Hailing from the planet…I don’t know. He’s a crystal guy.
Marvel Legends are still sold primarily at major retailers. This includes the likes of Target, Walmart, and even Best Buy which has been adding more toys to its portfolio over the years. And since they’re made by Hasbro, a company that has been selling toys to kids for generations, they still mostly operate on the same retail model. These things are in the toy aisle because that’s where parents go to buy their kids toys. Only, action figures (and Marvel Legends especially) haven’t really been kid’s toys for awhile now. I don’t have any hard data to support my conclusion, but I go to Target weekly and I have yet to see one single child so much as gaze at the Marvel Legends toys. I do see adults picking them over and maybe some are buying for a kid, but these things have been the domain of adult collectors for awhile now. The adults buying them today grew up playing with action figures in the 80s and 90s and still have an attachment to the form.
There it is. That’s the money shot.
And that is why a character like Crystar can get his own figure in Marvel Legends. The irony here is Crystar is not available in Target and never will be. This figure is part of the Void Build-A-Figure wave which is what Hasbro calls a Fan Channel release. That’s just branding for specialty retail and sometimes Amazon (and in this case, yes Amazon) as opposed to brick and mortar. Crystar is a character people under 40 probably have no experience with. And a great deal of the people who do know who Crystar is might only know of the character as a curiosity since Glenn Danzig ripped-off the cover of one of the Saga of Crystar issues for the iconic Danzig skull logo created by artist Michael Golden. Those who don’t know the character from that bit of trivia probably know it from the old Remco toyline. Following the success of Masters of the Universe, other companies were looking to create their own in-house toyline and make millions. Marvel teamed up with Remco to create Crystar and give him his own comic, The Saga of Crystar, which would release in step with the action figures. Didn’t work, but for those who did have the toys and enjoyed them seeing a new version was an unexpected jolt of nostalgia.
You can’t really tell, but he does have painted eyes.
I am one of those who know of Crystar via the Danzig connection. I’m not quite old enough to have interacted with the property when it was at retail, though in looking at the figures as an adult there’s some familiarity. I probably saw Crystar figures at yard sales or flea markets and maybe even in comic book stores as a youth, but I never did own any of them. I have been a pretty big Danzig fan since I was a pre-teen though, so I felt like I had to get this figure when it was first revealed last year at San Diego Comic Con. I have that famous 8th issue, so I might as well add the action figure as well.
He’s got gripping hands and one set of non-gripping hands, but I don’t know how likely it us that people will use them.
Crystar comes in the current Marvel Legends window box following a brief flirtation with plastic-free packaging. It is part of a Build-A-Figure wave, some crab-like creature called The Void, which kind of sucks since part of the money I paid for Crystar went towards a figure I’ll never assemble. I got my figure from Big Bad Toy Store where it cost me twenty-six bucks, a steep price for a Marvel Legends release, but one that is becoming normal. The box contains some vintage artwork of the character, but the toy is clearly an homage to the original action figure which was cast in translucent, blue, plastic and came with a sword and shield. This figure too is cast in translucent, blue, plastic and is a rather striking looking figure in-hand. Messing around with the transparency of a figure is certainly a little gimmicky, but hey, sometimes it works.
The elbows and knees are cloudy and ugly, but hey! Pinless!
Crystar, as far as I know, is mostly made-up of new parts. That’s because the body had to be sculpted to resemble a crystal so there are lots of flat panels coming together to form hard edges. There’s very little in the way of paint as a result. The helmet looks to be painted on and there’s a little white for the eyes, but the rest of the figure is just translucent plastic or red plastic for gloves, trunks, and boots. Considering what they were going for, this is acceptable. If this were an Iceman figure then I’d be bemoaning the lack of a frosted paint job, but for Crystar it’s appropriate. He stands a tick over 6″ which feels like the median for Marvel Legends. I have no idea how tall he’s supposed to be, but it seems fine.
There’s a little He-Man in that sword.
Where the visuals do take a hit is with the joints. Hasbro’s latest gimmick of the past few years is selling its customer base on the wonders of pin-less joints. For years, most Legends releases had double-jointed knees and elbows and holding those hinge joints in place were plastic pins slotted above and below the elbow. Maybe companies still use them while some don’t. In general, pins don’t bother me if they’re colored properly. They certainly create problems with a character like Spider-Man where the outside of the arm is a different color from the inside and a pin-less approach is superior. With Crystar, it sucks because the elbows and knees need to be a harder plastic apparently for the process to work. This leads to differences in color and for the elbows they’re more blue and less transparent. Blue pins would have looked pretty bad too so I guess if they couldn’t do transparent pins then it’s a pick your poison situation. It’s also an issue with the knees, but at least when they aren’t bent the boots hide them. Hasbro went with a hinged-ball joint for the head and the disc for the joint is also visible through the neck. Again, pick your poison as a double-ball peg wouldn’t have looked any better. This figure is the rare one where I’d have probably preferred the neck just end in a ball and socket joint to avoid the issue.
I’m guessing most will opt to equip Crystar with sword and shield.
Aside from the eyesores related to the articulation, the figure looks pretty damn cool for what it is. It also comes with what could be considered a robust array of accessories given the usual outlay for a Legends release these days. Crystar has a right fist, an open left hand, and a set of gripping hands. The gripping hands even have the proper hinge so that’s perfect because his other accessories are a sword and shield. Both are done in the same translucent plastic (actually, the shield is fully transparent with just a hint of blue coloring) as the figure itself and are again an homage to the old action figure release. The sword is pretty neat and well-stylized. I do get a bit of a He-Man vibe from it and Crystar looks good wielding it. The shield is plain by comparison, just a plastic circle with a little bit of sculpting, but there’s an elegance to its simplicity. Lastly, are the BAF parts: two sets of giant crab legs. They’ll look good in your trashcan.
If shields aren’t your thing he can pull-off some two-handed sword poses.
Articulation for Crystar is fairly basic by Legends standards. Given the visual issues with some of the joints, that’s probably for the best. We have that disc hinge at the head so he can rotate, look up, and down, with a little bit of tilt. The hinged-ball joints at the shoulders do what they’re supposed to, and we get a biceps swivel, double-jointed elbows, and wrists that rotate and hinge. There is an ab crunch that basically clicks forward and back one slot. The diamond on the belt will obstruct the range going forward, and while it does flex a little, I wouldn’t recommend leaving him crunched forward as that would probably warp the piece over time. There’s a waist twist below that and, once again, that diamond belt buckle will interfere with the range. The legs go out to the side for full splits and the usual thigh cut is. The double-jointed knees will bend past 90 degrees, but doing so exposes the ugly joint. The ankles hinge and the rocker is in place and works fine.
For you Legends collectors interested in scale, he’s pretty much average height for the line.
Pretty standard stuff and Crystar should be able to do enough to look interesting on your shelf. Not that he really needs to since the design of the character makes it rather interesting by itself. Two-hand swords poses are achievable though he can’t quite hit his pose from The Saga of Crystar #8. That’s all I cared about and as an oddball addition to my Danzig collection and the figure gets close enough to satisfy me there. As an action figure it’s also pretty good for what it is. This is probably the most satisfied I’ve been with a Hasbro release in quite some time as it doesn’t have any real problems and the presentation pretty much nailed it. I can do without the BAF crap, but that’s the nature of the BAF gimmick if you’re not interested in the end result. Hasbro doesn’t often do these obscure releases so I’ll give them credit for taking a shot with Crystar, especially since it’s a figure that probably required more new tooling than a lot of the stuff the company puts out. Hopefully it gives them confidence to do more and maybe they’ll finally start truly catering the line to adult collectors because that’s who is buying them.
And if you want to Crystar beside some other lines, here’s a Naughty or Nice Father Frost and a S.H.Figuarts Goku.
If you want to read more about the Danzig/Crystar connection look below. And here’s some other Hasbro stuff you may or may not care about:
There’s been a hole in my Danzig collection for quite some time. It was a hole that was easy to fill and actually quite cheap considering most Danzig records fetch well over $100 these days, but an important piece was missing. And that piece is not what one would necessarily expect, but I would assume…
I was quite surprised when Hasbro unveiled a deluxe action figure set starring the Forgotten Realms hero, Drizzt Do’Urden. Drizzt was a character I was familiar with going back into my middle school days when I traded Star Wars novels for Dragonlance. Even though my nose was buried in stories about Raistlin Majere and Tanis…
2022 was the year a dream toyline of mine was made a reality. Hasbro finally decided to do a line of Marvel Legends based on the animated series X-Men, which premiered 30 years prior on Halloween 1992. The line was staggered with a release coming every 6-8 weeks or so and ended up totaling 8…
I don’t usually do year-end wrap-up posts. My collecting is usually too narrow to really warrant it, but this year I felt a little different. I probably spent way too much on my hobby in 2023 as there were a lot of releases that came in bunches. It’s probably going to have a somewhat negative impact on my collecting in 2024 as I try to narrow things down and stick to what I really want as opposed to what just looks cool. I’ve already made the decision to not collect NECA’s The Last Ronin line as I just have too much TMNT as it is and I don’t love the designs from those books enough to warrant figure purchases. Plus, where would I put them? I’ll probably be scaling back on Turtles in general since most of what I want has already been produced. Am I going to stop? No, not entirely, but I’m finally at a point where I can see something new on the shelf and not feel like I have to buy it.
That’s 2024’s business, let’s talk 2023 one last time. Rather than just rank the figures I reviewed in a top 10 or something, I figured I’d do it more like an awards show only my awards are both celebratory and dubious. You can’t have good without the bad, so if you’re one of those types that just hates anything that could be perceived as negative then maybe skip those. I’m also limiting this to figures I purchased in 2023 that were also current. Getting a figure that was new to me didn’t qualify if it was released prior to 2023. On the other hand, release dates are pretty loose so it’s possible you personally got something on my list in 2022 that I received in 2023. That’s just the action figure business at work. Let’s get to it though as so that we’re not here forever.
This figure took so long to come out that I was starting to think it was never going to come out. Mezco isn’t known for its communication so folks who had preordered this thing, and paid in full, in 2020 were left completely in the dark. Maybe it would come, maybe it wouldn’t? 2023 ended up being the year where that wait finally came to an end. Was it worth it? Probably not. If I had a category for most interesting release of the year this figure would win that as well. It’s certainly an experience. Mezco did nail the Keaton likeness though which was the most important factor for me. I just question how well this silicon body is going to hold up over the years. Runner-Up: Super7’s The Simpsons Wave One
I mostly collect 1:12 and 1:10 scale action figures, but every now and then a company gets me to dip my toes in something else. Usually that something else is 1:18, but Mondo has absolutely been killing it with its 1:6 scale line of figures from X-Men the animated series. There have been 3 releases in 2023: Magneto, Jubilee, and Sabretooth, and it’s Sabretooth that takes the crown for me by just a smidge. He looks awesome, poses well enough, and came loaded with accessories. These figures half shelf-presence for days. The only negative is the cost and space and that Mondo solicited 5 figures in 2023 which really did some damage to the old toy fund. Gambit should be arriving any day now too with Logan and Omega Red coming in 2024. I better make room! Runner-Up: Mondo Magneto and Jubilee
Worst Company – Hasbro
Sorry to kick you while you’re down Hasbro as the company just announced a layoffs to take effect next year, though maybe look at the top of the company instead? Either way, Hasbro keeps getting worse with its action figure offerings. The Power Rangers brand is stale, the Dungeons & Dragons stuff based on the old cartoon were riddled with quality control issues, and prices keep climbing on Marvel Legends and Star Wars while accessories and paint apps get cut. They’re putting out their most bare bones releases ever in those lines, but at a price greater than we’ve ever seen for those lines. More expensive plus poorer quality is not a recipe for success. I currently have two Hasbro action figures on pre-order and I’m not looking to add anymore. Runner-Up: Super7
Best Company – NECA
A more conventional round-up of the best figures of 2023 would have included these boys.
Basically, see what Hasbro did in 2023? NECA did the opposite. For the most part. Yes, their prices have gone up as well, but we haven’t seen a reduction in the product to go along with that price hike. NECA still keeps putting out tons of unique sculpts that are fully-painted with a generous assortment of accessories. They also managed to deliver their long-awaited Turtle Van and the product turned out pretty damn awesome. Now, lets just not talk about the pricing debacle that is the TMNT Sewer Lair. This is supposed to be a positive entry. Runner-Up: Jada Toys(even though I didn’t review any of their stuff here)
Super7’s The Worst is their own collection of takes on popular, villainous, tropes, I suppose. Their first wave in their Ultimates! collection didn’t thrill me, but I could not keep myself away from wave two’s Robot Reaper. This thing is just a fun, clever, design and it’s also a fun action figure to mess around with. Some of the accessories I could do with out, and part of me feels like a sucker for paying full MSRP knowing full well it’s sure to be discounted, but when a company puts out something good I don’t mind paying full price. Runner-Up: Boss Fight Studio Saurozoic Warriors
Medicom’s MAFEX brand is basically known for being super-articulated and super expensive. Figures routinely cost over 100 bucks for those of us who dwell in the west and it’s hard to figure out why. Sure, some of the licenses they grab don’t come cheap, but Bandai puts out similar or better products for considerably less. And sometimes even for the same license. This Scarlet Spider figure is one I enjoy quite a bit despite feeling like it’s not worth the tasking price. It’s a better figure than what Hasbro is set to release very soon (one of two I have preordered), but I could very easily make the argument that the Hasbro one is a far better value which trumps any advantage the MAFEX figure brings to the table. Runner-Up: Super7 TMNT Ultimates! Robotic Rocksteady
I’m not sure if Super7 has ever made a prettier action figure than Goldar from its line of MMPR figures. I mean, he is a sort of dog-faced monster, but the gold armor they sculpted and painted looks terrific and the character looks like it stepped right out of a television set in 1993. I can’t say the same for basically anything else in Super7’s MMPR line. It’s also the figure that I’ve seen break on camera in figure reviews more than any other. Whether it be the neck, wrists, or those damn wings, this is a finicky, fragile, mess of a figure. I don’t even like handling it as a result. I basically selected the head I wanted and the wing options and I don’t intend to change anything or move much. In some respects, it’s a terrible action figure, but also a great one. It’s a conundrum. Runner-Up: None
Go ahead Venom, squeeze the life out of this twerp and his weird-shaped head.
This is one of those figures you may have received in 2022 that I got in 2023. Walmart put it up for preorder in the fall and didn’t ship them for awhile, if at all, while some were able to find it in-store in December. No matter, it’s my pick for worst figure of the year that I personally reviewed. And it’s kind of getting it on a technicality, as the worst figure I bought in 2023 was a reissue of an old figure in the McFarlane Batman – The Animated Series Mr. Freeze (what’s with figures based on 90s animated shows getting the shaft?). This Spider-Man is the infamous cel-shaded one, but I’ll defend the cel-shading to a point. It’s not awful like most of the X-Men figures were in 2022, though it’s nothing special. It’s fine. Everything else sucks though. The head is a bizarre shape and looks stupid, the body is way too undersized for the character this figure is based upon, and while it articulates better than some Hasbro Spider-Men, it still does some weird things. The accessories, which include two extra sets of hands and some web splats, are also terrible and since it was a Walmart exclusive it was really annoying to have to track down. Hasbro did a whole line of figures based on the ’94 cartoon series and yet they didn’t make the central character, Spider-Man himself, available in his red and blue threads to a mass audience. What a stupid decision and another deserving reason for Hasbro’s status as worst action figure company of 2023. Runner-Up: Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Magneto
I’m just sorry I don’t have an actual award to give him.
When Mezco first unveiled its take on the Green Ranger from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers I had a feeling it had a chance to be THE Green Ranger for me. I’d have no need for any other. It was another long wait, and the figure was released annoyingly enough as a convention exclusive, but it lived up to the hype. This figure is not perfect, but it’s the best representation of the Green Ranger in 1:12 form. The details look great, the proportions suitable for the source material, and the soft goods actually enhance the figure and not detract from it. It has all of the accessories you could want plus a flight stand. There are effect parts and even an extra holster for the Blade Blaster, if you want it. I was skeptical, and I almost put this guy in the runner-up category for the too expensive, but Mezco delivered a great product. It’s so good that I’m almost tempted to get the rest of the MMPR team, but then I look at the price tag and I feel pretty satisfied to just stick with Greeny here. Runner-Up: None, this figure was in a class by itself
Those are my thoughts on 2023. To my surprise, I didn’t pick anything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but then again, that brand had a lot of good releases in 2023, just nothing exceptional. I considered doing a “Best Toy Line” and that probably would have gone to NECA’s cartoon TMNT line, but I didn’t feel that strongly about it, nor could I come up with a corresponding worst toy line. As for 2024, I’m looking forward to it. I have a ton of stuff preordered with Bandai and its Dragon Ball line including some figures that I’m already eyeing as potential Figure of the Year when 2024 is nearing an end. And then there’s Mondo X-Men that I have preordered and we’ve seen artwork for Rogue and Cyclops so that line figures to expand. As for Mezco, I may have given them top prize for 2023, but I’m not planning on picking up anything from that company in 2024. Their brand is pretty specific and it often doesn’t appeal to me. It will take a perfect marriage of enthusiasm for a brand on my part and their unique talents to get me to buy another one. And while I may scale back my toy buying in 2024, don’t expect to see my reviews vanish anytime soon. There will still be plenty to talk about.
Looking for toy-related posts that are more broad than a single review?
It’s been probably 13 or 14 years since I’ve purchased a Marvel-branded action figure. This is somewhat shocking to me because from the age of 7 to around 25 I spent who knows how much money on Marvel action figures. I was there for the inaugural Toy Biz line of Marvel Superheroes and X-Men…
It’s the first Turtle Tuesday in a little while that I don’t have some new TMNT review to post. Given that, I think it’s time to revisit the rankings I did last year for NECA’s toon line of action figures. This has become NECA’s most popular line, and while it has cooled a bit since…
Wednesday, August 18th, ended up being quite an eventful little day in the world of toy collecting. There were some reveals from major toy companies, leaks, and even those long neglected Street Sharks fans got something to get excited about late in the day. Personally, it was a good day for me too as I…
We’re going to keep this Marvel/Mutant Monday thing going for one more week! After taking a look at a trio of figures from Hasbro’s new X-Men ’97 line of figures in its Marvel Legends catalog I’ve decided to do one more: Bishop. The first three figures I looked at were basically all missing pieces to the VHS line Hasbro did last year for X-Men, the animated series which aired on Fox in the 90s. Bishop wasn’t featured in that line either despite being the most frequent guest star in the series so it would stand to reason that I’d be interested in adding him as well. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your view, Bishop’s character received a redesign for the new show. It’s not incredibly drastic, but it removed his most mighty possession: his fabulous mullet.
Yes, Bishop decided to ditch the 80s haircut he had (despite being a guy from the future – maybe the mullet makes a comeback?) for something a bit more modern. He now sports a closely cropped head of hair, but largely maintains his look outside of that. He’s still sporting the yellow and blue, still has that kerchief about his neck, and also carries a big gun. Well, more on that last part later. Still, for someone like me who just wants to assemble the team from the show I grew up watching, it seemed like this was a figure I could skip. Then I saw him in a store, then I saw him again, and eventually I caved and bought the thing. I just like how it looks! Something about that yellow and blue will always appeal to me, but beyond that the figure looks better than a typical Legends release. It’s more in-line with how I would personally design the line if asked to so let’s dive into this one so I can explain what it is about Bishop that made me want to take him home.
He’s a bit bigger than your “Vulcan” body figures, but smaller than some of the villains presented in an oversized fashion. And yes, that is a custom Morph head.
Bishop stands at right around the 7″ mark making him the tallest figure in his wave. He’s composed mostly of blue and brown plastic with some yellow where it makes sense. His belt and the cuffs around his shoulders are soft, yellow, plastic keyed into the figure and secured with glue. The ends of his sleeves also appear to be yellow strips of plastic glued into place. The only paint needed on this figure was the yellow and black stripe down the body, the red and black X logo on the belt, and the details on his face. And perhaps to no one’s surprise, the painted areas are the weakest part of the figure and it’s mainly just that yellow stripe that runs the length of his body. All of the figures I found on the pegs had some issue with that part of the figure, either messy application or a chipped spot and I settled on the one that bothered me the least. The yellow isn’t as saturated as it needs to be so some blue shows through while the black line running down it gets messy in places. The easiest way for Hasbro to have prevented that would have been to cast the figure in yellow and paint on the blue and black, but Hasbro really doesn’t want to use that much paint so this is what we got.
I really like how the torso has a lot of mass to it.
Aside from that, I really like the presentation on this figure. I don’t have any other Bishop figures (I never even got the Toy Biz Marvel Legends one), but I believe most of what is presented here is new. He has a much sturdier build than most Legends figures I’ve encountered. His shoulders are broad, his chest has a lot of mass, and his proportions look great. I do think the cuffs at the shoulders help to minimize that low shoulder look a lot of Legends have and they also make the shoulders appear bigger. I’m guessing if I cut those off I’d be less impressed, but since they’re present I have to give the figure its do. I also really like the matte finish this thing has. It’s on the blue portions as well as the skin and it’s just really, really nice. There’s a temptation to seek out an older Bishop head that would better match the character I know, but I doubt any head I found, custom or official, would have the same finish. It means I’ll probably just have to get used to short haired Bishop, unless someone wants to sell custom pieces of hair since it appears to be a separate piece that’s glued down.
The gun is small and gummy, but it appears to look like the one from the show. At least the muzzle does.
The accessories for Bishop are like the other figures in the wave – terrible. It’s basically bare minimum type stuff here as Bishop has a set of trigger hands, a right fist, and a left gripping hand. I’m not sure why we need the gripping hand and trigger hand, I’d have preferred two fists, but either way the accessory count is too low. Bishop also has his gun which looks a lot like the one from the original show. It’s pretty small though and I wish it had more size to it. Maybe it’s accurate to the new show – I don’t know. In the 92 series, his gun wasn’t very consistent and there are some shots where it looks puny, but I would say it’s supposed to be on the bigger side. He has a holster behind his left shoulder that it slots into fine and the sculpt is solid on the weapon. It’s cast in gray plastic and unpainted so it’s certainly not flashy. There’s nothing else in the box though – no effect parts, no alternate head, no nothing. It’s Hasbro doing the bare minimum at a not bare minimum price point.
“I’ve still got my eye on your, cajun!”
Assuming much of what’s here is new, Bishop should articulate fairly well. Or at least as well as a burly fellow like him can. The head is on a double ball peg and it’s just okay. He looks down enough and the rotation is obviously fine, but looking up is severely limited. That’s because Hasbro just buries the lower part of the peg in the neck and doesn’t allow for as much range as it could. The shoulders are just hinged ball pegs and they rotate and can go out to the side to a horizontal position. The biceps swivel is fine and the double-jointed elbows bend past 90 without much fuss. The wrists swivel and the trigger hands have vertical hinges, the rest horizontal. In the torso is an ab crunch that’s pretty “clicky.” It basically has three positions: neutral, forward, and back. Going back just makes his belly stick out and he looks pretty silly, going forward is fine, but it’s not a great joint. The waist twist is a peg twist. The hips go out to the side well past 45 degrees though not to full splits. He kicks forward about 90 degrees, but doesn’t kick back very far. There is a thigh cut and a boot cut, though the thigh cut breaks up not just the striping down the left side of the figure, but also the sculpted pouches on the thighs so it’s a pretty useless joint. The knees will go past 90 degrees, and are on the tight side. The ankles hinge forward and back a good amount while also pivoting just fine.
“For the future!”
The articulation for Bishop is probably acceptable given he’s a big dude with a gun, he’s not here to do high kicks and such. My only real complaints are with how they did the joint at the head since he should have more function up there if they just did it right. I’m also kind of tired of these Legends figures with useless thigh cuts that break up the costume in unnatural ways because who is going to pose their figures in such a way? Put the rotation at the ball joint and it will look so much better. The torso also sucks and I’d like to see Hasbro ditch these ugly ab crunches in favor of double ball pegs in the abdomen. That will let the figure bend forward and back, especially if paired with a ball joint at the waist, while also providing tilt and rotation. It’s not something that’s really any more expensive to produce compared with what we have, it’s more a matter of changing over the infrastructure that’s the real cost. They’ve been doing it with pin-less joints for years now, a figure of mostly new tools like Bishop would have been a great place to incorporate more advances.
It’s not the Bishop I want, but he does look pretty nice.
The criticisms I have for this representation of Bishop are basically criticisms directed at Marvel Legends in general. For a Legends release, I think this Bishop is pretty damn good and it largely just comes down to the finish and proportioning. He’s supposed to big a big, burly, man and he is. He has the mass to his chest that so many figures lack. Just look at a figure like the well-received VHS Cyclops or the new Magneto from the side – there’s so little mass they’re almost flat. That’s not the case with Bishop and he looks a lot better than most figures as a result. He looks so good that I bought him when I had no intention of doing so. I probably could have waited for a clearance sale, but didn’t want to chance it. Now watch them re-release the figure with a ’92 inspired head (you know they will) so I can kick myself for giving Hasbro money in the first place.
If you’re interested in X-Men ’97 here are my other reviews on the line:
Everyone can relax – Gambit has returned. Or arrived, since I’ve never reviewed a Gambit action figure in this space, but that’s because I haven’t bought a Gambit figure in about 20 years until now. When X-Men arrived on airwaves in the fall of 1992, hardly anyone on that team could be considered a true…
Previously, on X-Men reviews we looked at Magneto from the upcoming series X-Men ’97. The animated series may have been delayed into 2024, but the action figures from Hasbro are already here. And if you were collecting Hasbro’s line of figures based on the animated series from the 90s, this new line offers a chance…
It was two years ago that Hasbro made the announcement that it was wading into the weeds of X-Men, the cartoon series that aired on the Fox Kids Network from 1992-1997. The line was released across eight installments in 2022 (plus a ninth if you include the obviously animated-inspired Apocalypse released on a retro card)…
Everyone can relax – Gambit has returned. Or arrived, since I’ve never reviewed a Gambit action figure in this space, but that’s because I haven’t bought a Gambit figure in about 20 years until now. When X-Men arrived on airwaves in the fall of 1992, hardly anyone on that team could be considered a true household name. Wolverine was certainly the closest. He was featured in a lot of Marvel related ads and had his own solo comic series as well. Other characters showed up as guests on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or in the pilot for the never was series, “Pryde of the X-Men” and the arcade game essentially based on it. My own familiarity with the team was mostly from the first run of ToyBiz action figures featuring Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Archangel, and Colossus.
Gambit was not featured in any of those things. For me as a kid in ’92, the first episode of the cartoon series was my introduction to the character and I don’t think I was a unique case. Gambit was the break-out star of the series, as far as I’m concerned. He was essentially designed to be cool. He’s probably over-designed, but somehow Marvel pulled it off. He looks ridiculous, and yet come 1993 that’s who I wanted to be for Halloween. I think it’s the trench coat that brings a lot of that “it” factor upfront and the way his face is framed with that unusual hood he wears and red eyes which adds a mysterious component. I remember thinking his gloves were cool, and for some reason exploding playing cards just struck me as bad ass. All of that allowed him to pull off the hot pink undershirt and that weird, blue, thing he wears around his neck area.
This figure should be pretty familiar to more dedicated Legends collectors.
Following the debut of X-Men, most of my peers would cite either Wolverine or Gambit as their favorite character. That’s just how it was. ToyBiz hit stores with Series 2 of its X-Men line around the same time and Tiger Stripe Wolverine (or Wolverine II) and Gambit were the two hardest to find. Maybe the character’s popularity has faded over the years, but I was surprised that Gambit wasn’t featured in the VHS line of Marvel Legends based on the show. I think the real reason for his exclusion was due to the fact that Hasbro had somewhat recently released a Gambit figure in the same getup on a retro card exclusive to Target. I think it’s even still available. The same was true of Rogue and I think Hasbro made a business decision not to compete with itself for both figures, but if you’re going to have a line of X-Men figures based on the animated series you have to have Gambit.
The heigh isn’t quite right, but I’m not sure it is with any figure in this line. Look at how massive Sinister is, for crying out loud.
Enter X-Men ’97 and its first wave continues to right the wrongs of the VHS line by including, among others, Gambit. This figure is basically a re-release of that Target exclusive with minimal changes that come down to a new head and new overcoat. I don’t have that Target figure, but as far as I know, everything else is the same including the accessories. The paint application is a little different to better reflect the new source material, but that’s it. Chances are, if you have that figure and you’re happy with it, you probably won’t need this one. I, on the other hand, just want an animated Gambit to put on my shelf with the rest of the animated X-Men so I grabbed this one along with Rogue and Magneto so lets see if that was a good decision or not.
The portrait is very animation inspired.
Gambit comes on the same card as the rest of the line with artwork from the show on the front. Out of the box, Gambit stands at approximately 6.25″ to the top of his head and 6.75″ to the top of his hair. Like the rest of this wave, the scale is suspect. Gambit is a bit too tall, but not egregiously so. The head sculpt will get the most attention here as it has a very animated look to it. It’s a very clean approach with few lines to make it easy to animate. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t look like Gambit from the original series. It looks more like him than the Target figure, but that’s it. He looks reasonably enough like the art from the new show, so that’s fine. The paint is iffy though. The eyes are good and he doesn’t have lipstick, but the edge of the cowl isn’t clean. There’s a spec of flesh color on the right eyebrow of my figure and they added some stubble to his chin via paint. It’s on the character model, so I can’t kill it, but I wish it wasn’t there. The hair is huge and probably divisive. I don’t mind it though. Again, not at all accurate to the ’92 show, but looks fine for X-Men ’97 based on what I’ve seen. There’s no shading on it, but it’s probably fine for the source material.
Gambit comes with his staff, though I’ve never understood why he would need one.
And speaking of shading, you won’t find any on this figure. The coat is an overlay and it’s fine. It’s pretty stiff though and won’t pose at all, but it looks okay in a default pose. The sleeves are part of the sculpt and we’ve seen these before. The hands are unique to Gambit, at least the left hand with two finger gesture, so it’s odd to see fingernails sculpted onto the digits covered by the glove. They’re black, so the flesh part is painted which ironically covers up the fingernails to make them barely noticeable. Maybe this hand is reused for another figure? I don’t know, it seems odd to me. The torso is molded in pink and the blue portion appears to be molded in blue as well and keyed in. The very bottom of the shirt is painted pink and doesn’t match as a result. It’s pink over black plastic, which is an odd choice. I guess it’s because they wanted to do the legs in black so they could paint the pink thigh stripes, but it’s a lot easier to paint black over pink than the opposite. The pink stripes are also sloppy and the black shows through. The boots are just blue plastic and it shows.
It’s a very mixed bag on the presentation. Excepting the boots, the parts in molded plastic look fine, but the paint is bad. Gambit also has the same issue as Rogue in that the overlay coat isn’t snug enough at the shoulder. There’s plenty of pink showing between the sleeve and overlay when it didn’t need to be that way. It’s basically just another figure that is only concerned with the bullet points when it comes to the presentation, but the finer details are most certainly lacking.
Holy crap! An actual effect part!
Gambit does get to have more accessories, at least, when compared with Rogue and Magneto who both just got a hand swap. That’s not to say Gambit is loaded, by any means. He has his staff which is molded in blue, and to my surprise, it appears to be a darker shade than the boots. It’s a staff, so it’s fine. What’s not is the gripping right hand which is too loose for it. Gambit can hold it if you’re patient and careful, but it’s not good enough. And if you wanted a two-handed pose you’ll have to search for a new left hand somewhere because Hasbro didn’t provide one. I mean, you can kind of use the default left hand, but it looks a bit silly. Instead, they provided an effect part hand. It’s molded in a transparent pink plastic or acrylic and has three cards extending from an open hand with a swoosh effect. It looks fine, there are fingernails on the hand again for some stupid reason, but the swoosh kills it for me. It makes no sense because it extends beyond the hand in both directions. The swoosh should end at the front of the hand and extend only one side, not past the hand on both. It makes it look like an energy wave is shooting out with cards too. At any rate, there’s also a single card effect to place between the two fingers of the default hand. I like this one much better and it’s good, but no second portrait? No second gripping hand? No gripping hand that actually works?!
Though it’s not exactly a good effect part. That swoosh makes no sense, but Hasbro keeps re-releasing this damn thing.
The articulation is basically as expected with Gambit. The head is on the hinged ball peg that provides range up, down, and rotation, but zero tilt for more nuanced poses. The shoulders are hinged ball pegs that raise out to the side just past a horizontal position. The biceps swivel is fine and the single-hinged elbows give the figure better than 90 degrees at the elbow plus some swivel. The hands swivel and the gripping hand has a vertical hinge and the other a horizontal one. The torso has an ab crunch that goes forward pretty far, but the coat prevents much use going backwards. There is waist twist, but it’s pretty ugly because it just sits on a peg flush with the hips. The hips kick out to side about 45 degrees and kick forward all the way. There’s some range going back that’s stopped by the coat. There is a thigh cut for a swivel there and they put it in between two of the leg stripes so that’s a plus. The knees bend past 90 pretty far and there is a boot cut in the middle of the shin if you want it, but it’s ugly. The ankles hinge forward and back a solid amount and the ankle rocker is fine. My left ankle is pretty stuck at the hinge and I haven’t tried heating it up to free it.
This is definitely not the most fun figure to pose. The torso joints have acceptable range, but they’re of little use on this figure.
Aside from the left ankle, the rest of the figure is fine as far as joint tolerances go. Like Rogue, the shoulders are a bit tight, but with Gambit I don’t feel any binding at the joint. This one seems less gummy than the other two figures so at least the feel is fine. This is just one of the few figures where I wish Hasbro had inserted a butterfly joint. It would serve him well with his staff and cards, plus the coat would hide it. Double ball joints at the head and waist would also have improved the figure. I don’t think the ab crunch offers much use and a ball joint there that gets some rotation would be better. It’s a very dated approach to articulation, but Gambit’s unique attire means unique tooling is needed and Hasbro doesn’t want to spend money it doesn’t think it has to.
If he’s just going on your shelf then I guess this animated Gambit is passable. When that Mondo one shows up though he’s going to really look like a piece of crap.
The X-Men ’97 version of Gambit is essentially another compromised take on an animated character that will be acceptable for some and unacceptable for others. At $26, it’s too expensive for what’s in the box, but if you want an animated version of Gambit this is what you’re stuck with. And, for me, it’s mediocre, but passable. On the shelf with the rest of the crew, he looks okay. In hand and on its own, the figure isn’t much fun to mess with and a bit frustrating to pose the way I want to. Add the mediocre accessory load-out and frustrating gripping hand and it results in a below average action figure by today’s standards. Here I am essentially talking myself out of what little affection I have for this figure, but to summarize, if you (like me) just want a Gambit for your animated shelf it will probably get the job done. If you want something that’s an improvement over what Hasbro has already released, then you’re going to be let down. As seems to always be the case with Marvel Legends, you’re better off waiting for a sale.
Need to catch up on other X-Men animated Marvel Legends releases?
Previously, on X-Men reviews we looked at Magneto from the upcoming series X-Men ’97. The animated series may have been delayed into 2024, but the action figures from Hasbro are already here. And if you were collecting Hasbro’s line of figures based on the animated series from the 90s, this new line offers a chance…
It was two years ago that Hasbro made the announcement that it was wading into the weeds of X-Men, the cartoon series that aired on the Fox Kids Network from 1992-1997. The line was released across eight installments in 2022 (plus a ninth if you include the obviously animated-inspired Apocalypse released on a retro card)…
This week, the long wait for an in-person San Diego Comic Con comes to an end. For the first time since 2019, attendees, creators, and the like will be invited back into the city of San Diego for a celebration of all things comics, movies, and general “nerd” culture. One of the many panels this…
Previously, on X-Men reviews we looked at Magneto from the upcoming series X-Men ’97. The animated series may have been delayed into 2024, but the action figures from Hasbro are already here. And if you were collecting Hasbro’s line of figures based on the animated series from the 90s, this new line offers a chance to fill in some gaps. That’s what drew me to Magneto, and that’s what is drawing me towards Rogue.
Rogue comes at us in the same style of card back as Magneto with artwork from the show on the front and a cross-sell on the back. Rogue is in her animated attire which is very similar to the costume Jim Lee designed for her in the comics, but with some minor differences. Her headband is just a headband with no knot on the back and her jacket is green instead of brown. Otherwise, she still has her two-toned hair and her yellow and green bodysuit. And her costume in the new show is the same as the costume from the old show. There is a style change going from the old show to the new and that’s reflected in the figure, but on the surface, this figure should be a candidate to serve as an animated Rogue in your X-Men animated series collection.
If you were introduced to Rogue via the 90s cartoon then you probably prefer her in the green jacket.
Rogue stands at about 6.25″ to the top of her hair. I was critical of the size of Magneto so I should do so here. Rogue is a bit too tall, not egregiously so, but she’s not perfect if that matters to you. I’m okay with it, personally. Her head sculpt is all new. The hair is done with two pieces: one brown and one white. It looks fine. There’s no shading which would probably help, but the two-toned nature of her design covers up for that. Her face and said hair are the most obvious change for the new show. She doesn’t have the big 80s hair she had before, and while her face looks fine, it just doesn’t look like Rogue to me. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about her face that differentiates it from say Jean, and I think it’s how her eyes are shaped. Usually stretched a bit and diamond shaped. It looks close enough though to the image on the box so ultimately I’m fine with it, this is more information for those looking to fill in the ’92 collection. Her face does have some shine to it, which I don’t care for, but that’s hardly surprising for a Marvel Legends release.
Rogue stands mostly in-line with the other female figures from X-Men.
The rest of the figure is a mix of old and new. The jacket is a floating piece while the sleeves are sculpted. It looks fine, the X logo on her right arm looks pretty ugly, but I have no issue with the approach. The opening for the arms is pretty large though so it’s something you have to be mindful of when posing if you don’t want her to look like she’s wearing a vest. The upper torso piece is new to better match the new show. She’s still a tremendously busty woman, only now the suit isn’t so skin-tight that she looks like she has cantaloupes on her chest. Some might complain that her breasts have been slightly deemphasized, but I personally think this looks better. This new torso does appear to have a slightly different finish to it though, at least the upper part, as the yellow on top doesn’t match the yellow of her abdomen perfectly. It’s slight, but something I notice with the figure in-hand.
You have probably seen a similar meme before. Cartoonists and figure sculptors just love working on Rogue’s butt.
The other main difference between this Rogue and the previously released retro card figure (which I don’t have), is that the boots are now fully sculpted. That figure had the top of the boot represented by a floating piece, but now that’s just sculpted to the thigh. It looks okay. When fully bending the knee it’s probably not as good looking as the previous solution, but at least there’s no fussing with the extra piece. The majority of the figure is molded in yellow and the green is painted on and the paint application is mediocre. The torso is okay, I have some yellow spots but they’re hidden under the jacket, but the thighs are a bit messy. The green straps on the boots also aren’t cleanly applied. And something sure to irritate some, myself included, the green portion of her thighs doesn’t line up on the front and back of the leg. Meaning if you twist the thigh to line the yellow and green up properly on the front of the figure, it will be mis-aligned on the back and vice versa. That’s just annoying, but also speaks to Hasbro as I often get the impression they just don’t care about the details. There’s also a weird paint detail on the side of each thigh. It’s like an extra application of green, but on the plastic seem of the upper thigh. It’s on both sides and I don’t really know what’s going on with it.
“Momma!”
The figure looks fine, it’s just imperfect when some of those imperfections don’t really need to be there. The articulation is also mostly fine. The head is affixed via the usual Marvel Legends hinged-ball peg. For Rogue, it works okay as her hair hides the gap and odd angles when pushing her head all the way down or up, she just doesn’t have a ton of room for nuance posing. The shoulders are hinged pegs and they’re really tight. Perhaps this is the result of creating a new upper torso, but not new arms? They’ve been doing that for years though so one would think they’re experienced at it. The joint is tight though on Rogue and sometimes when rotating it feels like the peg is binding more than rotating. It’s unpleasant, to say the least. The elbows are single-hinged and bend about 90 degrees. There’s also a swivel which works fine. The wrists swivel and hinge horizontally and they’re fine.
“I hate you!”
The diaphragm joint feels like a double ball peg. There’s a little movement to either side and some tilt forward and back, but nothing extreme. It should rotate, but like the shoulders, the joint wants to fight any rotation and is prone to binding. The plastic they’re using is just too gummy. There is no waist articulation and the hips are big ball sockets. She can do better than 45 degrees, but splits are out of the question. She kicks forward pretty well, but she can’t kick back much at all because she’s got herself a pretty ample backside. There is a thigh twist, but the design of her suit means it looks bad when utilized. I would have preferred her hips be designed to swivel on the ball peg. The knees are double-jointed and they’re fine, though there’s some paint transfer from the green to the yellow kneecap on my figure. The ankles are hinged and feature a rocker. The range is fine, but they’re very “clicky” so you basically just have 3 or 4 positions they can get into as there’s no smoothness to the joint.
The glove is off!
The articulation is mostly there, but the quality of the plastic lets the figure down. Those shoulders are problematic as is the diaphragm joint. She should have a joint at the waist, especially considering she has a belt to hide it, but that’s a spot where Hasbro seems to favor aesthetics over articulation with its female figures and I can accept that limitation. She could have double-jointed elbows and it’s mostly Hasbro being cheap in reusing old parts that prevents that from happening. There’s no butterfly joint, but I don’t consider that a terrible loss. Even though she’s a figure that could benefit from being able to rear back in a punching pose. It’s another figure where the quality control, the finer tuning, lets it down so it’s not much fun to pose. She’s also difficult to stand which I think has a lot to do with her body being more slight and her head top-heavy. The lack of nuance with the ankles adds to the frustration.
Sorry Logan, no going back for Morph and Beast.
As was the case with Magneto, Rogue is not going to shine when it comes to accessories. Of those, she has just two: an ungloved right hand and a second left fist that is holding her removed glove. The left hand is reused from the last Rogue release while the right hand is surprisingly different. I’m sure it’s not new, but it’s more of a reaching hand, I suppose? She should have a set of ungloved open hands for grabbing other figures. A second portrait with a more aggressive expression would also be nice. If you want her to look like she’s going to syphon someone’s energy she kind of looks like a creeper with that smile she’s sporting. The cuffs of the gloves are at least separate pieces that slide off of her arm so at least you can make the ungloved hand look convincing, but it feels half-assed still. I feel like a good company would include a ’92 inspired head or something, maybe some effect parts, but that’s not Hasbro.
Rogue comes away feeling a lot like Magneto. This is a fine enough likeness of the new X-Men ’97 design and probably a tolerable stand-in for the ’92 series. Considering the VHS line from Hasbro rarely seemed to feature new tooling, chances are a ’92 Rogue would have just been the previously released retro card with some haphazard cel-shading. At least this figure doesn’t have that blemish. It has problems with the articulation though and the accessories stink. At $26, it’s a harder sell than it should be. I don’t regret buying it, but I can’t give it a full-throated endorsement either. This is the sort of figure one buys out of a sense of obligation: I have an animated X-Men shelf, and it needs a Rogue. It’s not really one that’s bought because it’s a terrific product, but that seems to sum up the Marvel Legends experience.
Interested in more figures based on the animated X-Men?
It was two years ago that Hasbro made the announcement that it was wading into the weeds of X-Men, the cartoon series that aired on the Fox Kids Network from 1992-1997. The line was released across eight installments in 2022 (plus a ninth if you include the obviously animated-inspired Apocalypse released on a retro card)…
The penultimate figure in this series is a bit of a curveball. When one thinks of the animated series X-Men, the first villains that come to mind are Magneto, Sinister, Apocalypse, Sabretooth, and then it gets muddled. Graydon Creed made quite the impression in the show’s second season and may even be the most hate-able…
This is it! This is the big one! Back on Halloween of 1992 Fox premiered X-Men and we were introduced to a character named Morph. For comic readers, it was a bit of a re-introduction as Morph was based on the character Changeling, but for copywrite reasons, had to undergo a name change. Changeling wasn’t…
New show, new toyline, that’s how the world works.
It was two years ago that Hasbro made the announcement that it was wading into the weeds of X-Men, the cartoon series that aired on the Fox Kids Network from 1992-1997. The line was released across eight installments in 2022 (plus a ninth if you include the obviously animated-inspired Apocalypse released on a retro card) and you probably don’t need to be a huge fan of the property to know that eight figures just isn’t enough to properly capture the series in action figure form. Fans can debate on what the biggest omission was and it would certainly be easy to select one of the several X-Men not included, but for me, the one I missed the most was Magneto.
Magneto has long been one of my favorite villains in anything. While he really wasn’t the big baddie he could have been in the show, he still had tremendous presence and was a captivating figure. I was delighted to see Mondo turn to him second for their line of sixth scale figures based on the show and they basically nailed the likeness of the character. In a perfect world, we would all be enjoying X-Men 97 right now, the sequel series to X-Men from the Fox days set to launch on Disney+ in early 2024. It was going to launch this fall which would have coincided with the 31st anniversary of the original show’s premiere, but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. The show could be pushed back, but the tie-in merch was basically locked into their release windows so we at least have a new line of Marvel Legends based on the show to talk about.
He’s a bit of a slender boy.
As someone who is a big fan of that original animated series, I saw this X-Men 97 line as a chance to add to what Hasbro gave me in 2022. And I think some of that attitude is present in the character selection as we’re getting four characters right out of the gate not featured in the VHS line: Rogue, Gambit, Bishop, and the subject of this post, Magneto. Hasbro knows people like me will supplement that line with these figures which have a more animated look than a standard Marvel Legend release, even if it’s based on the new series instead of the old one. The characters are all coming on blister cards with artwork from the show on the front and they’re a mix of old and new tools. Unlike the VHS line though, these are definitely designed to resemble the source material where as the VHS line was very inconsistent with its approach. The line was actually pretty bad, if I’m being honest, but I keep buying this stuff anyway because nostalgia is a hell of a thing. If you think Marvel Legends are only getting worse these days then I guess I’m part of the problem as I’m still buying compromised visions of the characters I love.
There’s no cel-shading in this line, but he does have shadowy eyes. I just wish they went a bit heavier on the shading like the source material.
I’m looking at Magneto first because, as I said, he was the one I missed the most from the VHS line. He’s also the figure that best fits the style of the 92 series as not much has changed. I don’t collect enough Marvel Legends to know if the parts here are new or not, but they’re new to me. Out of the box, he stands at approximately 6.25″ to the dome of his helmet. We’ll get the accessories out of the way right now as he just has clenchy hands out of the box and a set of fists. He’s depicted in his classic attire from episode 3 of the original series: helmet, purple cape, red gloves. His costume changed here and there throughout the show. Sometimes he had purple gloves, something the part of his costume covering his neck and upper chest was red, but this is how he looked in Season One (and how he’ll presumably look, at least in the early going, of the new show). The crest on his helmet isn’t painted, but it doesn’t appear to be in the new show either. An outline might have helped though. The helmet has a very glossy appearance, but since it’s supposed to be metal I’m okay with that. The rivets holding his cape on are also shiny and there’s a little pearl quality to the purple portions of the wrists and shins. Those parts are painted, and the application is just okay. There’s some red poking through on the left shin of my figure and the lines aren’t all clean.
“Why is my hand shrunken when opened?”
The red portions of the costume are just colored plastic, but they have a nice, matte, finish. The cape is also colored plastic with a similar finish. I like how they sculpted in some shape into the shoulders which adds a little flair to the look. There is no cel-shading with this line, but Hasbro did paint the face with some black around the eyes as Magneto is often depicted in both the comics and animation. I like it, but I think they could have gone a little heavier with the black. There’s also some missed spots in between the eye and the eyebrow. The helmet is a separate, non-removable, piece and the face is painted underneath it. I don’t like the lipstick and I feel like his eyes are a little too high, but the face is okay enough.
The dainty hands are more pronounced when compared with Cyclops.
What I can’t shake though is the feeling that Magneto is just too small. X-Men 97 is a continuation of the original series so it stands to reason that the characters are the same size as they were back then. In that original series, Magneto was around 6’3″ and was basically eye-to-eye with Cyclops and Gambit if not a touch taller. With this figure, he is shorter than both Cyclops and Gambit. He’s also a touch slighter of build in comparison with the VHS Cyke. Maybe the new show is going for a slimmer profile with its characters and if so, criticism revoked, but the height is still an issue. Also of issue are the clenching hands which are almost comically undersized. Compare his open hand with Cyke’s two-finger hand and it’s like comparing a child to an adult. The fist hands are fine, and actually look like they’re reuse from Cyclops, and it’s even easier to see how small the clenching hands are by comparing them with the fists as there’s no way those two hands could be the same. The only big parts of the figure are his feet, which look terrible. They look like loafers and not boots. Magneto is a character that’s all about presence, so his size feeling off is a bigger deal here than it might be with other characters.
These two will never see eye-to-eye.
Articulation for Magneto is a touch limited for a Marvel Legends release, but that’s not exactly a deal-breaker. The head is on a hinged ball peg so you get range looking up and down, but it lacks the nuance of a double-ball peg. The shoulders are standard ball hinges and they raise out to the side past horizontal and rotate as far as the cape allows. The cape can be moved as it’s glued down to the figure’s chest, but also pegs into the middle of the back which can be popped out easily if you need it to. There are no butterfly joints, but I’m okay with that. There is a biceps swivel and double-jointed elbows that go past 90. They’re not the best looking elbows, and the entire figure has a bit of a gummy feel, but they work. The wrists swivel and both sets of hands feature horizontal hinges.
Lets bring in Gambit for another size comparison.
In the torso is an ab crunch that actually works really well going forward and back. There is a waist twist below the sash that works, but it gets ugly if you go too far. The hips are simple ball socket hips which can almost hit a full split going out to the side. They kick forward 90 degrees and kick back a little bit as well. There is the standard thigh cut which works fine and double-jointed knees that bend past 90 without issue. The ankles hinge forward and back and at least these ugly feet have solid range. The ankle rocker is also there and works fine.
If only he had an effect part of his own.
The articulation isn’t amazing or anything, but at least what is here works about as well as it could, minus the tactile issues. It’s enough for Magneto who basically just raises out his arms and floats around. What is lacking are the accessories since there basically is none. No un-helmeted head, no flight stand, no power effects. Just a figure with mis-matched hands. Is it enough? This figure cost me $26 and it’s a pretty bare bones release, all things considered. Any way you slice it, that isn’t great value. That’s probably why a lot of Marvel Legends are clearance buys for many people out there.
Yeah, he doesn’t look as good or come with as much stuff as the Mondo version, but it is almost a tenth of the price.
I bought this Magneto to go with my VHS set of figures. I know others are buying it for their comic collection. Presumably, there are people out there buying the figure to put on an X-Men 97 shelf, but with the show not out I guess it’s not surprising there isn’t a lot of folks going in that direction. For what I wanted out of this Magneto, it works. It’s undersized and lacking in bells and whistles, but otherwise looks the part. Is that worthy of your twenty-six dollars? That’s for you to decide. As for me, I don’t regret this one and compared to the VHS line he’s honestly among the better of those figures. It’s just a terrible value for what you’re getting, but as long as Hasbro is the only game in town it’s all we got.
Interested in more figures based on the animated X-Men?
The toyline of my dreams was announced last October. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the television series X-Men, Hasbro is doing a dedicated line of Marvel Legends with figures based on the look of the show. The show was obviously inspired by the designs of Jim Lee, but there are differences in the…
If you showed a random individual this blog and asked them what my favorite cartoon was as a kid I’m guessing they would go with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And they wouldn’t be wrong as that was my favorite for a time, but come 1992 I was starting to drift away from that show. Batman:…
I wasn’t sure he would make it in time, but Hasbro managed to ship Cyclops before the end of the year. Cyclops marks the final figure (for now) in Hasbro’s X-Men animated series subline of Marvel Legends. It has been…a ride. What was once a dream line of mine to see brought to fruition, turned…
I’ve been collecting action figures in some capacity for my whole life, and it occurred to me now that I’ve never owned the Fett man. That’s Boba Fett, who is one of the most iconic characters from Star Wars and also pretty noteworthy in the world of action figures. I am not the place for Star Wars history, but it’s my understanding that the original Boba Fett figure was hard to come by as safety standards prevented its release because of the missile firing action it possessed. Or it was released, then recalled, something like that. Needless to say, that original Boba Fett is a prized possession for vintage Star Wars collectors and the notoriety surrounding it has only added to the character’s popularity.
I didn’t collect the original Kenner line of Star Wars toys, but I did get into The Power of the Force which debuted in the 90s. My interest in it was somewhat of a passing one. I think I got a bunch of money for a birthday to do as I pleased and saw it as the right time to build up a Star Wars collection. Following that, it didn’t move much farther so I had plenty of gaps in my collection (the only Han Solo I had was the mail-away one in Storm Trooper armor you could get via Froot Loops), but the only one I was a little bothered by was my lack of Boba Fett. He just wasn’t in stock that day, and really, not a ton was as I ended up with quite a few figures from the Shadows of the Empire line. I would have opportunities to get Boba Fett later, and his spaceship, but when push came to shove I just didn’t want it enough.
I’m guessing a lot of folks leave these on card because it does display well.
As an adult, I don’t buy many Star Wars figures, but I do have a trio from The Vintage Collection. This is the Kenner homage line, but with more articulation and more paint. I liked the Mandalorian I picked up, but I really didn’t care for the Dark Trooper. I was so unimpressed with that figure that when I went to post my review I couldn’t be bothered to retake my photos which had come out rather blurry. I almost didn’t post it, but I took the time to write it so I let it slip through. I thought I was done with The Vintage Collection, but then I came across this Boba Fett the other day. I had previously considered getting the Kenner colors version of basically the same figure a few months back, but Hasbro wanted $26 for it so I wasn’t all that tempted. For some reason, $20 felt that much better when it came to this new one so let’s talk about it.
I just find the little guy charming and he does kind of fit in with the Christmas figures.
This Boba Fett is labeled as the Vintage Comic Art variant. As far as I know, the sculpt is 100% reuse from past Boba Fett figures and it’s part of a wave of Fett variants because the guy sells. This one is exclusive to Target which is where I found it. For some reason, it didn’t scan when I tried to buy it, but it wasn’t due to a register lock, so an associate just entered a price for me. I got it for $20, which is actually a buck cheaper than it’s supposed to be (thanks Target employee!) so I guess I have a tiny bit of surplus value in it. I’ve actually had that happen a couple of times at Target where I tell the associate the right price and they give it to me for less anyway. One older woman let me have a $4 Hot Wheel for a buck because I think she just felt that’s what it was worth which amused me.
Just look at that guy – such a bad ass!
Anyway, I don’t know where this look for Boba Fett comes from, but I’m going to assume it’s from a comic book adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back since that’s what’s listed on it. Again, other places could better inform you on the history of this thing, but what attracted me to it was the colors. This figure is cast mostly in a rich, dark, green with mostly red and white mixed in. Maybe it’s my love of Christmas influencing me a bit, but this color scheme works for me. It just pops, and I like where the red is utilized. What really works though is the helmet which has this blue shading on it between the black and white. And that little dot of white on the top of the helmet is just – chef’s kiss! It looks great! And I found myself taking it to the register against my better judgement. I think what also works in its favor is the size. As an homage line, we’re talking about a 3.75″ figure, give or take, where that colored plastic look comes off better. On the few Black Series figures I have, the red plastic in particular comes across as cheap, but it’s not as noticeable in a smaller scale.
I’m not in love with the soft goods or the appearance of the jetpack, but it’s not like they’re displayed prominently.
The presentation is rather lovely for this scale and the figure also comes with a couple of accessories. There’s a non-removable soft goods cape affixed to the back of the figure’s left shoulder. It has some holes in it so that it looks weathered, I suppose, though it does throw off the look of the figure a little bit. On the other hand, the plastic cape on the Din Djarin figure is a bit of a pain to deal with so I can’t say I mind too much. On the figure’s back is the jetpack with a non-removable missile, which is a little disappointing. The paint on it isn’t super detailed, but I’m guessing it wasn’t in the comic it’s based on too.
“Stick ’em up, unless you can tell me where I can stick this handgun then please help me!”
For weapons, Boba Fett gets a sidearm and a short rifle with a sling on it. The handgun is basically cast all in a light blue, while the rifle is solid purple. It’s an interesting look, for sure, and it works for me as a toy. There are no optional hands, but both hands are trigger-finger hands so he can hold a weapon in either hand. He can casually hold the rifle in two hands, the classic Boba Fett pose, though he can’t aim it with two hands. I like both, but I’m disappointed that he doesn’t have a holster for the sidearm. Now, he doesn’t have one on the card art, but maybe just give him one anyway? Or find a way to include one on his back or something. I feel like he has to be displayed holding the handgun or else it will get lost. The rifle at least has the sling so it can go over a shoulder, but the handgun has to be just shoved somewhere it’s not supposed to go if you want to store it.
Articulation is just okay. It’s a bit of a bummer that he can’t really do a two-handed, gun-firing, sort of pose.
The articulation on this guy is exactly the same as Din Djarin. I’m guessing some of the parts are the same, but there’s plenty that isn’t. This figure is going to pose much better than those old Kenner figures and really about as well as The Black Series. The limitations the Holiday Mandalorian I have possesses are pretty much the same here. It’s the torso that’s limiting since Fett wears armor so you don’t get anything in the diaphragm. The lack of butterfly joints at the shoulder prevent some of those gun holding poses you would like to have and the knees and elbows are single-hinged. The only joints I don’t like really are the hips, which are hinged ball pegs. Ball and socket joints would work better and I don’t see how they would cost anymore other than the expense of switching from one thing to another. The feet are a little on the small side so this guy might fall over here and there, but once you find a pose it seems to be fine.
The big thing with this series and figure is just the cost versus what you get. Should a 3.75″ figure cost over 20 bucks? I think in the minds of most the answer is “No.” I do wish we got a little more for our buck like maybe an effect part for the jetpack. This one doesn’t even have holes to accept the effect parts that came with the Dark Trooper which did bum me out a bit. A removable missile or a blasting missile effect would have been awesome too. I’d have taken that over the sidearm. My feeling with a lot of what Hasbro is doing (and it’s worse in the Marvel Legends line) with its prices is that they’re going up without the consumer feeling like they’re getting something extra. In fact, they seem to be cutting back on a lot of paint apps, accessories, etc. This one isn’t that bad as we at least get two guns and a fun paint job, but there’s no way to really downplay that the asking price is more than we’re used to.
At least he can handle this pose.
As someone who never owned a Boba Fett before, I’m happy with this being my first. I think he looks cool, he looks fun, and he adds something to my modest nook of Star Wars figures. It’s the appearance that sells this, so if you like it go out and grab one. If you’re not a completist though, maybe double-check and make sure you don’t prefer a different variant as there’s no shortage of Boba Fett these days. This figure is exclusive to Target in the US and my store at least got a whole bunch so I don’t think it will be super hard to find, but it might be the type of release where if you wait too long you could miss your chance.
If you would like to read more Star Wars toy reviews, I’ve got a few more you can check out:
I’m back with another Star Wars action figure review! Actually, I don’t do these very often. This is only the third such review out of me because I usually don’t collect Star Wars. Sure, I think the franchise is fine and I did collect figures as a kid, but it’s not something I’m drawn to…
We’re getting to Christmas coverage at The Nostalgia Spot one day early this year with this look at one of the latest in the Holiday Collection from Hasbro’s Star Wars line of action figures referred to as The Black Series. I have previously looked at a figure from the very popular streaming show The Mandalorian…
Today we are celebrating ten years of The Nostalgia Spot! It’s not ten years to the day, the actual anniversary was about a week ago, but it’s close enough. In those 10 years, there have been 750 posts here on a variety of subjects, pretty much all of which could be labeled as nostalgic to…
You probably heard, but Hollywood is essentially on strike right now. Two large unions are fighting for better pay, benefits, and assurances that they won’t be replaced by artificial intelligence while major studio heads like Bob Iger are tossing stones from their golden mansions. I am firmly on the side of labor when it comes to most strikes, but this isn’t a strike post. It’s a comic con one as the just recently wrapped San Diego Comic Con of 2023 had a decidedly different feel to it in light of the work stoppage. Unions frown upon any of their members even promoting their projects right now, and with good reason. Without the glitz of Hollywood, it meant Comic Con could go back to being about comics for at least one year. Though for me, every year is all about the toys!
I don’t know when it started, but Comic Con has become a huge spot for toy producers to show off what’s coming in the next few months to a year and 2023 was no exception. I sat glued to my phone once preview night started and fought with myself to put it down all weekend since I couldn’t be there in person. Now that it’s over, I’m going to tell you what I think because my opinions are very, very, important and the fate of the companies involved, nigh the entire industry, is dependent upon securing my approval.
NECA TMNT
That is one big ass Krang! Photo: Pixel Dan
Let’s start with the old standby – NECA and their many versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In some respects, this year’s display felt slightly subdued, but I think that’s because NECA has really branched out beyond just the cartoon and movies. They basically showed off a little bit of everything and undoubtedly they’ve held stuff back for the conventions to come. And that’s fine by me, I was kind of happy that I took one look at the new TMNT toon stuff and didn’t feel like I necessarily needed any of it. And some of that is tempered by the fact that I know I have a major expense in the sewer lair diorama to look forward to. On the toon side though, I’m definitely in for the street turtles. While I prefer the season one street looks to these, I’m still happy to have what they showed. That’s it though. I’m probably going to get more, and the giant Krang was certainly the show-stealer, but I’m definitely in more of a wait and see how I feel mode when some of this stuff starts becoming available.
These wrestling turtles so perfectly nail that Archie aesthetic I love. Photo: The Fwoosh
On the movie end, we just had some new Secret of the Ooze figures to look at. There was kick-boxing Keno, some new Foot, and two versions of Professor Jordan Perry. Is that too much of the professor? For me, yeah, and I can probably ignore all of these. Oh, and there was a pretty neat Shredder throne on display, but that’s another thing I don’t need. The comics end was far more exciting with a bunch of new figures based on The Last Ronin shown. They all look pretty damn good, but I may be out on that subline for the simple reason that I can’t buy, and display, everything TMNT from NECA. The Mirage line is getting some new figures as well, with the big one being Rat King who looked fantastic. That is definitely going on the “must buy” list. As for Archie, that may have stolen the show with a brand new Mondo Gecko unveiled and the much demanded Wrestling Turtles! Even if the models shown for the turtles were so early that they didn’t feature any articulation, I couldn’t have been more excited! I’ve wanted that black suit Raph ever since I was a kid and my dad bought me TMNT Adventures #10. I must have read that thing cover-to-cover at least a dozen times.
As for disappointments, there wasn’t much to be found. All of the new stuff looked good, so any disappointment was likely just the result of something not being shown. And the big one, for me, is Tempestra. I thought there was a very good chance we would see her from the toon line, especially after the profile boost given to the character thanks to Shredder’s Revenge, but she remains the elusive final member from the Night of the Rogues. I feel confident she’s coming though, so I’m not that broken up about it. I’d also like to see a new toon Shredder, or an Archie one, but again that’s probably coming, we just don’t know when. And hey, that Turtle Van is looking pretty sweet!
Super7
All right, when can I have them?! Photo: The Fwoosh
Super7 has cast such a wide net these days that maybe I should break their display up, but then again, there wasn’t a ton for me. The biggest though, by far, was the official unveiling of the new line of Misfits figures. These are being done in a retro, Masters of the Universe, style which is pretty cool. It means they won’t be as expensive as Ultimates, but definitely better than ReAction. I’ve felt for awhile that Super7 needed something in between those two lines, and maybe this is it. Would I like an Ultimate Glenn Danzig some day? Sure, as long as it’s good, and some of the figures Super7 has done of real people haven’t turned out so hot. This line, which features Skeleton Danzig, Jerry Only, The Fiend (aka Crimson Ghost), Samhain Danzig, and early 90s Danzig, already has hit on some great designs. We just need a Doyle to round things out. I’m also amused by how Super7 is basically just following the Medicom blueprint when it comes to Glenn Danzig.
On the disappointing side, well, there just wasn’t anything from the other lines I care about at Super7. Well, they did have TMNT Wave 8 on display and that’s looking fine, but there was nothing from the Disney or Simpsons Ultimates or even any new ReAction that I saw for either. Super7 usually doesn’t unveil new Ultimates at Comic Con, and they also don’t always go with a robust display. If they have something anticipated that they just got from the factory or something, they may bring that, but not always. I’m just concerned for both of those lines. The most recent Disney wave based on The Rescuers failed to secure enough preorders to go into production. Is the line in jeopardy? Sort of similar is that The Simpsons Wave 4 is still listed with an ambiguous “TBD” on the pre-order status page. It could be an oversight and they just haven’t updated it, or it could mean that no progress is being made and until it goes into production it should be considered as “in jeopardy,” as far as I’m concerned. It’s not exactly a star-studded wave and features two figures at $65 so nothing would surprise me.
Hasbro
Now that’s a figure worthy of the Master of Magnetism. Photo: The Fwoosh
I am certainly not the biggest Hasbro fan, but the company had my attention going into the convention because we knew that Marvel Legends based on the highly-anticipated X-Men ’97 were likely to be shown. And they were! Coming in Wave 1 is Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Storm, Bishop, and Magneto all with new sculpting to make them better resemble the upcoming show. For me, someone who collected the VHS line of X-Men based on the 1992 cartoon, I wanted to see if some of these could be fudged into that line. We have no assurances that Hasbro intends to come back and finish that team, so plucking Gambit and Rogue from this one might be our best option. And, for the most part, they look okay. Rogue has her green jacket and black headband and Gambit has a more “toon” appearance to his face. Neither face-sculpt looks truly like the ’92 show, but Hasbro was unlikely to give us that in the VHS line anyway. There is no cel-shading though, so that might throw off the display a bit, but given how half-assed Hasbro’s approach to that style was maybe it’s for the best? Wolverine is essentially the same as that release too, just now he has an unmasked portrait and pin-less limbs, so collectors waiting on a non-cel-shaded version of that figure should be happy. I personally don’t need it. And with Storm and Bishop featuring new hairstyles, I can pass on them as well. That Magneto though is a must have and I’m happy to see that Hasbro shaded his face. He could use some accessories, but this is Hasbro we’re talking about so that’s hardly a surprise.
I don’t know if I’m as happy as Pixel Dan is about this Crystar, but I’m definitely in “gimme gimme gimme” mode! Photo: Pixel Dan
Hasbro also gets credit for one of the biggest surprises as they showed off a figure of Crystar! Yes, Crystar The Crystal Warrior is coming to Marvel Legends and the figure looks pretty sweet. It’s all done in translucent plastic with a blue hue and he has his sword and shield to round things out. The comic he hails from is pretty forgettable, except for the fact that the iconic Danzig skull was lifted from the cover of issue 8. Naturally, this is one I need for the Danzig collection more than anything.
And that’s pretty much it for me. I did see other great stuff like Jada’s Mega Man line and NECA had some new Gargoyles to show, but the above stuff is what really stood out for me and got me excited. Mondo also unveiled an Omega Red in their sixth scale line based on the X-Men animated series and he looks unsurprisingly spectacular, I just wish they’d slow down a bit as that line is killing me financially. Special shout out to all of those working hard during the convention covering this stuff for people like me who can’t go. I’m talking about The Fwoosh,Pixel Dan, Toy Shiz, Toy Bro, and loads of others. The excitement is now over, we have lots to look forward to, and the next convention or show lurks on the horizon. This golden age of toy collecting appears to be going strong, weap for my wallet!
In the late 1980s the arcade scene in the US was still going strong. Classic style arcade games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man were being overtaken by a new genre of quarter-munching pain: the brawler. Or the beat-em-up. If you’ve played one, then you can picture what I’m talking about. It was usually a one…
There’s been a hole in my Danzig collection for quite some time. It was a hole that was easy to fill and actually quite cheap considering most Danzig records fetch well over $100 these days, but an important piece was missing. And that piece is not what one would necessarily expect, but I would assume…
Wednesday, August 18th, ended up being quite an eventful little day in the world of toy collecting. There were some reveals from major toy companies, leaks, and even those long neglected Street Sharks fans got something to get excited about late in the day. Personally, it was a good day for me too as I…
I’m back with another Star Wars action figure review! Actually, I don’t do these very often. This is only the third such review out of me because I usually don’t collect Star Wars. Sure, I think the franchise is fine and I did collect figures as a kid, but it’s not something I’m drawn to in the same way I am other properties. And that’s worked fine for me since there’s tons of Star Wars content and reviewers out there. And when it comes to Star Wars, I’m basically just an original trilogy fan, but the recent output of television from Disney has actually been pretty solid so it’s no surprise that this is yet another review of a character featured on The Mandalorian.
The Mandalorian is basically Star Wars as a spaghetti western. It’s easy to digest, but has some overarching plots (especially Season 3), and the characters are plenty likable. One of my favorite designs from the show came from the Season 2 finale which featured the Dark Troopers. These robotic replacements for Storm Troopers are these big, hulking, glossy, black instruments of death, though I don’t think they actually kill anyone in the show (it’s been awhile). The design was great though and it was only a matter of time until action figures arrived. The emphasis being on the word “time” there as Disney apparently didn’t give Star Wars license holder Hasbro any advance notice of what was coming in that season so even though it aired over two years ago we’re just now getting to the figures.
So…he looks a bit different on the box, no?
If you are a collector of Star Wars action figures from Hasbro then you probably know that the company has three styles of releases: The Black Series, The Vintage Collection, and the Retro Collection. The Black Series is the roughly 1:12, 6″ scale characters that Hasbro has made a focus of its action figures division ever since it brought back Marvel Legends. The Retro Collection is basically a 5 points of articulation line that harkens back to the original Star Wars line from Kenner. It’s a style that’s basically been resurrected by Super7 and it’s ReAction series and Hasbro wanted to tap into that themselves. The Vintage Collection, which is where the figure we’re talking about hails from, is like a combination of the two. It’s a 3.75″ scale line, but it features modern sculpting, paint, and articulation. It’s the only line from Hasbro that has much appeal for me. I’m not a scale snob when it comes to my collecting and I appreciate a variety, it just so happens that most of the properties I enjoy most either come in 1:12 or 1:10 scales. The smaller 1:18 stuff is a scale I’ve always found really charming and it’s a scale that’s perfect for Star Wars given the presence of vehicles. The one figure I did review from the line (I did also purchase a Koska Reeves figure, but never reviewed it) was a release I really enjoyed so adding to that has always been a possibility.
And I probably would have added more to it by now if not for one thing. Hasbro, for awhile, seemed to resist raising prices during the pandemic and was holding strong for awhile. However, it being a publicly traded company, eventually caved to shareholder demands and we’ve seen price hikes across the board from Hasbro over the past year. And it’s like they’ve been playing catch-up as the increases have been rather extreme. The Vintage Collection was basically Hasbro’s best bargain just a couple of years ago. I want to say the Koska figure I bought was only $12. Recently, I was at my local Target and saw the new, Kenner-inspired, Boba Fett and I was fixing to add him to my tiny collection, but he rang-up at $23! Yeah, no way. And the figure I knew I wanted when I first saw the episode was this Dark Trooper, but Hasbro wanted $26 for this one and I had to pass. Then, somewhat out of the blue, the figure hit clearance at the more palpable price of $17.50. Still higher than I think it should be, but I had wanted this for over two years so I gave in. And since the order pick-up option I selected actually sold out before the unit could be secured for me, I got free shipping out of it so let’s take a look and see if this thing is even worth the discounted price I got it for.
This guy is a bit of a nightmare to try to photograph. He’s so dark the camera often doesn’t want to focus on him.
The Dark Trooper comes in Hasbro’s plastic-free packaging which I think they’ve already backtracked on. It’s just a cardboard box with an image of the figure on the front and a hanger affixed to the back. Inside the box is a cardboard tray that the figure is slotted into plus a brown paper pouch with the accessories. I buy most of my toys online so I have not cared one bit about the loss of the plastic bubble on the packaging. This hobby I and many others enjoy unfortunately is a big polluter since they’re primarily all plastic so I was in favor of Hasbro’s move to plastic-free, regardless of the company’s true motives (which I’m not speculating on). It seems to be going away though, so be it.
Bang!
The Dark Trooper stands at just about 4″ tall and at first glance, wow, this thing does not look like the figure on the box. It’s cast in all black plastic with almost no paint. The paint is limited to the metallic portions of the elbows, wrists, and knees plus some patches on the biceps. There’s also some red dots on the chest, but that’s it. In the helmet, is red, transparent, plastic to create a light-piping effect that really doesn’t work very well at this scale. You have to basically hold a light to the back of the head (where the rear of the plastic is present in the form of a red square) to get anything out of it. They may have been better off just trying to paint glowing red eyes, or better yet, they could have done both and given us some options. As it stands, the eyes mostly get lost in the face.
“And now I squish your little friend!”
That is unfortunate, but what is really disappointing for me is the lack of a chrome-like finish. The image on the box is either a render or placed under some very harsh light. Even blasting white light on my figure at close range I can’t get it to resemble that finish even a little bit. It’s a glossy plastic, but not overly so, and it very much looks like plastic. There is no illusion here that this guy could be made of the same material as the actual character. The black plastic almost seems to suck in the light more than throw it back. And that could be due to its composition as it’s a soft plastic, there’s a gummy-ness to it, and not something harder. I think a harder plastic would have thrown more light back at the viewer and helped sell the figure. Or maybe it just needed some paint. The face, especially, just doesn’t translate because of the all black plastic. The sculpt is there, but you have to get in close to appreciate it.
“Whoa! How did you do that?!”
And that’s an issue with the whole figure. Granted, this scale is not the best choice to celebrate a sculpt, but it still can if the finish is done properly. And the sculpt looks pretty nice. There’s a lot of detail in the abdomen and the limbs, and really, all throughout the figure. There is a floating crotch piece that has these little pistons on them, at least I think that’s what they are, that can get a little messed up. It’s a softer plastic and one of the four pistons on mine is warped a bit, but at least it’s on the rear of the figure. The left shoulder is also a little jacked-up, it probably didn’t come out of the mold clean, but otherwise I don’t have any issues with the sculpt. At first glance I thought the hands might be a little on the small side, but after a little research, that seems to be a case with the design and not the figure.
::Muffled screams::
The Dark Trooper does come with a handful of accessories. For extra parts we get two fists. I don’t see myself using them, but I guess it’s always useful to have some fists. The default hands are a trigger finger right hand and a gripping left which work well for two-handed weapon poses. And the main weapon is a blaster rifle of some kind. It’s all black plastic and it can be either held by the Dark Trooper or it can be slotted into the right thigh. There are thrust effects that peg into the feet. They’re a semi-transparent orange plastic and look okay, but without a flight stand they’re kind of useless. The Dark Trooper also comes with its own, personal, hangar. It has to be assembled as it comes in three pieces and it was a little harder than I expected it would be. It’s black plastic with some red paint in places and it’s fine. It perhaps creates some desire for people to army build these guys so you can have some inactive units in your display, but at these prices I don’t know if many collectors want to do that. The hangar also has two cables that plug into it that I guess are supposed to curl under the arms. I guess they’re like charging cables? I don’t know. They don’t really hold the figure in place so they’re rather perfunctory.
Go to bed, Dark Trooper, I’m sick of looking at you!
One of the hallmarks of this line is you get small, retro-inspired, action figures that move like modern toys. The Dark Trooper mostly comes as advertised in that regard, but it’s not without its flaws. The head feels like it’s on a ball peg of some kind with another joint at the base of the neck. You get your rotation and the figure looks down well enough. The range going up is minimal and you only get a little bit of tilt out of the joint. The shoulders are ball-hinged and the trooper can just about raise its arms out to a horizontal position. Rotating forward and back is fine, though the shoulder pad will prevent full rotation there. At the elbow there’s a swivel point which is basically your biceps swivel and the hinge will allow for a 90 degree bend. The wrists swivel and feature a large hinge as well that moves in a horizontal fashion. There is, sadly, no vertical hinge on the trigger hand. In the diaphragm, there’s a ball joint that’s mostly for rotation. There’s a little tilt and a tiny amount of forward and back, but not much. The hips can kick forward about 90 degrees and they go back a little bit as well. Out to the side, you basically get to a full split so that’s good. There is a thigh swivel that’s pretty well hidden and at the knee we get a swivel and a hinge that will go about 90 degrees. The ankles feature a hinge, but it’s very clicky. You basically have a neutral position, one click forward, and two clicks back. And really, all of the hinges are like that including the knees and elbows. It can make it a challenge to stand this guy to not have something more nuanced. There is an ankle rocker that too is a bit on the clicky side. It will move a little, then just jumps to a full tilt, which makes its usefulness limited.
Issues aside, I think the Dark Trooper will move well enough to get it into Dark Trooper poses. It basically just stomps around blasting foes and shrugging off the weapons of others. It’s not much of a melee fighter, because it doesn’t have to be, and when it does get in close it just swats away its prey. It also comes with enough stuff and the only thing missing is a flight stand to better take advantage of the thruster effects. I suppose a blast effect might have been preferred, but oh well. What’s going to determine if you like this figure or not is just how good do you think it looks? And for 25 bucks I don’t think it’s good enough. I didn’t seek out any reviews on this figure before buying it, so silly me for thinking the image on Hasbro’s packaging was indicative of what this figure looked like. Even at the discounted price I got this one at, I don’t think it’s really there. This should be a $12 line, and the fact that it’s double that is crazy and unfortunate as I think Hasbro is going to kill The Vintage Collection with these prices. I don’t hate that I have this figure, but it’s also not something I can whole-heartedly recommend.
If you want to read all of my Star Wars coverage you don’t have much to catch up on, but if you just like laser fodder, I’ve got plenty of reviews of such characters:
Today we are celebrating ten years of The Nostalgia Spot! It’s not ten years to the day, the actual anniversary was about a week ago, but it’s close enough. In those 10 years, there have been 750 posts here on a variety of subjects, pretty much all of which could be labeled as nostalgic to…
We’re getting to Christmas coverage at The Nostalgia Spot one day early this year with this look at one of the latest in the Holiday Collection from Hasbro’s Star Wars line of action figures referred to as The Black Series. I have previously looked at a figure from the very popular streaming show The Mandalorian…
It’s been a long time between releases by Bucky O’Hare license holder Boss Fight Studio. The last figure released by the company was 2018’s Storm Toad Trooper, a figure that arrived at my doorstep on Boxing Day 2018. Since that time, Boss Fight Studio has had sculpts and specs to show off, most notablyBruiser, but…
It’s not Spider-Man vs Venom, but I guess it’s the next best thing?
Last year, Hasbro celebrated the 30th anniversary of X-Men, the animated series that premiered on Halloween 1992 and would become a ratings hit shortly thereafter for the Fox Kids Network. It was responsible for getting a lot of kids into the X-Men and Marvel comics in general and the first, prime, benefactor of that rise in popularity was Spider-Man. Spidey had taken a couple of swings at television and found modest success, but certainly nothing on the level that some of the other prime kids’ shows that were contemporaries. I personally recognized Spider-Man more from his public service announcements or the Marvel Productions animatic that would follow a show like Muppet Babies. With X-Men being a hit though, it opened the door for more Marvel cartoons and Spider-Man was next in line arriving in sneak peak fashion, just like the X-Men, in the fall of 1994.
You guys still into the VHS inspired packaging? I think I still am, but this would have been way cooler if it was actually two boxes and a slipcover instead of just one, big, box.
The Marvel Legends VHS series for X-Men must have been received well for the company to do the same with Spider-Man. That is easy to understand. What is not is why now? The X-Men wave has almost sold out on Hasbro’s website and it’s expected the remaining figures will eventually get there (Cyclops was just added to shopDisney in April) which suggests that a second wave is certainly in order. The 8 figures Hasbro did release hit on some members of the team and some notable villains, but more remain. Why not come back around with another 8 in 2023, 30 years after the show really took off since only 3 episodes premiered in ’92, and then come back with Spider-Man in 2024 to, you know, coincide with that show’s 30th anniversary? It seemed like it was setup perfectly for just that, but apparently Hasbro and the Legends team got impatient or they feel like they need to space the X-Men releases out more or that line is dead and they’re not ready to admit it. I personally don’t get it and I will be a little ticked off if they don’t come back to X-Men to finish off the team, at least, even though that product line was rather poor. I’m a sucker for that cartoon though so I was committed to filling out the roster, as imperfect as it was, and not having the likes of Gambit, Rogue, or Magneto leaves my shelf feeling incomplete.
It’s Spider-Man once again, who is the same, but different, as the last black-costumed Spider-Man we saw.
That aside, Hasbro’s approach to Spider-Man could be described as the same, but different. We’re still getting VHS styled boxes with TV show inspired artwork, only now they’re apparently coming in two-packs. I guess that’s great if you didn’t like the gap in releases between the figures in the X-Men line, but it stinks if you only want one of the two figures (and I think that will be true for many with the upcoming Doc Ock and Aunt May two-pack). Hasbro doesn’t think it’s worth their effort to credit the artist on the box, but good thing we have social media as I was able to find out that it’s Harry Moore once again who did the art on the retro card release too. The box is designed to look like a slip cover with two VHS tapes in it, but it’s just one box with the two figures inside. Like the X-Men line, this one is likely to be a collection of repaints with minimal investment made in the tooling of new parts. These figures aren’t direct adaptations of the characters you saw onscreen. It would have been great if that was what Hasbro committed to, but at this point no one should be surprised. A big feature of the X-Men line was also the cel-shading approach to the paint. It was something that was not applied consistently from release to release. Some figures looked okay, some looked terrible, but it mostly came down to the application being cheap and unfocused. With this line, we’re going to have two figures where one is shaded, and the other is not. It looks like cel-shading isn’t going to be as big of a focus here, but it’s hard to know why with anything Hasbro does.
Yeah, it’s pin-less and has some toe joints, but the only reason to get this figure is if you like the shading.
We’ll start with Spider-Man first. This is the symbiote, or black suit, Spider-Man from the show since we already received a standard, animated, Spider-Man via the retro card release late last year. Thematically, it makes some sense to pair symbiote Spidey with Carnage, a fellow symbiote, though anyone who watched the show can point out that Spider-Man never fought Carnage while wearing the black costume. Interestingly, this Spider-Man is a repaint of the figure that came in the Renew Your Vows two-pack last year. The animated Spider-Man from last year was on the noticeably smaller Amazing Fantasy figure mold making this figure basically not scale with the other Spidey. Cool. The sculpt is also much more cut than that one so this is a Spider-Man that looks almost absurdly ripped and lumpy for this source. The head appears to be the exact same as the retro card black costume Spider-Man and so are the hands, and for that matter, the torso. Whatever your preferred body is, none are particularly great for the animated Spider-Man as he was very broad shouldered and full in the chest which neither figure is. This one is pin-less in the arms and legs, so it has that going for it.
I don’t consider myself a Legends collector, and yet I now have 5 Spider-Men (Web-Man and Cyborg version not pictured).
“We’re the same guy, just in a different costume.” “If you say so.”
What is going to be most divisive with this release is probably the paint. The figure is cast in black plastic so the only paint present is the white and the blue. Yes, blue, as this figure is shaded like the show. Or rather, like basically every version of black-costumed Spider-Man. Just doing him in all black won’t show up on print or on TV, so he (and Venom) have always been shaded blue. In the show, Spider-Man was outlined in blue and the muscles were also done in blue. For the figure, Hasbro appears to have tried to outline the abdomen with blue while also hitting both clavicles. For the limbs, it’s just a few lines down the meat of the arms and the front of the legs. There are a couple of lines in between the eyes, and almost nothing on the back of the figure. There’s also none on the hands. It looks okay, but there doesn’t appear to be a ton of thought put into the blue on the arms. And, as usual, I think the figure would have benefitted from a little more. Something on the crown of the head would have looked nice, and maybe some under the pecs. And maybe just more curves to the lines would have helped with the biceps looking the worst out of all of the spots, but it’s probably as good as we could have expected out of this line. The rest of the paint is reserved for the eyes, hands, and the spider logo which has some gray shading. That is not consistent with the show, but it looks okay on the front, though I don’t know what they were going for on the back. The spider itself is pretty clean, though the white on the hands is too thinly applied. The eyes, which have a little luster to them, look okay.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Nice split, spider dweeb!”
There’s no point in devoting a full paragraph to accessories for this guy as he just comes with the standard array of hands: fists, wall-crawling, and thwip. The thwip hands are useless since this version of Spider-Man shoots webs out of the back of his hands so why not drop them for a set of gripping hands? Or web accessories? It’s like the people who design these figures have little or no attachment to these characters, but any average fan would say “This doesn’t make sense.” Anyway, this guy should be pretty familiar when it comes to articulation too since he’s like most of the other Spider-Man releases. We get a double ball peg at the head that feels rough. It has some gapping issues and they did that thing where they cut out a chunk of the rear of the neck which shouldn’t be necessary for a figure that has no hair. Even with that, he doesn’t look up all that far and the head just wants to fight me for some reason. The shoulders are ball-hinges on butterfly joints. He can raise his arms out to the side fine while the butterfly joint provides okay range going back and forward, but nothing crazy. They also didn’t continue the paint on the spider logo on the rear so when the arms are all the way forward you get a gap. There’s a biceps swivel and the elbows are double-jointed. I cannot get the top hinge on the right arm of my figure to budge, but I was able to get the left one to move. He gets a little better than 90, so nothing impressive, but it doesn’t look ugly. The wrists swivel and hinge.
Go web! (Web not included)
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense, but they look good when they’re matchy-matchy.
In the abdomen we get a ball joint that lets the figure bend back and forward a little bit. It creates gaps in both directions so it’s better used for rotating and pivot and the range going to the side is pretty good. Below that we have an ab crunch that does what it’s supposed to and at the hips we get the utterly useless drop-down hinged hips. With the hinge up, he can kick forward about 90 degrees and he doesn’t really kick back due to the sculpted butt cheeks. With the hinge down, he kicks forward…about 90 degrees. Maybe a little better and more straight, but you’re gaining practically nothing. With the hips up or down, he can’t achieve a full split. It’s pretty crazy the amount of figures I have that can do a split, and yet none are Spider-Man. There is a thigh cut, but not only does it break up the anatomy it breaks up the blue shading as well. The double-jointed knees work better than the elbows and they go well past 90. There is a boot cut if you want it, but again, it breaks up the sculpt and the shading. At the ankle, we get a hinge that lets the feet go forward and back an acceptable amount, though it’s kind of ratcheted so finding those in-between positions is a challenge. The ankle rocker works well and we also get a toe hinge which is fine. Aside from the addition of the toe hinge, this figure moves as well as the previous symbiote Spider-Man which I would categorize as good, but not good enough for a Spider-Man figure. There’s plenty of things to nitpick, but mostly it’s just scrap those garbage hips. Ball and socket hips would work better and cost less than the silly hinge. The whole thing also has a gummy feel and ultimately posing this guy isn’t really a fun experience.
This entry won’t have the maximum amount of Carnage, but it will have enough.
He wanted a picture with his daddy.
Okay, that’s enough about Spider-Man, let’s talk about Carnage. This figure is a partial reissue of the Monster Venom wave Carnage from about four years ago. Some stuff is the same, while some stuff is different. The head, hands, and probably the arms are the same while the torso and legs are actually different. That older figure lacked butterfly joints while this one has them. It appears to be the same torso we saw with Web-Man, who shared a torso with Spider-Man 2099, if I’m not mistaken, and probably several others. He is a very bright red, which isn’t really what I’d call show accurate, and the black paint for the various swirls and lines on Carnage is understated compared with a comic version of the character to attempt to match the show. The head is clearly the comic inspired head so it doesn’t really match the show aside from the amount of black on it. The Carnage in the show had a much stubbier head as opposed to the elongated one from the comics. There was one shot of the symbiote right after it attached to Cletus Kasady that looked like the comic book character, but that was pretty much it. I think there should actually be a bit more black on the torso to really match the look of the show, but that’s not Hasbro’s goal apparently so I don’t why I feel the need to point out the inaccuracies. This figure also has some tendrils plugged into the arms and a removable one that slots into the back. That aspect of the character wasn’t seen much in the show where animation and the ability to do it well is a concern, but I prefer Carnage with them so they don’t bother me. I think he looks okay, he just doesn’t really look like the character from the show. He’s much too lean and suffers from that Marvel Legends “tiny shoulders” syndrome that so many figures in this line possess. The figure also struggles with trying to be somewhat inspired by the animated series without looking cheap. It seems to me if they just committed to a more toon-accurate paint job that would have solved that issue to a point, but I’m just some guy with a blog so what do I know?
Why use the regular hands when you can use these?
I basically feel the same way about this head as I do the hands. Plus it’s a pain to get on anyway.
When it comes to accessories, Carnage fares better than Spider-Man. Again, these are all reused from past releases, but you get a second head that’s of Kasady and he looks pretty creepy. There’s no paint on the hair, so that’s a bummer, but at least the face appears to be done with face printing making it much better looking than the original release. It’s a comic inspired look, but you probably could have guessed that. If you have the older figure, it might be fun to have this head on that, but I’ll probably never use it. For hands, Carnage has two open hands by default where his fingers look long and bladed. They’re basically style posed, though the right hand is more curled like it’s trying to grip something. The fingers on that hand also don’t end in points and are rather stubby so they look stupid. You’ll never use it though because the optional hands are way better. For the left, we get a more exagerrated, clawing, hand that also has some added tendrils on it. I think it looks great save for the added blob on the index figure which is just a bizarre design choice as it makes it look like he has six fingers. For the right hand, we get a fisted hand that’s affixed to a big, symbiote, axe head. I like how it’s sculpted to have slime separating the fist from the axe and then the axe head itself has a neat design with a little hook in it. It’s painted too so we get some black lines that look nice and help sell it. They also gave the figure a vertical hinge on this hand which is appreciated. The only downside is it is pretty heavy, and the hinge fairly loose, so posing it can be a tad frustrating.
Spider jump!
For articulation, we have a pretty standard Marvel Legends figure. The old ball hinge is in place for the head and the figure can look up and down without issue as well as rotate. He even gets a touch of tilt on the ball, so that’s okay. The shoulders hinge out to the side less than 90 degrees so that’s disappointing. Web-Man can get his arms out to the side without issue which has me thinking these two share a torso, but the arms are actually different. The butterfly joint provides for solid range going back, but not much across the chest. There’s a biceps swivel and the double-jointed elbows will let the figure bend past 90 degrees there. The wrists swivel and hinge and all except the axe hand hinge horizontally. In the torso, we get an ab crunch that works well going forward and back with no gapping issues present. Hasbro also continued the black paint so that looks good. The waist has a twist which looks pretty ugly because there’s nothing to hide it, but it does work. At the hips we get the standard ball and socket setup and, what do you know, he can do a split. It’s a miracle! There’s a thigh cut below that which works fine, but breaks up the black paint. The double-jointed knees also work fine and you get a boot cut if you want it. The ankles hinge forward and back all the way and rock side-to-side just fine. I think the legs are basically the same as the old release, they just don’t have the plug holes for more tentacles. In other words, more old Spidey parts shared with Web-Man and other Spider-Man figures. Aside from the shoulders, he moves well enough. There’s still gummy-ness to the joints with Carnage, but it isn’t as pervasive as it is with Spider-Man.
Spider kick!
Overall, this release is basically what I expected it to be. It’s a bunch of parts reuse, with a different paint job. As a kid, it always bothered me that every Venom figure I bought was just black plastic when in the comics he was clearly blue. Obviously, that’s because an all black look wouldn’t work, so he had to be shaded blue and even some artists made blue his dominant color (he was very much black in his first appearances though). Because of that, I always wanted a Venom or a Spider-Man in the symbiote costume that took a similar approach so that’s what drew me to this set. Plus, I did like the cartoon series and it’s where most of my Spidey knowledge came as prior to that it was all from Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends and the occasional stray comic book. This figure from Hasbro has its problems, but it comes close to satisfying that urge for me and I think it looks better than the more plain release from the retro card line. It’s pretty absurd that he’s so much bigger than the red and blue Spider-Man when they’re supposed to be the same character from the same show and the accessories blow, but at least the base figure looks fine.
Worth it? Eh, I guess if you like what you see, it’s okay given the apparent new going rate for Marvel Legends.
With Carnage, this is a character all new to me in figure form. Well, new in the sense that I had not purchased a Carnage since the Toy Biz Carnage II figure from the Spider-Man line way back in the 90s. I was never a huge fan of the character, he was just Venom without a conscience, but he did look cool and I certainly spent many hours playing Maximum Carnage back in the day. As a figure, he’s fine. He looks good, moves well enough for the character, and I like the optional parts. I like them so much that I consider the main hands rather useless, but it’s fine. And when I got that animated Venom in 2021 I knew I wanted to add a Spider-Man and a Carnage to my little display so I at least achieved that. As for this series going forward, I might have been interested in that Doc Ock, but the Aunt May he’s bundled with looks bad and I’m not paying for her. This set retails for $53 on Hasbro’s Pulse website. If you’re a member, you get free shipping, but if you’re not then tack on the price of shipping as well. This was the last order I made with my subscription and I don’t intend to get more. At this price, it’s something a fan of the show can possibly talk themselves into. The box is nice, if that interests you at all, and the figures are I guess the usual level of quality for Marvel Legends. Had they just given Spider-Man some worthwhile accessories it would have been much easier to recommend, but since they didn’t it puts this one squarely in the niche category. Few Marvel Legends are worth their asking price these days, and these are no exception. If you’re primarily a comic book collector and already have these figures, then don’t bother. If it looks like something you like and you know what to expect, give it a shot. Or wait awhile for the next warehouse sale when you can probably get it for 40-something where it would be a much easier recommend. That’s probably not going to happen for awhile though. There’s also shopDisney which is supposed to carry this and may be more aggressive with its sale prices if it hangs around a few months. You can also get free shipping there, though you have to spend $75 I think. If you time it right, and have a wife or kids that love Disney, it’s not a tough threshold to meet. At least it’s easier to get than the stupid Walmart exclusive.
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