The Nostalgia Spot

I can’t recall a figure I agonized over more than the subject of today’s entry. The Bandai/Tamashii Nations S.H.Figuarts line of action figures based on the Capcom produced Marvel games has been a bit controversial in the toy collecting world. Where a line like S.H.Figuarts was once considered on the cutting edge of action figures, it is now inconsistent where quality is concerned. It’s also a line where Tamashii Nations seems to want to innovate where articulation is concerned, but in doing so they’ve often been accused of over-engineering their figures. This has created a more cut-up presentation, something collectors have historically associated with a brand like Kaiyodo’s Revoltech as opposed to one from Bandai. And as we saw with the Cyclops in this line, some pretty basic functionality has been lost in the process. Now, we turn to Wolverine who comes at the very high price this line demands and also has the misfortune of following in the footsteps of what Hasbro did. Hasbro, also focusing on its own line of not Marvel vs Capcom games, released their take on Wolverine last year alongside Silver Samurai. It was one of their best efforts in a long time and even though collectors have to also get Silver Samurai, the price of the two-pack is still around 40% less than what Bandai is offering here. No one has ever been able to answer the question of how many Wolverines is too many Wolverines, but maybe Bandai is about to find out?

Wolverine comes in his traditional yellow and blue costume. Where the Hasbro figure appeared to draw its inspiration from the Bengus artwork associated with the Capcom titles, this version of Wolverine from Bandai looks to draw more on the game’s sprite. The “fins” on the mask and boots are exaggerated compared with most takes on Wolverine from the comic books, but not quite to the degree of the Hasbro version. The yellow pops as opposed to the orangey color utilized with the Cyclops figure and the blues are a touch lighter than we typically see with Wolverine. The stripes alongside the torso are separated where as the comic costume features a solid, connected, patch of black wrapping around the body. The form is stocky, but still taller than what is typical of a Wolverine. He’s shorter than Cyclops, but not dramatically so at 5.75″ when standing up straight. The sculpt is soft when compared to what Hasbro does which, for me, gives him an almost animated quality. It was the main draw for me with this version as my first love when it comes to X-Men is the classic 90s animated series and this Wolverine could almost pass for that.

Paint is sparsely used, as it often is with Bandai, but is largely clean where applied. The “X” on the belt looks good and the details of the face are clean. I like the mass present in the sculpt as this is a bulky Wolverine which is true of the look in the game (and for Wolverine in most media). Where the presentation is likely to cause controversy is in that cut-up nature touched upon in the opening paragraph. There’s a lot going on here as Tamashii needed to make sure that Wolverine could nail the poses he’s known for. To do so, he has this almost scalloped neck area. Where Hasbro uses a simple ball-hinge to let the head point as far up as possible, Bandai wants to use ball pegs which require joints at the base of the neck. Wolverine almost has a frill as a result as there are two segments at the base of the neck which is odd looking in some poses. The Hasbro approach also has some cosmetic challenges, as well as range of motion which we’ll get to with articulation, but this is certainly different. Whenever a company deviates in such a way, I do wonder if what we tend to view as an eyesore is just due to not being accustomed to seeing it. What is probably more universal in thought is the arm hair. Wolverine is a hairy guy and most companies will either paint such details on the arms or sculpt it. Bandai sculpted it, but not in the way most would expect. Rather than the hair being raised, they actually cut into the arms for the look of the hair. There’s a paint wash applied, but it’s an odd look and the paint doesn’t get into all of the grooves like it probably should. They did the same with the web pattern on their Spider-Man which is what ultimately got me to say “No thanks,” to that one. This wasn’t a deal breaker for me with Wolverine, but I don’t like it.

Another area that’s cut-up is the torso. The bulk of the torso is basically made up of three parts: chest, middle abdomen, and lower abdomen. And then inside that lower abdomen is yet another piece that fills in the lower back. Along with this odd approach is one I’ve never seen on a Wolverine with this costume. The yellow of the shirt actually continues onto the shoulders in both sculpt and paint. I’ve never thought of Wolverine’s shirt as having short sleeves, I always imagined it just ends with the blue shoulder pads. I think they did it this way so that the ball peg connecting the shoulder to the butterfly joint could be yellow. The ball is visible as it was with Cyclops and probably would have looked bad. They could have just cast that part in a flesh color and I think it would have been fine so it is pretty peculiar. I don’t hate it, but it does take some getting used to. The crotch is also pretty cut-up, but that’s something this Wolverine shares with the rest of the line. The crotch is basically a T shape and it’s cast in hard plastic with floating, blue, parts used for the bottom of the trunks. It looks worse from behind, but I don’t have as strong a reaction to this design choice as others. At the same time, they could easily do something different and more aesthetically pleasing.

Where Bandai has also invited criticism is with the chosen accessories for Wolverine. For starters, we have two portraits in angry and more angry. He has a teeth baring expression and a yell. I would have liked a neutral one as well, but most would likely pick one of the these two expressions for their display even if one were provided. An unmasked head would have also been nice, but I wasn’t expecting one. Wolverine also has the cardboard backdrop for his Fatal Claw move which is fine for what it is, but at the end of the day is just a piece of card stock. Where things get weird is with the hand options. Wolverine has just two sets: fists and open hands. That’s not particularly unusual, but the approach Bandai took with Wolverine’s claws is.

Historically, Wolverine’s claws have always presented a bit of a problem. In the old days with Toy Biz, their first Wolverine had retractable claws that were spring loaded. It was a decent approach for a gimmick line, but housing the claws in the arms meant he had no elbow articulation. And the claws were just single pieces of plastic with the claws carved into the top of the plastic, but there was no separation between them. When Toy Biz designed their second attempt at Wolverine, they kept the spring feature, but did not let them be permanently retracted. Instead it was more of a stabbing effect, but the actual claws were basically the same only now Toy Biz added a hook onto them (which always struck me as bizarre as a kid). There were probably safety standards at play, but also the scale of the line meant doing individual claws just wasn’t practical. They’d be too fragile and these were toys meant for kids. Over the years, they would get better, but we wouldn’t get properly segmented claws until the Legends days. By then, they could be done individually though getting a set that wasn’t warped was a true rarity. When Toy Biz, or Hasbro, wanted to do Wolverine with claws retracted, they included optional hands and that’s largely how it has gone ever since. With a larger scale like Mondo’s animated line, the claws can be pulled out individually without much fear of breakage or the collector losing them. And when Bandai did a Wolverine for its Deadpool & Wolverine line they did claws out hands and claws in and even gave us options with fists and open hands.

For this Wolverine, Bandai and Tamashii Nations decided to approach things differently. They must have felt that making the claws pull out like they do with the Mondo figures was still too unpredictable. Maybe the failure rate was high? Instead, they made the claws pop off the hands where the channels are on the back of the gloves. Basically, this means there’s a tiny rectangle of plastic with the claws affixed to them and a part without the claws. It’s possible this was considered more cost-effective, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Instead, I think this was someone’s bright idea to try and innovate with Wolverine, but I don’t see many copying this approach . The claws here are fiddly. They fall out of the fist hands when posing and since they’re on a separate piece it creates yet another unsightly seam line on the figure’s hands. On the open hands, they’re far more snug, but there they also have the annoying tendency to not want to come off when you actually want them to. And since the part has to be removed easily, it means it can’t really sit flush with the hand or else it would be a giant pain in the ass to remove (and the retracted clawed pieces kind of are). The open hands also have a different shape when compared to the fists so Bandai couldn’t even have the hands share the same claws. You get two sets of hands, two sets of claws, and two sets of retracted claws hand-backs. It’s why I can’t see how this is more cost effective since they’re using only slightly less plastic when compared with the movie version of the character. The only benefit this choice has for the consumer is that you can remove the claws first before removing the hand. Since Bandai still utilizes rigid plastic for its hands, they can be a pain to utilize and at least now you don’t have to worry about breaking the claws or warping them if you want to heat the hands up before removing or inserting them onto the figure. And if you do have issues getting the claws off, I found that pushing up from the underside appears to be the best method. Chances are you’ll only need to do that with the open hands. For the fists, just shake them and they’ll probably fly off.

We talked about all of those cut-up parts of the sculpt earlier, now it’s time to find out if they paid off. Those cuts are all done in service of the figure’s articulation, and when it comes to Tamashii Nations, that’s a big priority. For starters, the weird neck works as intended. Wolverine can look up, down, side to side, and there’s plenty of tilt. The lower flange, for lack of a better word, is hidden in more neutral stances and only pops out of the chest when making the figure look up. It will look ugly in his “Fatal Claw” pose, but not in a crouch. The shoulder ball pegs work as intended and the shoulder pads peg into the back of the shoulder like many a Dragon Ball figure in the past. That allows for them to be adjusted when posing the arms to hide gaps, though for some gaps there’s only so much that can be done. The bicep swivel, double elbows, and wrist ball pegs all work fine, though the bicep swivels are a bit snug on my figure. The glove cuffs rotate while the boot cuffs pivot a just a little. The double-jointed knees and thigh swivels work as intended, though I still think these thigh swivels are pretty unsightly. The ankles can rotate, hinge up and down, and rock side-to-side and the stripe is continued onto the joint. It can become misaligned, but works well enough. There’s also a toe hinge.

The area I was most concerned with was the torso as I wasn’t impressed with that portion of Cyclops or the Scarlet Spider from Bandai. Those two figures had some interesting things to work around, namely Scott’s unusual belt and Ben’s hoodie. With Wolverine, there’s no comparable issue, but we got this oddly segmented torso design anyway. The goal is clearly to get Wolverine to crouch nice and low like his stance in the game. As far as that goes, it works. He crunches forward and back on what I assume are two ball joints – one in the diaphragm and one at the waist. I think the middle segment is just floating, but I could be wrong. I’m tempted to pull him apart and find out, but I’d rather not since he is expensive. Unfortunately, Bandai repeated it’s error from the past figures by including that fixed, lower back piece. The only purpose this thing serves, as far as I can tell, is to close gaps when bending the figure forward as far as it will go. The problem is it interferes with the waist articulation taking away the ability for the figure to rotate at the waist. I had hoped that these extra parts in the torso were intended to fix that, but the lowest piece of the abdomen doesn’t have the clearance to rotate over that back filler. The upper chest piece is also too snug on the middle piece to allow for much rotation up there. He can rotate a little and along with the butterfly you can kind of fudge a pose where Wolverine’s arm is out in front of him, but it would be a lot better if he could just rotate at the damn waist. I don’t understand this design choice and why a simple waist twist has been turned into something this exotic and hard to do? The other stuff all works, but this waist twist is a pretty big flaw. Also annoying is that his torso is pretty loose. The upper chest is borderline floppy. He’ll tilt back when posing without trying, and when repositioned to suit the pose it seems to always hold, but this should be better.

The flaws with this figure are made worse by the fact that this Wolverine retails for $100. A Wolverine with some questionable design choices that only comes with two heads and two sets of hands for $100 is a pretty piss-poor value. Cyclops had three heads and multiple effect parts to go along with an assortment of hands. Spider-Man had multiple sets of hands and some web effects. Why is Wolverine short-changed in such a manner? And no, I do not consider the included backdrop for his super move any kind of value. It’s a piece of paper that will never leave the box. I was conflicted about this figure going in, but I just could not shake my curiosity for it and feared it would only become more expensive just like Cyclops and Spider-Man so I gave in. And considering what I bought it for (the look), I actually do like it. I think this is a really cool looking Wolverine. The height is still a bit iffy for those looking to upgrade their comic book collection, but it’s not as drastic as Hasbro’s take on this Wolverine. I love the colors and I think the sculpt is great for an all-purpose, early 90s Wolverine. I wish he came with more stuff though and I wish the claws had been done in a more conventional manner. The actual claws look awesome, but the added seams suck and it just wasn’t necessary. The way the arm hair is painted also looks terrible, like someone tried to draw it on with a fading pen. I’m tempted to paint it myself, but this is a $100 figure. Do I really want to risk making it worse? At a hundred bucks, I can’t in good conscience recommend this Wolverine even if it might be my favorite Wolverine I own, warts and all. It’s a way better sculpt than any of the comic or animated Wolverines from Hasbro and I prefer the stylization with this version over the Hasbro one. That’s not a knock on the Hasbro figure as it matches the source material quite well, I just subjectively like the look of this one more. In terms of value, there’s really no comparison and if you’re happy with the Hasbro Gamerverse Wolverine I don’t blame you at all.

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