Recently, we took a look at the Marvel Legends retro-carded Iron Man. In that review, I mentioned I was always more of a War Machine guy than an Iron Man one. As a kid, The Avengers and associated characters appeared outdated and were largely off my radar. Then War Machine was introduced and suddenly Iron Man seemed cool again. War Machine was the only figure from the 90s Iron Man toy line I would acquire. The snap-on armor of that line better suited War Machine, who was just Iron Man with a bunch of stuff affixed to him. And that stuff was mostly guns, very large guns.
War Machine feels like a post-Reagan era antihero. The name is almost grotesque for a superhero – war machine? He makes war? Does he seek it out? It’s quite silly, not that I paid it any mind as a kid because an armored guy with a bunch of guns is cool. And if you have spent any time looking at this blog then you know I’m still very much affected by things I thought were cool when I was a kid. As a result, when Hasbro released its retro-carded War Machine figure a little while back it got my attention. Not enough to get me to buy it right away (and I first encountered the figure at a comic store that wanted more than MSRP), but it was on my radar enough that I kept an eye on it. I was hoping to get it for a discount some day, but after getting Iron Man I felt like I needed this War Machine and had to settle for a discount of only a couple bucks.
War Machine comes on the same retro card as Iron Man, only the art has been swapped to change Iron Man to War Machine. This is consistent with how the Toy Biz line sold the character back in the day so I do like that Hasbro kept that tradition going, even if this is going in the trash eventually. Unlike Iron Man, this War Machine is much more closely aligned to his animated, season one, appearance of the Iron Man cartoon. He’s mostly a mix of white and black plastic with few painted details. The face is painted as are the lenses found on his head and mini gun as well as the center of the chest armor. The armor of the body is a bit more detailed than it was in the cartoon. To make it closer to 100% accurate, the panels that come across his traps should come to a point and the boots should end at the bottom of the knee pad. It’s pretty minor stuff, but the most “off” aspect are the eyes and mouth which should be red rather than black. Personally, I’m not bothered by that as I think the black looks better, but if you wanted a true representation of the character from Iron Man then it is inaccurate..
Ignoring the inaccuracy, I do like the look of this figure. It’s what drew me to it in the first place. The white and black complement each other so well and the mixture of finishes works really nice. The black parts have a satin, or matte, appearance while the white is glossy with a slight pearl quality to it. A matte finish would have probably looked nice too for the white (which is true of the face), but I like the juxtaposition. The paint on the mouth is a little messy, in particular the right side. The edge of the face is also imperfect. It’s not something to notice from the shelf, but it is apparent in-hand. As far as I can tell, nothing on this figure is reused from the Iron Man figure I looked at previously. The arms are pin-less, but the legs are not so I am assuming the legs are reused from a previous War Machine or Iron Man release for Legends. The presence of pins doesn’t bother me as they’re colored properly. The arms look fine as well as the joining elbow piece maintains the finish of the rest of the arms. There is some excess plastic on the right elbow that I’ll have to trim away. The sculpt of the character is a touch more slight than Iron Man, which is odd. I’m not really bothered by it when it comes to the upper body, but his thighs could use some beefing-up. Overall though, I find the color combo so appealing that I can overlook my otherwise minor criticisms.
War Machine is basically known for two things: looking like Iron Man and having big guns. This War Machine comes with two, shoulder-mounted, guns: a mini gun and a cluster rocket launcher. They snap onto pegs that are affixed to channels on the armor so they can slide back and forth and pivot. Both also come with effect parts. For the mini gun, it’s a fairly simple blast effect done on translucent orange plastic which pops on and off easily. The rocket blast effect is a bit more robust. Also done on translucent orange, it features three “trails” for three, orange, rockets to peg onto. The rockets are way too big to plausibly come out of the weapon, but I’m willing to bet that was true of the illustrated ones as well. There’s a bit of black spray at the base of the plume which is kind of odd, but doesn’t ruin the look. Aside from the guns and effects, the only other items in the box are two sets of hands: fists and open, repulsor, blasting hands. Like Iron Man, we don’t get any effects for the blasting hands and, oddly, they’re unarticulated. I’m a bit surprised we didn’t get an unmasked head, but I’d never use it so I can’t rightly complain. It’s more than we’re probably used to getting these days, so it’s fine.
The articulation for War Machine is fairly consistent with that of Iron Man. One change that is for the better is his head is on a double ball peg. It works great and the only limitation is the shape of the armor around the base of the neck prevents the figure from having much range looking up, but I’ll take it over the hinge which doesn’t work much better on Iron Man. The shoulder hinges are not impeded by the shoulder pads which move out of the way just fine and we get the standard biceps swivel, double-jointed elbows, and hinged peg for the hands (fists only). Even with the large forearm gauntlets, the elbow still bends past 90 degrees. There is a small canon on the right forearm that unfortunately does not swivel or anything so you have to use the bicep swivel to aim it. A forearm swivel would have been nice to accommodate such.
The torso features an ab crunch that’s just okay. It has better range going forward, which is preferred to having it going back, but more range would have been nice. There is a waist twist and it’s fine while the hips are affixed via ball sockets. They don’t quite go out to the side for splits, but they kick forward plenty far. There’s almost no range going back while the thigh twist and double-jointed knees work as well as expected. The ankle hinges go back all the way, but not forward very far due to the cut of the boot and the ankle rocker is fine. The articulation in general moves well with the appropriate tolerance. The knees are a touch gummy though and I don’t care for that. It’s fairly standard stuff though and the only aspect of the articulation that bums me out is the lack of forearm articulation for that gun.
If you’re into Marvel Legends then you’ll probably like this War Machine. It looks quite a bit like the character from the cartoon and also works well enough as a comic book version. He has the weaponry one would expect and even some effect parts to go with them. He’s missing effect parts for his hand blasters and the gun on the forearm. And like Iron Man, a flight stand would have been really nice. We got all of that, or nearly all of that, with the Toy Biz Marvel Legends version of the character so it’s a bummer to remind one’s self of that fact. I’m sure it’s also disappointing to some to not have a James Rhodes head as well. Aside from that, the only other negative here is that this figure won’t work for your Marvel vs Capcom display. That’s through no fault of the figure though as the MvC War Machine was just a palette swap of Iron Man when Capcom found out late in the game that Iron Man was off limits for contractual reasons. If you really need that version of War Machine, Hasbro did release such a figure a little while ago so it’s out there. I’m just not interested in it.
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