They are shrinking the Hanna-Barbera Justice League. The license is walking.

McFarlane showed three Super Friends and used the word "features" like a trapdoor. Wave 6 of the DC Retro Super Friends line is The Joker, Apache Chief, and The Atom. Six-inch scale. Hanna-Barbera colors. Preorders September 4, 2026, at select retailers. Toy Habits is the one who stopped at the wording. Previous waves in this line have typically been six figures. The official post, as Toy Habits quotes it, says the wave features these three characters and does not mention additional reveals. I am not going to invent three more names to make the case feel complete. I am going to sit with the trio, because the trio is what they put on the still, and the still is what they put on the internet, and the internet is how a license walks.

The figures look like the cartoon. That is the whole brief of this line and it is still the brief. Toy Habits walked the sculpts without turning them into modern DC Multiverse homework. The Atom is Ray Palmer in the clean red and blue, large red triangular chest, red gloves and trunks, blue boots, blue cowl, atom on the forehead, squared-off Saturday-morning face. Apache Chief is the 1977 original, the one who grew to about fifty feet on a catchphrase, long black hair, orange headband and sash, brown open vest, loincloth, boots, the muscular bare torso that only works if you commit to the model sheet. The Joker is purple suit, yellow vest, green shirt, oversized black bow tie, chalk face, red mouth, slicked green hair, the grin that is a little too wide for a six-inch head and therefore correct. Toy Habits liked that McFarlane did not modernize the costumes. I like that too. The second you add 2020s panel lines to Super Friends, you have made a different toy.

They are shrinking the Hanna-Barbera Justice League while the license walks.

I already filed the Adam West piece when McFarlane put a Shakespeare bust on a 7-inch shelf and called it a DC figure. That brief is still in the catalog as the Shakespeare bust is the set, and the argument has not moved. The collector license is a countdown. DCCollectors reported in October 2025 that Todd McFarlane had confirmed DC collector figures through the end of 2026, with Mattel taking the kid aisle first and the collector aisle in 2027. ToyNewsI spent a whole column on the two dates, Mattel's second-half-2026 language versus Todd's end-of-2026 language, and landed on overlap, a misstatement, or a change. I am not going to pretend I have a signed contract. I am going to look at September 2026, four months from the wall, and notice that Super Friends Wave 6 arrived as a three-figure post.

Toy Habits left the door open, because a decent editor should. Maybe these three are the first look and the other three drop closer to September 4. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the final Super Friends wave, and Scarecrow, Solomon Grundy, Gorilla Grodd, and Giganta stay drawings. Those names are not my wish list. Those names are what Toy Habits saw in the comments. I am not adding a fifth. If September 4 puts six SKUs on Entertainment Earth and Amazon and whoever else is still carrying McFarlane DC, I will write the correction. Until then, the product they showed is a trio, and a trio in a line that taught you to expect a six-pack is a shrink. Shrinks are how you wind a license down without a funeral press release.

Apache Chief is the figure that makes the shrink sting. He is not a comic-book loan. He is Super Friends tissue. He joined in 1977. He grows. He is the character you cannot get from a Batman movie line or a McFarlane Multiverse deluxe. Putting him next to a standard Joker and a standard Atom is the Saturday-morning math: one deep cut, one icon, one science hero. That is a complete cartoon commercial. It is also half a peg. If you have been building this Hall of Justice in 6-inch, you already own the obvious members from earlier waves. Wave 6 was supposed to be the weird room. Three figures is a vestibule.

The Atom is the other confession. Size-changing heroes are a pain in a 6-inch line because the gimmick does not survive the scale. McFarlane did not give you a two-pack with a tiny Palmer. McFarlane gave you the costume. Toy Habits is right that they resisted modern detailing. The Super Friends Atom is a triangle and a cowl. That is enough if the paint is bright. It is not enough if this is the last chance to get a Hanna-Barbera Justice League on a collector shelf before Mattel starts over. Last chances should be greedy. This post is polite.

The Joker is the sales engine and everyone in the comments knows it. You cannot ship a DC retro wave without a clown if you want the preorder to clear. Super Friends Joker is not Killing Joke Joker and is not 1989 Joker and is not the one with the ice cream. He is a purple shape with a yellow vest. McFarlane's head sculpt, per Toy Habits, translates the animated eyebrows and pointed chin into three dimensions without turning him into a realistic man. That is the line's one trick. Keep it. I still wish the trick had six stages this time.

Nearby, because the calendar is crowded on purpose, ToyNewsI says the FINAL wave of DC Super Powers goes up for preorder September 3 at noon Eastern, Entertainment Earth exclusive, six 4.5-inch figures. The names in that post are Batman Beyond, Starfire, Raven, Wildcat, Dr. Midnight, and Black Adam. Soft goods on Beyond and Raven. Classic blister cards. That is a different scale and a different funeral. Super Powers is Kenner memory. Super Friends is Hanna-Barbera memory. McFarlane has been running both like a museum shop. I am keeping Super Friends as the lead SKU this morning because the 6-inch cartoon is the one that just arrived as a half-wave. Super Powers getting a six-pack on the 3rd only makes the Super Friends three-pack on the 4th look smaller. That is the point of putting them in the same paragraph.

McFarlane's own site still sells the Super Friends Batman as a 6-inch retro figure with up to 12 moving parts, a Super Friends radio, and a Batarang. I am citing that as line language, not as a joint count I have verified on Wave 6 prototypes. The Wave 6 still is a group shot on rocks, SUPER FRIENDS logo over the top, DC and McFarlane marks in the corners, prototypes shown, final product subject to change. That legal line is how you know they photographed these before the tools were done. It is also how you know they felt the three were enough of a photograph to announce a wave. I have seen six-figure group shots in this line. This one is three because three is what they had, or three is what they wanted you to see. Either way, the camera shrank.

DCCollectors wrote the more cheerful version on August 29. Pre-orders September 4. Stellar trio. Apache Chief finally joins. The Atom in the vintage cowl. Joker in the Saturday palette. They mentioned at least one Platinum, with Bro-Depot spoiling a rumor about Warpland Superman, the lost-episodes bit where the heroes get turned into animals. DCCollectors followed that rumor two days later with a longer Warpland note: Atom, Joker, Apache Chief for preorder September 4, ideally three more, only two possible Red Platinum names in the air, Batman and Superman from that 1983 segment. I am tagging that as rumor. I am not putting a man-bat on this peg until McFarlane puts a man-bat on a cardback. The confirmed SKU is three cartoon people.

License math is uglier than sculpt math. If McFarlane really has DC collectors through December, there is time for another Super Friends wave, another Super Powers wave, another 7-inch Prestige oddity. If Mattel's collector clock starts sooner than Todd's interview, this trio is a remaindered Hall of Justice. I live in the ugly middle. I have watched enough toy licenses change hands to know the last year looks like this. Pegs get shorter. Deep cuts get skipped. The clown still ships. The original cartoon character ships because skipping him would start a thread. Everybody else waits for a company that has not tooled them yet.

A three-figure wave is not a tease. It is a smaller Hall of Justice.

Shelf math, because I can still want the toys. Super Friends 6-inch wants a row, not a museum cube. The colors only work if they sit together. Atom's triangle, Joker's purple, Apache Chief's orange sash. Split them across two shelves and they look like leftovers from three different cartoons. I would rather have a short, complete row of earlier waves plus these three than a speculative six that does not exist on September 4. If the other three drop, I will make room. If they do not, I will not invent a gap I can fill with a knockoff. The empty slot is a different brief. This brief is the three they showed.

I am not going to recap every Super Friends episode so I can sound like I earned Apache Chief. Premise only. Saturday morning, a big table, villains who scheme, heroes who grow or shrink or throw a batarang that looks like a cookie cutter. The toy is the model sheet. The model sheet is the SKU. McFarlane has been good at that. Good is not the same as generous. Generous would have been Grodd. Generous would have been Giganta. Generous would have been a six-figure case that let retailers fill a peg without leaving two holes for a Platinum rumor. They showed three. Toy Habits got nervous. I got greedy and then I got funereal, which is the correct order for a license in its last season.

Buy the Atom if you have been waiting for the triangle. Buy Apache Chief if you actually watch Super Friends and not just Batman. Buy the Joker if you buy every Joker, which is most of us, and then at least pose him with the two heroes so the wave looks like a scene. Skip the whole thing if you only wanted Grodd and you are saving the money for Mattel's 2027 pitch. Skip it if three figures at 6-inch is a bad density for your budget this month. Do not skip it because the post used the word features. Features is how a company says we are not promising you the rest. Believe them. Then decide whether the Hanna-Barbera Justice League, half-size, is still your Hall.

My own plan is stubborn. I want Apache Chief on the peg first, because he is the one Mattel may not feel like tooling. I want the Atom because the costume is a piece of graphic design I still like. I will take the Joker if the preorder is not a bundle. I will watch September 4 like Toy Habits told us to, and if three more names appear I will be happy to have been wrong. Until the listings go live, Wave 6 is a trio. They are shrinking the Hanna-Barbera Justice League while the license walks. The SKU is the shrink. September 4 is when we find out whether the shrink was a tease or a goodbye.