.