As a kid in the 90s, there was a social pressure to not choose the obvious when discussing favorite parts of a fandom. It’s basically a method of gatekeeping, a really silly, annoying, habit that’s not exclusive to children. If you enter into a certain band’s fandom there are some who will claim you’re a fake fan if your favorite song is the most popular one. Likewise, if you claim to be a fan of X-Men and say your favorite character is Wolverine there would be kids who would assume you’re a phony. You’re just trying to fit-in and so you picked the most popular superhero on the team as your favorite. No real fan says Wolverine is their favorite. And yet his books are the most read, his action figures sell the best, and it’s plainly obvious the character is popular for a reason.
Nevertheless, I succumbed to such pressures as a kid. Wolverine probably was my favorite member of the X-Men, but if you asked me back then who my favorite character was I’d tell you it was Iceman. And it wasn’t as if I was lying as I really did love the character of Iceman. He was my introduction to X-Men without me really knowing it via the cartoon series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. There he was teamed up with Spider-Man and the made-for-TV character Firestar. Played by Frank Welker, Iceman had a really neat transformation sequence into his icy form that stuck with me well beyond that show’s expiration date. It was the only thing I really remembered from the show and for a time I wasn’t sure if it was even real or if my brain made it up as TV shows back then had a habit of just disappearing to make way for something else. Iceman didn’t get to be a part of future televised X teams, but you bet your ass I was pumped when he showed up for an episode of X-Men. I can remember the episode title flashing on the screen and knowing it had to be referring to Iceman and the hair on my arms stood up. It was awesome!
Toy Biz did manage to get Iceman into its X-Men line of figures pretty quickly. It was one I sought, but he proved hard to get. I never did get the original release which had a color changing feature, but I was able to finally score it on a refresh. By then the color change gimmick was gone and replaced by a feature where you put him on his ice sled, filled a cut-out with water, and then stuck him in the freezer. After a little while, that water encased the figure’s feet in a block of ice for you to remove and I guess just slide across a surface. Cool? I didn’t really care as I hated action features so any gimmick that didn’t intrude upon the sculpt was fine by me. A second edition Iceman would eventually follow, modeled somewhat on his Age of Apocalypse look, but I never did find that one. When Marvel Legends became a thing, Iceman managed to see release in the eighth wave. He was pretty mediocre even by the standards of the day being too slight and formless, but he had a neat Sentinel hand base frozen in ice. Toy Biz would do better with the sister line, X-Men Classics, and the Iceman released there. That one was on a standard buck, and while not perfect even back then, was a major improvement. There were also two chase versions one modeled after the character’s appearance in Ultimate X-Men and the other a de-iced Bobby Drake. That Bobby version instantly became my most wanted and I managed to track down two of them. Worry not, I didn’t scalp either and instead traded one for a chase Moon Knight.
That X-Men Classics Iceman is the most recent Iceman purchase I’ve made. Until now, obviously. There was a three-pack released a couple of years ago based on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. I wanted to like that set and probably could have settled if the Firestar or Spider-Man was mediocre, but it was my beloved Iceman who was left out in the cold. The figure was hideous and about the only good thing was the portrait. I just couldn’t do it, even when it hit clearance. Hasbro has come back though with a release of the character for its Secret Wars line. This series is a throwback, an homage, to what was essentially the very first proper action figure line for Marvel. Back then, Iceman received a release, but he wasn’t sold in the US. This new figure is like a long overdue makeup. It also reminded me of the very first Toy Biz one and that was enough to get me to throw down my $28 even if I had some reservations about what I was seeing in those solicitations.
Iceman stands at around 6.25″ to the top of his head. He is essentially a blank body cast in transparent plastic. The base appears to be the same as some older Spider-Man figures namely The Amazing Web-Man and Cyborg Spider-Man, minus the cybernetic arm. In other words, this is an old mold though it has been updated with pin-less joints. Considering that the figure is transparent, that’s both a blessing and a curse. These pin-less limbs require a different composite of plastic be utilized for the elbows and knees, and as we saw with the Crystar figure last year, the result is the plastic comes out cloudy. With Iceman, it means his elbows and knees have a milky color to them. Had Hasbro elected to add an overspray to the rest of the figure this effect may have been minimized, but they left him almost purely transparent like that classic Toy Biz release. There is a very subtle frosting applied to the chest, but that’s about it. That does mean if you like seeing the inner workings of an action figure Iceman is showing you the goods. He’s got nothing to hide. Even the soft plastic belt is transparent. The only paint is reserved for the X logo and the details on the face – basically eyes and teeth. It’s not a bad look and it certainly makes sense for a man of ice to look this way, but I do wish Hasbro added a little blue tint to the plastic just to dress him up a bit.
The approach to the presentation is fine, even if it’s not what I’d do personally (I’d want him painted like he is in the comics, basically white or a very light blue with some shading and squared-off anatomy), but what I can say is poor are the overall proportions. This just isn’t a good looking body. The shoulders sit so low that it looks ridiculous and you get these gaps between the traps and the top of the shoulders. What human being, let alone superhero, has a body like this? The shoulders are also undersized taking away from the heroic look the character should have and the width of the body is comically small. From a straight-on perspective, the chest looks okay. There appears to be a little frosting to the plastic to create the illusion of a cubed-off look to the pecs, but it kind of makes him look like he has moobs instead. Turn the figure to view from the side, and the width of the chest is preposterously thin. There’s no front-to-back bulk to this guy. It’s like a person with an average build drew muscles onto their body. Iceman isn’t supposed to be a behemoth, but he should have far more bulk than this. This is a mold that should be chucked in the trash.
For accessories, we get a mostly typical mix with some new stuff thrown in. Iceman has two portraits: smile and angry. Both are fine, but I wish we had a neutral one too. For hands, he has a set of fists and a set of relaxed hands and he also has a snowball that the relaxed hands can handle. For power effects, we get a small, icy, platform that I wouldn’t consider a proper ice sled. It looks fine, but it’s just way too small in both length and width, but at least there’s some white paint on it to give it a frosted look. He also has two power effects that clip onto the wrist. I like the idea here, but these effects suck. They appear to be designed to clip onto the wrist so that the relaxed hands rest on them. The problem is, they end up pointing straight down so angling them to make it look like he’s creating an ice sled looks pretty bad. They also look bad as just a blasting effect if you want him to shoot at bad guys. Clipping them on backwards actually presents a better angle, but also looks stupid. They also end with a flat surface like they should be contacting the shelf or table you end up putting him on. I think they would have done better if they made the hands part of the sculpt or if they designed them to work with flat palms that get inserted into the effect. This feels half-assed and like a first try that no one decided to spend just a little more time on. If the ice sled effect were wider maybe it could have been fudged more easily, but maybe that would have broke the budget. There’s also an included shield with a lenticular image of Iceman’s portrait on it that shifts to Bobby. This thing is an homage to the old toy line and every figure comes with one. It has a clip and a peg on the back of it so you can affix it to the figure’s forearm or peg it into its back. I can’t imagine anyone would. It’s cheap and kind of lame – into a drawer it goes!
The articulation for Iceman is pretty basic, and also pretty frustrating. This mold is the type of figure that seems to have most of the joints one would want, but actually getting the figure into the poses you want is harder than it looks. The head is on a ball hinge that gets no tilt so it kind of sucks. There are butterfly joints at the shoulder, but they mostly provide range going back and not forward. There are bicep swivels, double elbows, wrist hinges and swivels, ab crunch, waist twist, ball-socket hips, thigh cuts, double knees, boot cuts, and ankle hinges and rockers. Range is acceptable at all of the major spots while the ab crunch is certainly antiquated. The boot cut is pretty worthless because it breaks up the shape of the leg when utilizing it. The waist twist is the same, but at least the belt is floating to kind of hide it, granted we’re talking transparent parts here. The transparent plastic does seem to result in tighter than usual knees and elbows, but I could get them to work without heating the figure up. It’s not a terrible action figure from an articulation standpoint, but we can definitely do better, Hasbro.
If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m not in love with this figure. I even regret buying it to a point because there’s just no posing away some of the issues I have with the sculpt. Those shoulders always look goofy and the body is just way too slight. The included effect parts are a nice thought, but how good is that when they don’t really accomplish what they intend to? The old X-Men Classics ice sled is better than this and that thing was a flat, blue, plastic and kind of lame. At least it worked though. I wasn’t expecting to do anything with the silly snowball accessory, but I think that’s how I’ll end up displaying him because I just can’t look past those blast effects. I waited 20 years for a new Iceman figure, and I’ll be waiting longer for an actual good one. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll show up in X-Men ’97 giving Hasbro an excuse to fix this thing. As one of the first openly gay X-Men, I could see him fitting into the spirit of that show so it’s not impossible, though does Disney have the courage to go there? That I have serious doubts on. This is what we have though and for some collectors out there it might be good enough, but for me it’s not.
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