Apache Chief is the till date. The Joker is just the bait.

September 4, 2026 is a Super Friends till morning. McFarlane Toys opened preorders for Wave 6 of the 6-inch DC Retro Super Friends line across Amazon, BigBadToyStore, Entertainment Earth, GameStop, Walmart, and the usual specialty tabs, and the trio on the card is The Joker, Apache Chief, and The Atom. ToyNewsI, DCCollectors, Mephitsu, and Toy Habits all print the same street for the books: today. A Warpland Superman platinum shows up in the same conversation, with GameStop called out early for that chase listing. I am not inventing a fourth mainline face. I am filing the wave McFarlane actually put on the cart.

This desk already watched the Hanna-Barbera Justice League shrink when the license story got loud. That piece, the shrinking league, was about the aisle feeling temporary. Wave 6 is the opposite mood for one morning. Apache Chief finally gets a modern 6-inch card. The Atom gets the clean red and blue Saturday suit. The Joker gets the purple coat and the grin that looks like a cereal box learned how to threaten a city. Retro scale. Up to roughly a dozen points of articulation on the line's usual promise. Art card in the box. That is the Super Friends religion McFarlane has been selling since the early waves, and today is when the next three faces go live.

Apache Chief is the till date. The Joker is the bait. The Atom is the quiet flex.

Price talk stays honest because I will not forge a press sheet number I have not seen. U.S. retailer pages for this line have been living in the mid-twenties to about thirty dollars per figure, and related chase listings in the same Super Friends family have already printed around $30. Treat that as shelf weather, not a sacred MSRP carved in Billund stone. The real cost is three figures if you want the wave, four if the platinum Warpland Superman is the joke you cannot leave behind, and a shipping email that will arrive whenever McFarlane's warehouse decides nostalgia is ready.

Apache Chief is the reason collectors will argue in the comments. He is a Super Friends original from 1977, the size-changing hero with the phrase kids yelled in living rooms, and he has been the missing adult card for people who already built a cartoon League out of earlier waves. Toy Habits walks the orange headband, brown vest, sash, boots, and bare torso like a model sheet that refused to get modernized. Soft goods chatter showed up in fan threads. I have not pinched a production sample. I will say the stills sell the Hanna-Barbera silhouette hard, and that silhouette is the product.

The Atom is the scientific counterweight. Ray Palmer in the red triangle, blue cowl, clean boots, forehead atom mark. No modern battle damage. No movie grit. Super Friends proportions on purpose. Size-changing heroes are a nightmare in plastic because the gimmick wants a second scale. McFarlane did the smart thing and sold the hero-sized Saturday morning read instead of a microscopic gimmick that disappears into carpet. That is shelf design. That is also why The Atom will look correct next to a cartoon Superman and slightly wrong next to a hyper-detailed Multiverse Batman, which is fine. This line was never trying to match Multiverse sculpt density.

The Joker is the retail oxygen. Purple suit, yellow vest, green hair, chalk face, oversized bow tie. Toy Habits is right that the head sculpt carries the joke. Without that grin the card is just another purple coat. With it, the figure explains itself from across a peg wall. Accessories in this line usually mean a small prop and the art card. I will not invent a specific gas flower or joy buzzer unless a listing prints it. What I trust is the costume read and the fact that every retro DC wave needs a villain who photographs well in a shopping cart screenshot.

Saturday morning is a scale. Wave 6 is how McFarlane keeps selling it.

Warpland Superman is the rumor that became a preorder tab. Bro-Depot spoiled the platinum talk early. DCCollectors repeats the animal-prison episode beat where Batman and Superman get twisted by alien nonsense. GameStop listings for the chase are part of today's noise. Chase figures are how modern waves tax completionists. If you only want the three mainline cards, ignore the platinum and sleep fine. If you need the weird Superman, watch the retailer that actually stocked the SKU instead of refreshing a wish list that never had inventory.

I already filed the Kenner ghost when Super Powers got its last Entertainment Earth wave. That story, the Kenner ghost's last wave, was 4.5-inch nostalgia with Flash and Martian Manhunter energy. Super Friends is a different church in the same McFarlane cathedral. Six-inch. Cartoon bright. Soft articulation philosophy. The two lines can share a collector without sharing a shelf language. Mixing them looks like a thrift store argument. Separating them looks like you understand what Saturday morning was selling.

Wave size anxiety is real and I will not paper over it. Earlier Super Friends assortments often felt like six-packs. McFarlane's Wave 6 language featured three faces hard, and Toy Habits correctly flagged the missing Legion of Doom names collectors still want. Scarecrow. Grundy. Grodd. Giganta. Those absences do not make Apache Chief fake. They make the wave feel like a partial apology. Buy what is on the card. Lobby for the next card. Do not invent a secret fourth mainline figure just because Discord wants one.

Shelf math for people who already own Waves 1 through 5 is simple and slightly cruel. Three more bodies want about nine inches of riser if you pose them in a row, more if Apache Chief gets a taller stance than The Atom. The art cards want a binder or a trash can. I prefer the binder. Soft goods, if production matches the chatter, want a steamer and a refusal to store the figure in a hot car. None of that is in a press release. All of it is how retro lines survive a year in a real apartment.

Distribution today is the usual modern scatter. Amazon for the people who live in Subscribe and Save brain. Walmart for the people who still believe in a blue bin miracle. GameStop for the platinum hunters. Entertainment Earth and BBTS for the collectors who want a pile of loot and a single shipping day. I will not invent stock counts. I will say a Super Friends wave with Apache Chief on the logo is the kind of drop that empties specialty tabs before the casual scrollers notice the Joker.

There is a soft politics in putting Apache Chief on a modern card, and I will keep it on the Collectibles desk instead of writing a culture-war essay. The character is a 1977 cartoon invention with a transformation phrase kids copied. McFarlane is selling the model sheet. Collectors who want the deep roster complete will buy him. Collectors who only buy Batman-adjacent purple coats will buy the Joker and leave Chief for the secondary market. Both behaviors are already visible in every prior wave. Today's cart just makes the split louder.

Compare the ask to a Multiverse 7-inch deluxe and Super Friends still wins on clarity. You know what you are getting: bright plastic, cartoon faces, articulation that favors play over museum microposes. You also know what you are not getting: fabric capes with wire, ultra likeness, or a $50 price that needs a TED Talk. That clarity is why the line keeps working even when the DC license weather gets weird. It sells a specific television memory, not a cinematic universe press tour.

Buy the wave today if your Super Friends row has a Chief-shaped hole and you are done waiting for a mystery assortment. Buy The Atom alone if you care about clean costume geometry more than villain memes. Buy the Joker if you need the photograph that explains the line to guests. Skip the platinum if Warpland Superman is a punchline you can live without. Skip the whole wave if you already decided Hanna-Barbera DC is a closed chapter on your shelf. Retailers will keep the tabs up until the allocation story ends.

Packaging is part of the product on this line and I will not pretend otherwise. The Super Friends cards are bright on purpose. They want to look like they fell out of 1978 and landed in a modern specialty aisle. That design choice is why casual shoppers photograph the Joker first and why collectors photograph Apache Chief second. The art card inside is the quiet add-on that becomes a binder problem. Keep it. Trade it. Do not leave it under a soda can in the car. Retro lines live and die on whether the ephemera survives the first week.

There is also the soft goods question hanging over Apache Chief. Fan coverage flagged cloth elements in the reveal chatter. Soft goods on a mid-price retro figure can be a gift or a curse. Gift if the drape reads like the cartoon sash. Curse if the first wash cycle turns the vest into a sad napkin. I am not inventing a care tag. I am saying anyone who preorders Chief should plan for fabric the way they plan for paint rub on purple coats. That is adult collecting in 2026. The toy is half sculpt and half laundry anxiety.

Retail timing matters because September 4 is also a crowded Collectibles Friday. LEGO is yelling about dead consoles. Cards are yelling about Gift Bundles. Statues are yelling about eyes. Super Friends has to win on clarity. Three faces. One scale. One television memory. If your cart is already full of $180 grey bricks, these figures are the cheap joke that still completes a shelf. If your cart is empty, they are the easiest way to feel like you participated in the day's nostalgia without refinancing a cabinet.

I keep returning to articulation philosophy because it explains the line better than any SKU number. Super Friends figures are not meant to recreate a comic panel mid-air. They are meant to stand in a Hall of Justice tableau and survive a kid nephew for ten minutes. That dual audience is why McFarlane keeps the sculpt language simple. Clean boots. Big chest logos. Faces that read at three feet. When a line forgets that, it becomes another hyper-detailed adult toy that gathers dust beside Hot Toys. Wave 6 still remembers the cartoon.

Final cart note before I close the tab. If you only buy one, buy Apache Chief. He is the character the modern aisle rarely reprints at this scale with this fidelity. If you buy two, add The Atom for costume geometry. If you buy three, take the Joker and admit you wanted the photograph. If you buy four, congratulations on the platinum tax. Preorders opened today. The till date is Apache Chief. Everything else is how McFarlane gets you to clear the rest of the card.

My own cart is embarrassingly sincere. Apache Chief first. The Atom second. Joker if the portrait still looks like the stills when the package arrives. Warpland Superman only if the GameStop page is not a haunted house by supper. I want them on a short riser with the earlier Super Friends, not mixed into Multiverse sludge. Preorders are live. September 4 is the date McFarlane printed. Saturday morning just got three more inches of plastic and one chase that will ruin someone's weekend in the best way.