Tag Archives: marvel legends

October 23, 2023

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Gambit

By Joe
Gambit has arrived.

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?

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Rogue

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…

Keep reading
by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Magneto

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)…

Keep reading
by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Mr. Sinister

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…

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by Joe

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October 16, 2023

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Rogue

By Joe
Rogue is back with a facelift.

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?

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Magneto

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)…

Keep reading
by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Mystique

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…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Morph

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…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

October 9, 2023

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Magneto

By Joe
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?

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Wolverine

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…

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by Joe

Mondo X-Men TAS 1/6 Scale Magneto

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:…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Cyclops

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…

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by Joe

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May 4, 2023

Marvel Legends Spider-Man ’94 Spider-Man vs Carnage

By Joe
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.

Need to know more about what Marvel Legends has done for Spider-Man? Check these out:

Marvel Legends Spider-Man (Animated)

It was in 2021 that Hasbro released a PulseCon exclusive Venom figure on a Spider-Man retro card. The retro card series is meant to stir-up nostalgia for all of the adults who were buying toys and watching cartoons in the 90s as the retro card is a facsimile of the old cards Toy Biz used…

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by Joe

Hasbro Retro Card Symbiote Spider-Man

One of the most iconic costumes in the world of superheroes is definitely that of Spider-Man. I put that classic red and blue with webbed detailing right up there with Superman and Batman. I would argue that there’s no more iconic costume in the world of Marvel than Spidey’s, and the crazy thing with Spider-Man…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Comics, Television, toys

January 26, 2023

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Marvel’s Beast

By Joe
Welcome, Professor McCoy, to The Nostalgia Spot.

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 figures, pretty standard for a single wave. There was hope on my part that the line would continue into 1993, when the show really took off, but that was not Hasbro’s plan. As a result, several characters from the show are still outstanding, and while Hasbro has referred to this break as a pause, that’s hardly a guarantee of anything going forward. If this were a romantic relationship, it would be dead, and maybe it should be since the line was subpar. I am a glutton for punishment apparently so I do want to see it continue so that we can get the missing X-Men and some of their most notable villains, but I can’t count on that. That means I’ve had to take matters into my own hands. I’m probably playing right into Hasbro’s thinking in doing so, but so be it, which is why I now have Marvel’s Beast to talk about.

We need to ponder the potential release, or non-release, of Beast in the X-Men Animated Series subline.

Beast, or The Beast, had an interesting run in the television show. He was part of the team, but basically written out of the first season pretty quickly as he was arrested and held for trial for the bulk of the episodes. He’d be released at the end of that first season and was able to become a recurring character as a result. Beast has always been one of those characters where the viewer is not supposed to judge a book by its cover. He looks like a beastly creature and adopted a name to play off of that, but in reality he’s pretty gentle, thoughtful, empathetic, and highly intelligent. Since he’s a well read individual, the writers of the show had a lot of fun with him as they could make him rather wordy and insert lines from famous writers and poets into his vocabulary as he was quite fond of quoting others. Some viewers found it annoying, but I was always rather charmed by Beast. And mostly, I just liked him because he was blue! Blue is my favorite color so a big, blue, furry, creature is aesthetically pleasing for me. Especially because I just really like the shade of blue used for his fur. It stands out and it’s a fun, somewhat ridiculous, design.

I prefer him naked.

This figure of Beast is a re-release. There’s been a prior blue version as well as a gray version and Hasbro apparently felt now was the time for another re-release. This one differs in that the shade of blue is different, more of a cobalt, and it’s all together brighter than that past one. There’s also less shading and he comes with a new head and some new accessories. It’s my thinking that certain figures from the animated series were not in play last year because of planned releases like this one or figures that were recently released on a retro card like Rogue and Gambit. It’s also my feeling that if we get a Beast in a 2024 or 2025 from the show he’ll basically just be this figure with some cel-shading and maybe a new head. And since I just really like how this blue turned out, I took the plunge with this figure as a stand-in. Maybe a permanent stand-in? Who knows? I’ll probably want that damn box when and if it comes so, yeah, this could easily be a double-dip for me, but at least I’m future proofed.

Beast! No!

The retro card is a throwback to the Toy Biz days and features artwork by David Nakayama. It’s a lovely card and many collectors like to keep one mint and open another, but I am not one of those guys. Beast stands right around 7″ if you stand him up straight, though practically speaking he’s a little shorter since this is a character that is almost always in some kind of a hunch or crouch. He comes out of the box sporting a white lab coat which is one of the new additions. It’s not an original idea to pair Beast with a lab coat as Toy Biz did the same early in the Marvel Legends line, but some people who already have the older Beast might want it. It’s decent, but the quality of the soft goods isn’t going to impress. Mine has several stray threads and if I intended to display Beast with this coat on I’d probably do some trimming. It does have a chest pocket on the left side which is neat.

The coat is not the best quality, but I also don’t know how much of a draw it truly is for collectors.

Getting the coat off is rather easy and once done we have our furry blue boy in all of his glory. This Beast is clearly inspired by the artwork of Jim Lee, as nearly all of the retro card releases seem to be. He has a stoic expression which features his completely white eyes and his teeth poking over his upper lip. This is where the distinction between show and comic comes into play as Beast in the show always had pupils, but in the comics he was often depicted this way. I prefer my Beast with pupils, but I can’t hold that against a figure that is trying to emulate a comic look. His hair is a darker blue and the body has lots of sculpted fur on it. There are hits of dark blue shading in the middle of the chest and shoulders which makes up the bulk of the paint on this guy. Otherwise, there’s just the belt and upper legs. The trunks are sculpted in navy and the belt in yellow with the X logo painted on. The upper thigh piece appears to be sculpted in navy and the parts of his exposed fur are painted and Hasbro did a good job of matching the blue paint to the blue plastic. The area around his ab crunch though is less successful as far as color-matching goes as it appears that was sculpted in navy as well. The rest of the paint is basically reserved for the white claws on the hands and feet and it’s done okay. It’s not the cleanest application of paint I’ve ever seen, but at least it’s not egregiously bad or anything. The proportioning on the sculpt is very well done for a Marvel Legends release. His chest and shoulders have plenty of mass and so do the legs and biceps. He should fit in pretty well with your other X-Men releases from this era of the comics, or show, in my case.

Fascinating!

I already mentioned the coat, but Beast does come with some other things as well. For hands, he has a somewhat tight gripping right hand and a loose gripping left hand. He also has a right fist and a left fully open hand. I would have preferred just two sets of gripping hands that match each other, so two tight and two loose, as the loose gripping hand is a nice style pose hand. The fist I find useless while the open hand is fine. It would be a bit more useful with better articulation, but we’ll get to that. The claw paint on all of the hands is pretty consistent in that it’s passable. Beast also gets a second head and this one is from the older release. It’s a screaming head and it’s pretty well painted and the inside of the mouth is sculpted. The hair on it is slightly more narrow, enough so that it throws off the aesthetic for me. I like the wider hair look of Beast, but this older head probably wasn’t going for that. It’s fine, but I’ll never use it as I just don’t think of Beast as a screamy sort of character, but artists have had fun drawing him like one for years. Beast also comes with a pair of beakers, one containing the X-Gene and another a green liquid. They’re fine and they look nice since they’re cast in transparent plastic with a colored fill to create the illusion of a liquid inside. They’re also two different designs with one featuring a more spherical base and they certainly work with the lab coat if that’s the look you want. Lastly, Beast has a pair of glasses. They’re cast in transparent plastic with the ear pieces painted black. They’re pretty terrible though because there’s nothing to hold them onto his face. They’re rubbery and soft so they don’t pinch at all and there are no holes or any way to key them in. I’m glad they didn’t do that, but these could have been manufactured in a stronger material so that they gripped his head better. Or they could have been designed to fit between his brow and his nose. Whatever, it is what it is, and at least they fit in his pocket. I received a Baxter Stockman figure last year from NECA that came missing a pair of glasses, and since NECA still has not sent me the replacement they promised, I’ll give these to Baxter for now.

I would not leave him like this on a shelf.
At least someone can make use of these glasses.
A potential addition for the accessory-less Mr. Sinister?
He does enjoy the arts.

Lastly, we need to rundown the articulation on this blue boy. Beast has quite a bit, and most of it I like, but he’s not without his problems. For starters, he has the usual ball hinge at the neck only with this figure the ball basically sits right on top of the hinge. His head is low so it affects the range. He can rotate and tilt a bit and he does have up and down, but since he’s a character who crouches a lot I would like even more range looking up. His shoulders are ball-hinged with butterfly joints. He can raise his arms to the side no problem and the butterfly joint goes way back, but hardly anything forward. He has a biceps swivel and double-jointed elbows that will bend past 90 degrees even with his rather generously sized biceps. The wrists swivel and hinge with all of the hinges being of the horizontal variety which is appropriate, in this case. In the torso, we have a diaphragm joint that runs along the bottom of the rib cage. It mostly affords rotation as any movement to the front, back, or tilt is minimal at best. Below that is an ab crunch that is mostly hidden behind the floating belt. It basically only has 3 positions so you get one click back and one click forward. It’s okay. At the hips we have some ball and socket joints and he can nearly hit a full split. He kicks forward about 90 degrees with no movement to the rear. There’s a thigh cut below that and double-jointed knees which work just fine. The ankles have a ratcheted hinge, from the feel of it. It will go back all of the way with two clicks of movement, but it goes forward only one click. He has a very nice ankle rocker and he also has a fairly well-engineered toe hinge as well. I wish the toe hinge was a little more firm, but it seems to be usable.

With a different head, I’d be more than satisfied with this display.

For Beast, it’s a solid mix of articulation points and approaches and, for the most part, I think it works. Where it’s lacking just a bit is with the ab crunch and the butterfly joints not coming forward more. Beast is known for that one-handed pose on the ground in a crouch not unlike Spider-Man. He has the big, open, hand for such, but he really can’t hit it convincingly. If you get him in a crouch with the hand down he looks silly because he doesn’t have the range in the head to be looking forward. More range back in the diaphragm would have helped. It does make me think his proportions might be just a little off in that his arms should be longer. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s a character where artists cheat at times and when he’s just standing around his arms look fairly normal in length, but when posed in a more “beastly” manner they mysteriously get longer. It’s just a bummer he really can’t do his classic Jim Lee pose from the cover of X-Men #1. He can stand on one hand though, if you’re patient. I wouldn’t recommend leaving him like that on a shelf without a stand, but I was able to pull it off.

It’s kind of a Beast pose.

This Beast is probably as good as a Marvel Legends version of the character is likely ever to get. Yeah, he can’t hit all of the “Beast poses,” with ease, but he still poses well. Mostly though, the sculpt looks great for the character so it’s no wonder why Hasbro has re-released it multiple times at this point. The extras like the lab coat do little for me, but this new, stoic, head is definitely more of what I envision for the character. Yeah, I want a smiling portrait with pupils in the eyes (like the box art, I might add), but I can’t really hold that against the figure since this is a comic interpretation and he has white eyes in the comics. Mostly, I just like this blue and I love how it pops on the shelf. I think the shading on the figure is enough, though maybe some hits on the calves and forearms would have livened things up, but it’s fine. The prior version looks over-shaded to me so I prefer this dialed-back approach. The only other thing to mention is the cost. This figure, for whatever reason, is considered a deluxe release so it’s going to cost you around $35 or more in some places to add him to your collection. Considering it’s nearly 100% reuse, there’s not much in the package to justify the price aside from Hasbro just doing whatever it wants. Compared to other releases at this price point it’s not a good value, but if you need a Beast (or have doubts about Hasbro doing more animated X-Men) you’re probably going to pay it. At least the figure looks nice enough.

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Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on…

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X-Men: The Art and Making of the Animated Series

A few years ago, I talked about my love of X-Men, the animated series, via a book review of Previously…on X-Men by Eric Lewald. That book chronicled the development of the 92 animated series that helped propel the Fox Kids Network to the top of the Saturday morning leaderboards through notes from the author and…

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January 12, 2023

Marvel Legends Retro Card Cyborg Spider-Man

By Joe
It’s Spider-Man with a robot arm!

Well, this is a figure that I never planned on reviewing. It’s a bit old at this point, but we’re looking at yet another Spider-Man retro card release from Hasbro and this time it’s Cyborg Spider-Man. Now, I remember seeing this quite some time ago at Target and thinking it looked fine, but I’m not a Marvel Legends collector so I never paid it any real mind. I say that, and yet 2022 is the year I bought more Legends than I have since 2006 mostly due to the X-Men animated line, but it also got started with the animated Venom. That Venom lead me down a rabbit hole where I wound up with Web-Man, Symbiote Spider-Man, and more recently the animated Spider-Man. It was getting that most recent one that basically resulted in me grabbing this guy because what I really wanted was a webline part. That figure didn’t come with one, but when I went to Target recently I spotted a figure that did. Spoiler alert – it’s this one!

Even with the new hardware, he still does spider shit.

Cyborg Spider-Man is a 2021 release, if I’m not mistaken. Possibly late 2020. Things blend together a bit in my head when it comes to release dates, especially for lines I don’t typically collect. The foot of this one is stamped 2016, but I’m guessing that’s because most of the parts are that old. It’s not recent though and not one I’ve seen in Target in quite some time. I don’t know why my nearest Target had one, random, figure on the pegs, but it did. It initially didn’t even ring up because the barcode was no longer in their system, and when it finally did, it rang up as some Spider-Man bow and arrow toy. Unfortunately, that toy carried the same MSRP as this one so I didn’t get a deal or anything, but it suggests to me that maybe Target recently unearthed some extra stock because the figure is also online again as of this writing. Regardless, I thought the sculpt was interesting and a pretty fun variant on Spider-Man, and since it came with a web line accessory, I said “Why not?” And since I have a blog that heavily leans into toy reviews, we might as well take a look.

I think of him as more of a punchy Spider-Man.

Cyborg Spider-Man stands a tick over the 6 inch mark. He comes packaged on a retro card and is a nice throwback to the Toy Biz figure of the same design. I actually never had that one, I really didn’t get many Spider-Man variants, but I can recall thinking it looked fine. I just prioritized getting villains over yet another Spider-Man. He was also a late entry in the line, if I’m not mistaken, and it’s possible I was already shifting priorities. The design hasn’t changed though. This is basically Spider-Man, but with a robot arm. He does have a belt and some accessories on the head, but it’s the big, cybernetic, left arm that stands out the most. Since I’m not a regular buyer of this line, I couldn’t tell you where all of these parts are from. The main body is the same one we saw with Web-Man which I think originated with a Spider-Man 2099 figure. The arm could be from someone like Cable or Deathlok, or it could be all new. Since it’s an older release, it’s not a pinless body so we get the ugly red dot on the inner right arm resulting from the red peg that goes through it. The blue pegs around the knees don’t cause the same sort of eyesore. It’s a very muscular sculpt and one that feels appropriate for this specific version of Spider-Man. I like how the cybernetic arm turned out and it looks as it should. The head has these giant eye lenses which are also fun and very McFarlane-esque. The belt is glued in place, but the white wraps on his right thigh are a floating part which could be removed if desired. It’s a little annoying that it doesn’t stay in place and it’s a reminder why newer figures like Morph and Cyclops have them keyed in. The only details I don’t like about the sculpt are the tiny shoulders, which is a consistent criticism I have for Marvel Legends. They just look silly and sit too low.

I wish they had painted the stitching on the mask.

As far as paint goes, we have our usual Marvel Legends mixed bag. The figure is a mix of blue and red plastic with a light gray used for the robot arm. The weblines are done well enough and I like the black outline on the red portions of the costume, something the animated Spidey didn’t roll with. The painted and colored reds look close enough and the painted portions of the head are fine. What I don’t like is how the spider logo on the rear turned out. It really needs a black outline or something to help it pop and it looks almost washed out. It also has a big hole which I guess is for an old flight stand. There’s also a severe lack of paint in most places. On the head, there’s stitches holding a portion of the mask together which were left unpainted. It’s a shame, because they’re sculpted well enough, but are barely noticeable due to the lack of paint. There’s also no paint on either the belt or the left arm save for the plate on the shoulder and bracelet area. The belt just looks boring and cheap as a result while the arm has too much of a plastic look. There’s no attempt to make it look like it’s made of metal and, again, it’s a shame because the sculpt is there. It just needs a little dry-brushing to bring it out. In a perfect world it would be painted-up like NECA’s Fugitoid, but I know Hasbro isn’t going to sink that kind of money into this line. At least this one is $23 instead of $28 or $35 so it’s easier to overlook these shortcomings, but still unfortunate to see Hasbro not do right by their sculptors and designers.

This spider on the back could have been handled better.

The articulation for this Spider-Man is not really it’s strong suit. I suppose we shouldn’t expect a cyborg version of the character to move as well as a traditional one, but I thought it would be a little better than this. The head is on the usual ball hinge which provides good enough range up and down, but not much nuance posing. The shoulders are ball-hinged and pretty limited out to the side. The left arm is hindered by the big plate on the shoulder, but even the right arm can’t quite hit a horizontal pose. There is a butterfly joint which provides more range going back than forward. It’s okay, but a bit ugly because the paint isn’t continued as far as the joint goes so you end up with gaps in the weblines on the front and the spider legs on the rear. The elbows are double-jointed on both arms and both can bend past 90 degrees. The cybernetic arm can even go further than the right arm as more plastic was cut away to make it work. The wrists rotate and hinge horizontally while the abdomen features a ratcheted ab crunch. It only allows one click back and one click forward so the range isn’t impressive. The waist twist is a waist twist and it is at least hidden by the belt because otherwise it would look pretty hideous. The legs can just about hit a split with a little effort, why newer figures can’t is a real mystery, while the legs kick forward to about horizontal with no range going back. We get the usual thigh cut and the double-jointed knees work just fine. There’s a boot swivel and the ankles hinge forward and back pretty far and feature a steep, but usable, ankle rocker. It’s nothing particularly impressive, but I don’t know what kind of posing most want to do with this guy. I tend to think he should be posed more like a brawler than the nimble Spider-Man of norm, but that could be just me. By Legends standards, it’s basically average.

Your webline is looking a bit limp there, Spider-Man.

And that’s kind of it for selling points with this guy because the accessories are not impressive. Cyborg Spider-Man comes with fist hands in the box and he has one thwip right hand he can switch to. He also has that all important webline I wanted which is just a piece of malleable, off-white, plastic with a little curl at one end and a triangular shape at the other. It’s kind of odd that they don’t have a clip on the end designed for the hand/wrist area. And since he can’t grip it with any hand it makes it hard to do much with. I found I can kind of get the triangle to work with the thwip hand, but it’s rather precarious and frustrating. It’s a bit amusing that I basically bought this figure for this piece and I’m not finding it very useful. If it was just a bendy wire that could wrap around him that would be better than this. That’s it though. One extra hand and one mediocre web effect.

All right, you can stay.

Given the articulation woes and the lack of accessories, this figure is basically one to judge based on the overall aesthetic. And if you like this interpretation of Spider-Man, then you’ll probably be fine with this one. I do like the look, and while I wish it was painted better, I think it looks okay on a shelf. The fact that it’s at the older price point definitely helps because if it was up any higher I’d have not bought it. And if you are into customizing your action figures, this one probably won’t take much effort to really bring out some of the details. There are elements of the figure that are a bit dated, but the sculpt helps make it worthwhile. In short, I’m content to have this figure I never planned on getting.

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January 5, 2023

Marvel Legends Spider-Man (Animated)

By Joe
Not quite amazing Spider-Man.

It was in 2021 that Hasbro released a PulseCon exclusive Venom figure on a Spider-Man retro card. The retro card series is meant to stir-up nostalgia for all of the adults who were buying toys and watching cartoons in the 90s as the retro card is a facsimile of the old cards Toy Biz used to utilize. The cards were for the Spider-Man tie-in series of toys that went along with the cartoon series of the same name. Airing on Fox Kids, Spider-Man was a natural follow-up to X-Men as it featured arguably Marvel’s most popular and recognizable hero in a starring role. The X-Men animated series did wonders to help boost the profile of Marvel’s mutants, and the Spider-Man cartoon essentially did the same. The retro card series that Hasbro launched just a few years ago often had some overlap with that cartoon, but they weren’t necessarily cartoon-specific sculpts. The exclusive Venom was different in that it contained two, new, headsculpts clearly modeled after Venom from the show. Plus, it featured his unusual shading from the show of light blue on one side and red on the other.

Go web!

2022 saw Hasbro double-down on the retro releases as it launched the X-Men Animated Series subline of Marvel Legends. While we can certainly debate how hard the company actually went in to trying to recreate the characters as they appeared in the show, the line did try to showcase those characters with some animation specific shading and (in some cases) sculpts. The line must have been successful because Hasbro is doing the same in 2023 only with Spider-Man as the featured series. Why now? I don’t know. The X-Men line coincided with the show’s 30th anniversary and it would have made sense to do the same for Spider-Man in 2024, but Hasbro is apparently far too eager to wait another year. The show is getting the same treatment in that it’s likely to be reused sculpts with some shading added and it’s all packaged in a box designed to mimic a VHS release. The first set, as they’re apparently going with two-packs for now, won’t be out for a few more months, but we essentially got a preview to close-out 2022 in the form of an exclusive Spider-Man sent to Walmart. This Spider-Man is sold on a retro card designed to resemble the old Web Racer Spider-Man toy from the 90s. The image is essentially the same, but since there wasn’t much in the way of preservation for those old cards it had to be redone and has been lovingly recreated by artist Harry Moore. This time, Spidey is fully posable and doesn’t have a string running through him. It’s a new sculpt, though not a unique sculpt, and most importantly it features a cel-shaded paint job to fit-in with the previously released Venom.

The sculpt is mostly fine, save for how pointed his face is (unless it’s just mine).

Let’s get it out of the way upfront: Walmart sucks. This guy went up for preorder in July, but before a single figure was shipped it started showing up in stores in early December or late November. It showed up in tiny quantities though, apparently just 2 per store, and it was a bastard of a release to track down as a result. It also never showed up in Walmart’s app or website as in-stock, so it was a total shot in the dark to go looking for one during the busy, holiday, rush. As for those preorders, that’s how I got mine, but several are still waiting and with the listing being dropped from Walmart’s website it sure looks like a lot of folks are heading for a cancellation. It’s great that they made sure to send product to stores first, rather than take care of the orders they already took-in months ago. And if you are lucky and like me and manage to get one shipped from Walmart, expect it to come packed in a foil envelope likely beat to hell once it arrives. The cardback on mine is dinged-up pretty well, plus the plastic bubble was cracked and broken. I’m not a mint-on-card collector, but I know a lot of people are with these retro cards and plenty more like to double-dip to keep one carded and one opened. To those folks, best of luck. You’re going to need it.

The rear spider looks nice and clean.

Once opened Spidey stands at a tick over 6″. This sculpt is apparently the same as the first appearance Spider-Man also released in 2022 in the new style of packaging. It’s a pinless body and it’s notable because it’s a smaller Spider-Man. He’s well-defined, but not as bulky as the other new Spider-Man body from this year released in the Renew Your Vows two-pack. This is probably Hasbro’s best Spider-Man body to date. I’m certainly not an expert as I only dabble in Marvel Legends, but it’s much better than the Web-Man and Symbiote figures I do have. It still has its problems, which we’ll go over, but just overall has a nice shape. The smallish Legends shoulders aren’t laughably small here and most of all I just like this shade of blue that’s in use. It’s a light blue, shaded with a darker blue, and it just captures the look of the character from the era. I get more of an 80s vibe if anything from the color combo, but it’s fine as an animated version too, though I’d argue his blue was actually darker in the show. The only thing about the sculpt I don’t like is the head. It’s a little big, plus it feels pinched in the front. I don’t know why it’s not more round as it doesn’t even look like a human face could make this shape. It’s a shame, because the eye shape is nice and it’s pretty well-painted. Many have complained that web lines on their figure are off-center. Mine is, but it’s small. You can see it by looking at the hexagonal shape in the middle as one side touches the tip of the eye lens while the other does not.

The range isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to get some Spidey poses out of it.

The overall paint job strikes me as pretty much par for the course with Hasbro. There’s a lot of colored plastic in use which leads to issues of color-matching. The red on the chest is noticeably darker than the red on the arms and feet. That’s because one is painted, and one is red plastic. The edges are also not crisp and clean as my figure has a blemish on its right pectoral which is a rather lousy place for such an imperfection to exist. There are little instances of that throughout the figure, though not in a large number at least. The web lines mostly look good though with a defined curve to them rather than a boxy look which tends to happen. Both spider logos are nice and clean, and the pinless body is a welcomed addition as there’s no unsightly red dot on the inner arm any longer. There is one eyesore on the back of the figure where Hasbro didn’t continue the red paint of his belt area far enough so when he crunches forward you end up with a section of blue instead. Normally, not a big deal, but Spider-Man is a character who is known for deep crunches so here it’s not acceptable. The cel-shading is what it is. For Hasbro, this is one of their better applications of it. There’s some linework on the torso in black to highlight the musculature and the shading goes under the pecs. The rest of the shading is reserved for the inner arms, as they apparently wanted to avoid shading red areas as much as possible, and inner right thigh and outer left. There’s also a hit on both boots and the inner arm shading continues onto the gloves a tiny bit. Does it make a ton of sense? No, they’re clearly going in a haphazard manner. I think it looks fine on the torso while the inner arms are kind of “meh.” The thighs and boots don’t bother me. It is what it is and you know if you like it or not at this point. And if you want to remove it, good luck. It’s paint on top of paint where the arms are concerned so it won’t be easy to just wipe away. And where it goes over the web-lines you’re basically screwed. You would be better off just repainting the whole thing. At least for Hasbro, this one is probably better than all of the X-Men releases with only Sinister perhaps being better. Venom was pretty good too for what he is so maybe these Spider-Man releases will just plain be better than what we saw with the X-Men?

“Take that!”

Articulation for a Spider-Man figure is rather important, and I was a little let down by the other Spideys I have. This one is better. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it’s a step in the right direction. The head is still on a ball and hinge so it looks up and down rather well and can rotate, but lacks much in the way of nuance posing. The shoulders are ball-hinged and they raise out to the side just fine, though it does expose the red hinge underneath which is set against the blue of the armpit which is one eyesore not solved by pinless tech. The butterfly joint provides more range back than it does forward, but it’s not a tremendous eyesore so I consider that a win for a Hasbro butterfly joint (and if you want more range, there’s a popular mod for doing so that may apply to this figure as well, just search for it on YouTube). There’s a biceps swivel which does what it needs to do and double-jointed elbows. I cannot get the top hinge on either arm to budge though so I am presently only getting a 90 degree bend (after the review, I did resort to the hot water trick and got it going, though it’s still pretty tight). Hopefully this isn’t a widespread issue. The wrists rotate and hinge horizontally on all hands. In the torso, we have a diaphragm joint which allows for some forward and back, but is mostly good for rotation and tilt which it does rather well. There’s a lot of painted stuff here though, so do be careful. At the waist is the ab crunch which goes forward and back plenty far. Missing is a waist twist which makes me wonder if a ball-peg would have worked better in place of the ab crunch. At the hips, we have ball and socket joints which still can’t quite hit a split. This is Spider-Man, Hasbro! Why can’t he do splits? He can at least kick forward a reasonable amount, but not back. There’s a thigh cut there, double-jointed knees which work better than the elbows, a boot cut, and a hinge and ankle rocker combo at the ankle. All of that stuff works well with no gummy-ness to the joints. I know some would like a toe-hinge, but I don’t really care if it’s here or not. He can hit some good Spidey poses though with the only real disappointment being those hips and my stuck elbows.

“Now it’s our turn, Spider-dweeb!”

That’s where the good stuff ends as when it comes to accessories Hasbro loves to disappoint. Spider-Man comes with three sets of hands: fists, wall-crawling, and thwip hands. That’s basically the standard, Spidey, assortment, but some gripping hands would be nice. I suppose they’re not needed though since he doesn’t come with a web-line to grip. Instead, he has two web splat effects, one bigger than the other. They’re all white and made of a pliable plastic, but they don’t really do anything. I guess you can toss one onto a villain’s face? They’re more like window-dressing parts and what I would prefer to have is an actual webline or something from the show like his web backpack. These things are just useless.

Spider-Men! Assemble!

If you want to get your hands on this guy, I guess all you can do for now is monitor Walmart to see if the listing returns. Their exclusive Black Series Holiday Scout Trooper recently showed up at Big Bad Toy Store so maybe this Spider-Man will too? Otherwise, it’s the secondary market at this point where this thing will cost a lot more than the $27 Walmart was charging. As is the case with virtually all Marvel Legends these days, this one isn’t exactly worth it, but if you have that Venom or really loved watching this show as a kid then you may feel a strong pull towards this guy. And in that case, it’s a price that can be accepted. At 50 or 60 bucks? Ehh, I wouldn’t do it. With Hasbro launching a dedicated Spider-Man line in 2023 it seems highly unlikely that this will remain a Walmart exclusive forever. After all, how can you do a Spider-Man line that doesn’t feature Spider-Man in red and blue? Hasbro does some stupid things, like not finishing the 92 X-Men team, but I don’t think they’re dumb enough to let this figure remain a Walmart exclusive. My assumption is there will be a VHS re-release with different accessories. It’s possible it will be on a different mold, but I don’t think they’ll go through that trouble. It’s a good Spidey though, probably Hasbro’s best, so when that re-release does happen (or this mold gets a comic release in this shade of blue) I would suggest jumping on it unless you absolutely hate the cel-shading. And if that’s the case, there’s the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends three-pack that has a Spidey from that show on this body with no cel-shading. It’s probably every bit as good as this one, perhaps better if you prefer your Spidey with a darker blue, but it costs $75 and comes with a decent Firestar and an absolute dumpster fire of an Iceman. That set would have been right in my nostalgia wheelhouse if they didn’t blow it so hard on Iceman, my favorite member of the X-Men when I was a kid. Hasbro just can’t make things easy for Spider-Man fans.

“So am I a member of the X-Men now? Because the Avengers keep coming after me and I don’t want to overcommit. Especially since I have class tomorrow.”

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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…

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1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

December 29, 2022

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Cyclops

By Joe
The field commander of the X-Men has arrived.

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 into something less. I won’t go so far as to get overly dramatic and juxtapose dream line with nightmare, but basically nearly every negative thought I had going into it came true. I don’t have a high opinion of Hasbro to begin with, but they are a giant toy maker that is pretty good at getting out a decent product at a good price. It’s just in 2022, most of those things have stopped being true. There’s been a reduction in quality, content, and it’s been paired with a rising price. Initially, I tried to be positive about a line based on the show X-Men. We had those Into the Spider-Verse figures to use as examples of what Hasbro is capable of when it decides to base their design’s on a particular source material, but the company chose not to do that with this line. Instead, we got previously released comic book figures with a dash of cel-shading and little in the way of new tooling or accessories. The line is best qualified as lazy, and I hate to use that word because I know there are people who work at Hasbro who are anything but lazy. The direction of the line has sucked. It’s been inconsistent, underwhelming, and yet, I’m still sad to see it end. To a degree. I want the company to just finish the main cast so I can take a step back and assess what we have, but that’s been put on pause with no guarantee of anything past this figure.

For some reason, Hasbro (and Toy Biz before them) have had trouble with this costume, but I think they finally got it right.

Given all of that, there’s at least a chance that Hasbro saved the best for last. Prior releases of Jean, Storm, Jubilee, Mr. Sinister, and Mystique have basically been of the straight repaint variety with varying results. Mystique and Storm got new hair parts, while Wolverine got a new head and hands. Morph has been the only new figure, though in Marvel Legends fashion, his body is mostly reused from past figures. He did get to debut new legs which were re-tooled to allow for his thigh and boot straps to be keyed in and it’s a part that’s going to be reused quite a bit in the figures to follow. Like this one! Cyclops, like Morph, is a mix of old and new. His costume is based on the show, which was based on the costume Jim Lee designed for the character during his run. It’s been a bit of a challenge to get this costume to look nice in plastic because of the unusual belt. Cyclops has a belt that goes up and over both shoulders, but only attaches to the waist at one spot on the rear and front. It’s sort of like a pair of suspenders, except one side of the belt has been clipped to the other side instead of the waist. It’s pretty goofy, but it’s been around over 30 years now so it seems pretty ordinary as a result. It just stinks for a toy-maker like Hasbro which wants to reuse the main body of its figures and add belts onto it, but past attempts have made the end result look ugly and chunky. Not to mention it can make any articulation in the torso seem pointless.

The chest strap is now keyed into the sculpt so it doesn’t hinder articulation and it’s not as cumbersome.

That’s why, like Morph, Hasbro decided to re-tool some parts to better accommodate the belt. The torso for Cyclops, which I think is the same as Vulcan, has been modified slightly so that the belt can now key-in like the straps on the thighs and boots. This means the belt no longer has to be one continuous piece, it’s actually “broken” at the ab crunch, but when the figure bends it creates the illusion that the belt is sliding around, but really it doesn’t move. The bottom piece of the belt just gets hidden by the ab crunch with no gap visible between the top and bottom piece. Is it totally seamless? No, but it’s an action figure and it needs to articulate and short of just making the belt part of the sculpt, this is probably the best solution. And by keying it in, it sits closer to flush with the rest of the costume. It’s not as chunky and awkward looking, and it’s easy to see why Legends collectors more interested in the comic line are excited for this release because you know Cyclops is likely to get re-released there. Possibly on a retro card or something.

Stay away from my friends, Sinister!

Hasbro did some actual tooling and it’s for the better. Sadly, that’s a pretty major development for this line as standards are pretty low at this point. And it’s not all, as Cyclops has a new head and his gloves might be new as well since they’re a little different from other figures released on this buck thus far. And just taking him at face value, he looks fine. Maybe even good. The head seems a little too big for the body as superheroes (especially from this era and the show) tend to have smaller than normal heads. The shoulders still sit too low and the chest could use more mass. Cyclops is a big dude, and this figure doesn’t really capture that perfectly, but it does so better than before. There’s also an eyesore on this guy on the forearms. Vulcan has long gloves that go up his forearms and Hasbro decided to sculpt in a groove where that glove ends and the paint stops. Cyclops has short gloves and apparently Hasbro blew the budget for tooling on the torso modifications because they didn’t do the same for the forearms. It feels especially cheap because surely there are other figures who would benefit from forearms without that line? It’s so frustrating how Hasbro will go halfway to deliver an accurate product, but stop short of something so simple.

Yup, he’s cel-shaded. Get over it.

The major talking point of this line has and likely always will be the cel-shading. Again, I reiterate that I like cel-shading when it makes sense. I think figures seeking to emulate a specific look benefit from the effect, but only if it’s done well. This line has been an example of how not to do it well. It’s been applied in a cheap and lazy fashion. Cyclops really isn’t any different, but by virtue of much of the figure being cast in a dark blue, it’s not as bad. The darker blue used to shade the main body, arms, and legs looks good. A better figure still would have used three colors for the shading, but here it’s acceptable. The yellow parts still look terrible. They’ve been using this gold, mustard, color for the yellow which matches no source material I’ve ever seen, comic or show, but expecting them to change at this point would be equally stupid. It’s also applied the same as it was on Morph for the boots which includes this goofy, wavy, line on the right foot that makes no sense. The belt on his torso has almost no shading, so it really stands out as just being bare plastic, but the trunks and waist have a little. It’s still not good, but it’s not the worst we’ve seen in the line (that honor rests with Jubilee), but it is as expected so at least they’re consistent?

“You left me to die!” “No, I didn’t.”

If this line has a strength (aside from the very well done box art by Dan Veesenmeyer) it rests in the articulation as it’s been pretty solid. I think at this point that’s the main strength for Marvel Legends given the changes brought this year. Cyclops still uses the ball-hinge head which works fine and his design doesn’t introduce any elements that would hinder the range up there so that is good. The shoulders are hinged and come out to horizontal just fine, rotate, and we get a biceps swivel that does what it does. There’s a butterfly joint in each shoulder that works well enough, though the left one will be hindered a bit by the chest strap. The elbows are pinless and double-jointed and he can bend his arm past 90 degrees. Even though we have that “cut” on the forearm, there’s no articulation there. It only exists to be ugly. The wrists swivel and hinge in typical fashion. In the torso, there’s an ab crunch that’s rather stubborn on my figure, though that seems to be unique to mine. It works, but bending him back makes him look pregnant or like he has a beer belly. The waist rotates as one would expect. At the hips, we have ball and socket joints and he can spread his legs enough, not a full split, but enough for Cyclops. He kicks forward just fine, not really back, and we have the usual thigh cut. A lot of people remain unhappy with the placement of these straps and how high they are, but I couldn’t possibly care less about that. The knees are double-jointed and bend past 90 and we get a boot cut below the straps. It’s ugly, but you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. The ankles hinge forward and back enough plus they have a rocker. I’ve seen more than one person have issues with the ankle rocker snapping. It does feel a tad gummy, and even though these are the same feet as what we saw with Morph, the ones on Cyclops feel different. Just be careful. This guy is going to do what he needs. It’s disappointing that the ab crunch results in such an ugly look for the figure considering this is a mold Hasbro intends to reuse over and over, but it is what it is.

If you know, you know.

What is not a strong suit for this line has been the accessory count and Cyclops is no different. He doesn’t even get a second head. The only other items in the box are a set of open hands and a two-finger pointing right hand designed to be used with his visor or his X communicator. There’s no effect parts or anything like that which feels pretty damn cheap.They’ve done Cyclops effects in the past, but I guess they wouldn’t work here. For 28 bucks, he really should have a second head that includes a blast. The fact that the Mr. Sinister figure in this wave was a straight re-paint with no accessories should have created enough savings for the entire line to get a decent spread. The open hands are also reused from Morph (and likely from other figures) and, like the gripping hands we saw shoehorned into the Wolverine set, are sculpted to be bare hands so he has sculpted fingernails and it looks rather silly. Again, Hasbro couldn’t see a benefit with multiple figures of creating a gloved, open, hand? We’re moving well beyond “cheap” with some of these shortcuts.

“Next time, I use these!”

Did Hasbro save the best for last? I wouldn’t go that far. I still think, given that this is a line of figures supposed to be based on the animated series, that Wolverine remains the best. He got two new heads which both look like they came from the show plus a fun little toss-in accessory in the form of the picture frame. Cyclops is sort of in a tie with Sinister and Morph. I can see arguments for all 3. Sinister is the most on-model, but also the biggest rip-off in many ways in the line given how little Hasbro had to put into it. Morph gets bonus points for just being Morph, but there was really no imagination put into that figure and the default portrait really looks nothing like the character from the show. As has been the case with most of these, Cyclops is a figure of half-measures. Hasbro did some good, but also did some bad, and the bad is mostly in what they chose not to do. His proportions are still iffy, but that seems to be a problem with Legends in general while the forearm thing is just annoying and it makes it look like Hasbro has zero pride in their product. Cyclops, like basically every release in this line, is a terrible value and I can pull up several other figures from different companies in a similar price-point that actually justify their cost. Nothing from Hasbro of late in the Marvel Legends line does that, but we keep buying it so it’s not likely to change.

This is it for the animated line for now. Despite my issues with it, I would still like for Hasbro to at least finish off the team and hit on a couple of the most important villains.

Given all of that, I actually find myself really drawn to this Cyclops. I’ve always loved this look for him and that combo of a rich, royal, blue with yellow just does it form. There’s a ton of nostalgia at play here which has made this figure hard to put down. Certainly if you’ve been collecting this line you’re not going to stop before you get to Cyclops unless you’re just so dissatisfied that you’re bailing all-together and selling everything off. For what this line has been, he’s good, but overall he’s more fine than good. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about any of these. If you would like to add Cyclops to your shelf he’s available on Pulse and should be available at some point on ShopDisney. He’ll set you back 28 bucks plus shipping, but once he’s gone it’s unclear if he (or any of the figures in this line) will receive another production run. Some have already started to sell out so you may not want to sleep on it. At the same time, this is the last release in the line for now with no, true, assurances that it will continue. Hasbro called it a “pause” so that it could focus on doing figures from the Spider-Man 90s cartoon, but it’s not like they’re obligated to continue it. My guess is that it’s still under consideration, but if the figures sell out then it’s more likely they return to it. This clearly hasn’t been an expensive line to produce, so any hurdle it has to clear performance wise may not be very big. I think they just wanted to space out some of the retro card releases like Rogue, Gambit, and the new Beast a bit more before tackling them for this line. We’ll probably know the fate of this one come this time next year (likely a little earlier as I imagine PulseCon is where we’ll find out), but as always, buyer beware if you feel you need the team to be complete to feel satisfied. I am, for better or worse, all-in with this line so if more come you can be sure I’ll cover them. And if you just want more animated X-Men figures to talk about, I did order the Mondo Magneto so the discussion isn’t over with 2022.

More from the world of X-Men: The Animated Series:

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Wolverine

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…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Mr. Sinister

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…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on…

Keep reading
by Joe

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November 28, 2022

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Mystique

By Joe
Mystique is bringing the big guns.

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 villain the show produced. Omega Red was certainly memorable since he was a very 90s sort of villain and being tied to Wolverine never hurts. And, of course, we have Mystique, the character Hasbro selected to be the second villain of the line (third if you want to count Morph). I think she has a claim to that fifth spot and I can certainly see an argument for Mystique as one of the most memorable villains of the show. It’s just that her character is very much tied to others. She does briefly cross paths with Sinister, and her box art appears to be inspired by that scene, but she’s not really associated with him. There’s her adopted daughter Rogue, biological son Nightcrawler, and her lackeys in the form of Pyro, Avalanche, and the Blob. All of those characters could certainly make an appearance in this line, and I would certainly argue that Rogue should be, but it strikes me as odd to get Mystique before some of these other characters. And it’s especially surprising considering she is, as I mentioned in the first setence, the penultimate figure of the line with the only remaining character set for release being Cyclops. Hasbro left open the possibility that they will return to the world of the X-Men animated series, but for now we basically have to consider it done which just makes this selection an odd choice.

Are we all in agreement that the box art is the best thing about this line?

I don’t know how Hasbro settled on the characters for this line, but my guess would be it’s largely sales related and cost-oritented. You can’t do this line without Wolverine, and basically any member of the team can’t be considered a surprise. I’m guessing Hasbro skipped over Rogue and Gambit because of their recent retro card released figures, and the same is true for Beast who has a new figure shipping now. Magneto also had some recent figures, so maybe that’s why Hasbro went with an older figure like Sinister. He was prominent enough in the show that it was hardly an upset to see him released as soon as he was, and he pairs well with Morph who was a character they absolutely had to do. With Mystique, it’s possible she’s a favorite of someone on staff who pushed for her, but it seems more likely to me that this release has more to do with Hasbro and the Legends team wanting to get her back out there. Like most of this line, Mystique is a re-paint with some minor additions and the previous figure was released as a Walgreen’s exclusive. Retail exclusives can be a pain to track down, so putting out another version that’s easy to acquire is often a welcomed development. I could be wrong, but that’s my guess on how Mystique made it into this 8 figure line.

I don’t hate this figure, but I would like it a whole lot more if it actually looked like the render on the box.

Mystique comes in the customary VHS styled box with artwork by Dan Veesenmeyer. It depicts Mystique in a shadowy area holding a candelabra which gives it a real horror vibe which mixes well with the character’s blue skin and affinity for skulls. It might be my favorite illustration in this line so far. On the spine is the usual profile shot and on the rear is the customary product shot, only with this figure the product on the back is not representative of the figure inside. In what has become an annoying and, frankly, unacceptable trend with Marvel Legends of late the promotional renders for figures have been using the wrong molds. The actual figure is on the same female buck that the former Mystique figure utilized, while the render on the back appears to be based on the newer Shriek figure. It’s a much better base for a superhero line as the figure is well proportioned, looks like a woman of impressive physical fitness, and it’s an all-together better looking figure than what’s actually in the box.

“I have some information about your daughter…”

The render basically gives Mystique an unfortunate hurdle to overcome right out of the gate and I’m going to try to not let it impact my feelings here, but the simple fact is this older female body is just okay. It’s very slight and not particularly heroic looking (granted, she is a villain). It has articulation limitations as well which we’ll get to and it’s just a base body that I would like to see retired. Mystique does feature her cartoon accurate costume of a white, sleeveless, dress with long gloves and boots. The head has been reworked to give her a new hair piece which looks fine. I love her wicked grin which is very appropriate for the character and they got the little skull on her hairline correct. Her body is mostly colored plastic as she’s basically a two-toned figure of blue and white. The controversial cel-shading is also present and, once again, Hasbro made the odd choice to use gray instead of black and it’s a shade of gray that looks too close to the gray-blue of her skin. It’s applied okay here, certainly not as bad as some of the other figures in the line, but it still comes across as half-assed. She really should have multiple shades of gray, black, and blue to do her justice and considering she’s a character who often featured heavy shading in the show it really feels like a missed opportunity. There’s no shading on her hair or on her yellow belt and it just very much feels like an afterthought. The only shading is applied to the clothing. The belt is a floating piece and the skirt portion of her outfit is a part of the belt which is a little odd. I think an overlay might have worked better, but then you lose the articulation in the torso. I am forced to reiterate, once again, that I love the idea of putting shading on these figures, but if they’re not going to put the effort in then don’t do it. She really needs some on her face to bring her to life, but I’m not brave enough to try my hand at customizing. She also has a hole in her back which is unnecessary and unwanted.

“Lord Apocalypse!”
I don’t know if she ever had a gun this large in the show, but at least it opens up the smaller gun for another figure.

Mystique comes with a fair amount of accessories, though most are just reused from elsewhere. She has open hands out of the box with her right hand being more “cupped” than the left like she should be holding a long-stem glass. She has optional trigger hands and they’re for her two guns. One is a large, machinegun, type and the other a pistol. Both are just cast in the same blue-gray plastic used for her flesh which is pretty damn cheap on Hasbro’s part and it makes the larger gun, especially, look stupid in her hands. The pistol is the same gun that came with the movie Deadpool. At least being blue makes it kind of resemble the gun she used in “The Cure” and the one Morph was seen with at times. Her final accessory is a more thoughtful one, but again, Hasbro’s cheapness ruins it some. That accessory is a baby Nightcrawler wrapped in a brown blanket which has better shading than most of the figures in this line. This is a callback to the show and the scene of Mystique preparing to toss her unwanted mutant child off of a waterfall. The problem is, this baby is repurposed from a baby Hulk figure. It lacks Nightcrawler’s defining pointed ears and he has this pompadour styled hair that looks stupid. He also has a yellow pacfier, which he did not possess in the show. Lastly, Mystique’s portrait is inappropriate for posing her with the child. Had they included a secondary one with tears streaming down her face that would have been something. Should we give Hasbro credit for at least referencing the show? I guess, but I’m also the type who sees little point in doing something if you’re not going to do it right.

And the other character in need of a gun is Morph. This blue one looks a little like the gun he featured in “Till Death Do Us Part.”
I appreciate the thought, but that’s not Kurt.

The last thing we need to consider with this action figure is the articulation. Mystique, being essentially on the same body as Jean, has few surprises. The ball-hinged neck lets her look in all directions save for up since her hair gets in the way. The shoulders can lift out past horizontal and rotate fine while the arm articulation is limited to single-hinged elbows with a swivel point in the elbow. She can’t quite hit 90 degrees and the lack of a bicepts swivel is a disappointment. The wrists rotate and hinge with the right trigger hand featuring the proper, vertical, hinge so that’s good. The torso has the diaphragm joint under the bust which offers little more than some rotation and tilt with very little forward and back. There’s no waist twist, and the legs can barely manage a 45 degree spread. She does kick forward okay, but not back, and there’s a thigh cut for rotation there. The knees are double-jointed and they feel less gummy than Jean and Storm’s. There’s no boot cut and the ankles hinge forward and back a decent amount and rock side-to-side. It’s a mediocre spread of articulation. She can at least pose fine with the hand gun.

“Oh, my beloved child. Wait…you’re not my baby!”

Mystique is another bare minimum type of release from Hasbro in this line. She looks okay, the cel-shading is at least passable, and there’s a tiny bit of re-tooling with the head. They still half-assed the accessories and really should have just used the new body they had already made for other figures as I bet this belt and head would have fit just fine. Why they didn’t is not something I can figure out. And making the guns the same color of plastic as her body is just weird and cheap. Imagine if everybody ran around with guns that matched their skintone perfectly. That’s Hasbro not wanting to pay to change the color of the plastic in the machines. And the baby Kurt is a nice thought, but a poor execution. At least the box art looks great.

“So long, imposter!”

Mystique is presently available via Hasbro’s Pulse website and the Shop Disney webstore. Like all of the figures in this line, she comes with a slight upcharge that’s not really reflected in the product. Chances are, if you’ve been collecting this line then you’ll probably want to add Mystique to your shelf. She could have been a lot better, but by the standards of this line she’s actually one of the better releases. I suppose I’d stick her somewhere in the middle, and I probably prefer her to any of the X-Men women. I’m still left wishing she wasn’t the character we got with one of these precious 8 slots Hasbro budgeted for, but at least she’s not a dud. That means we only have one more figure to look forward to in this line, Cyclops, before we say “goodbye for now.” Hopefully it’s a good one, but it’s not looking like it will arrive before the year’s end so check back in 2023 for my thoughts on Cyke.

If we’re only getting a few villains out of this line, at least they fit reasonably well thematically.

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October 31, 2022

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

By Joe
“I know more of this world than you could even dream, that is why I must…destroy it!”

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on the Fox network. The decision to debut a cartoon in prime time with characters still on the periphery of mainstream appeal was both a bold choice and one brought about by necessity. Fox had done the same recently with Batman – The Animated Series, but that hardly feels like a gamble considering that was coming hot on the heels of Batman Returns. You see, the show should have premiered in September on Saturday mornings, but the project was fraught with delays and the early animation sent back from studio AKOM was said to be a disaster. And since the show wasn’t going to be able to premiere as planned, the producers involved decided to focus on the first two episodes to get them ready for a Halloween premiere with the rest of the season to follow in early 1993. Marketing dubbed it a sneak peek, and it must have worked because before long the show was a ratings hit and the rest is history.

Given that it’s such an important day for an elder X-Men fan like myself, it only felt appropriate to forego something spooky this Halloween in favor of something celebrating that show. Now, I originally intended to debut my review of Hasbro’s Morph, but I received that figure in late September and I was just too eager to talk about Morph. The timing just didn’t make sense, so we’re pivoting to something else. Had Mystique, the next planned figure in Hasbro’s dedicated X-Men animated line, arrived this month she would have been featured here. And she even embodies a bit of that Halloween look with her blank eyes and affection for skulls. Instead though, I think we have the next best thing with one of the major villains from the show: Apocalypse.

This card is stupid big.

Hasbro’s retro card series of Marvel Legends has caused some confusion in the collector community, and I’m afraid this Apocalypse only adds to that. It started a few years ago as an homage to the classic ToyBiz line of figures from the 90s. Hasbro created updated blister cards based on those styles and packaged Legends in them. They had to be slightly oversized to accommodate the larger Legends figures compared to the classic ToyBiz ones, but who in the collector community doesn’t love a good dose of nostalgia? They’re definitely neat, and since the designs of the figures are largely based on their 90s appearances they hit pretty hard when it comes to nostalgia. It was successful enough that Hasbro then did the same with Spider-Man. Unlike the old X-Men line, the Spider-Man line from ToyBiz was a direct tie-in to the animated series that premiered on Fox (in sneak peek fashion as well since it worked so well with X-Men) in 1994. As a result, collectors weren’t sure if these new Spider-Man retro card releases were based on the animated series as well. I’ve seen many collectors refer to the Hobgoblin, especially, from that line as being animated inspired, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The only one released that is definitely based on the cartoon is the PulseCon exclusive Venom from last year (which is being followed-up with an animated Spider-Man this fall).

The actual figure though? Not really that big. I would have actually liked a little more height out of this guy.

Now adding to any confusion that still exists out there is this Apocalypse figure. Apocalypse had multiple releases in the ToyBiz days so a retro card release makes sense. However, this particular figure features a purple and blue deco. That is significant because that’s the color scheme Apocalypse had in the animated series. No where else has Apocalypse ever looked like this. And to drive the point home further, he comes with an interchangeable gun attachment for his arm that is pulled right from an episode of the show which has left many to ask “So why is this not a release in the VHS line?” And the answer is, “I don’t know.” I don’t think any of the marketing team for Legends has explained that one. My guess is that someone on the team really wanted to do this character in this look, but the budget for the VHS line couldn’t accommodate it so they did it this way. It’s bizarre, because this figure does not feature the cel-shading paint job of the VHS line so it’s not just a difference in packaging. This figure is also based on the build-a-figure Apocalypse released a few years ago, so disassembling it to fit in a VHS box would not have been problem. Plus, as illustrated with Mr. Sinister’s VHS box, Hasbro is willing to adjust the sizing when necessary on those boxes so there’s really nothing stopping Hasbro from releasing the figure in that line from a design standpoint. I know the cel-shading is a bit of a contentious topic in the community, but this figure is so cartoon specific that I can’t imagine there was a ton of demand from collectors not interested in the animated series. This version of Apocalypse has always been viewed as a little “goofy” because of those colors so comic collectors are most certainly not the target audience, but here we are.

This is unquestionably supposed to be Apocalypse from the cartoon, you can’t fool me Hasbro!

Because of the colors on this guy, I definitely consider him to be part of the animated series line of action figures. It’s bizarre, and if it’s simply a matter of budget then I don’t know why they didn’t just hit this guy with more paint so he would fit in, but here we are. That said, I’m happy to have Apocalypse in this deco as it’s been perhaps the figure I’ve wanted most to come out of the animated line next to Morph. This funky color palette just hits right for me. Like most kids in the early 90s, I was confused why Apocalypse looked like he was painted for Easter in the show and would have preferred him in black and blue, but over time this look has just become a hallmark of the series for me and I appreciate it more as a result. Plus, Apocalypse is so bad ass that he can look like this and still be feared!

The figure does come on the aforementioned blister card and it is pretty massive. It’s almost comical to look at how big this thing is relative to other retro card releases and even more ludicrous compared to the 90s cards. It features some nice artwork, though not in the animated style aside from the suit colors, and definitely has that old school ToyBiz feel. Many like to keep these releases mint-on-card, but I am not one of them. If you want to preserve the card as much as possible, I recommend slicing the bubble from the bottom with a blade which will allow you to slide this big boy out. And once removed, he is indeed rather big standing at around 8.25″.

Even this gun attachment is taken right from the show.

In looking at this figure, what immediately stands out as “animated” aside from the colors is the sculpt of the chest. I mentioned earlier that this figure is based on the build-a-figure from a few years ago, but it’s been re-tooled in several places and the upper torso is one such place. The musculature has a very soft look to it which is in-line with the show. There’s basically just a hint of pectorals and nothing more. The other details of the costume, such as the shoulders and the collar area, look as they should. The only parts not exactly screen accurate are the boots and the gloves. The boots are just all-together busier in their design, something an animated show would strive to eliminate. The hands are similar, but they’re also just not sculpted right as he should have a blue knuckleguard on each hand. Lastly, the cables that connect his arms to his back should plug-in around the elbow and not the forearm. Obviously, these inaccuracies exist because Hasbro is reusing old parts and I would say it’s mostly fine. While I would love to buy action figures that are committed to matching the source material to a more exact specification, I know that’s not Hasbro’s approach. They do things mostly with cost in mind and basically think giving us a new torso is good enough. The issue now is that approach was more acceptable when these figures were a lot cheaper. It’s something that will bother some folks, and for others it won’t. In my experience Hasbro has done a good job of conditioning its fanbase to accept these figures for what they are so my expectation is most will be unbothered.

In typical Hasbro fashion, they give you some of what you want, but not everything. This gun has four barrels, but you get just 3 blast effects.

As a last bit of aesthetics, we should talk about the paint job. Apocalypse is quite purple and quite blue, as he should be. Hasbro prioritizes using as much colored plastic as possible with their figures and this one is no exception. The paint is mostly limited to the head, upper torso and the gauntlets. The head is where the most paint was needed and it’s done well enough. We’ll talk about the appropriateness of the expressions when we get to the accessories, but there’s enough paint to bring out the sculpted details of the face with minimal slop. He’s not the easiest face to paint as the lips basically wrap around the whole head and he has that gap in the blue on top of the head, so Hasbro did a very nice job here. What is unfortunate though is his head is in two pieces glued together and there’s a blue seem as a result between his forehead and the portion of his flesh that runs up his head and it looks stupid. Otherwise, the paint details are fairly simple and done well enough. The chest even has this really nice, matte, finish which looks great, but also makes the shiny, plastic, portions look worse by comparison. Where they had to match colored plastic to painted, the figure also looks fine.

The source material for the gun is clearly the show, though it was simplified a bit for this release.

The elephant in the room when it comes to paint is obviously the exclusion of cel-shading. This is a retro card release, so cel-shading isn’t normally expected, but he’s also animated Apocalypse and the other X-Men animated figures all have it. Personally, I would like characters based on a cartoon to feature a paint job that reflects that medium. On the other hand, I concede that the cel-shading in the VHS line has been applied poorly. Part of me would like to give Hasbro some credit here in thinking that with a bigger figure to work with, the cel-shading would turn out better, but there’s no guarantee of that. They seem to struggle just finding the right colors to use when shading (see the hideous mustard color they use to shade yellow). Ultimately, it is what it is. I would love some shading on the torso, especially, but it’s not here. Maybe that’s a good thing? I don’t know, but that’s just my opinion. I don’t think he clashes in a significant manner amongst the other figures in the VHS line so I guess it doesn’t matter that much. As was the case with the accuracy of the sculpt, the absence of shading is going to matter more to some, and not at all to others.

Would it have been hard to just give us one more teeny, tiny, piece to stich in that bottom barrel? Though the proper thing to do would have been to sculpt a new, double-barrel, blast effect that plugs into both at the same time.

Moving on to accessories, Apocalypse is pretty much par for the course when it comes to Legends these days. He doesn’t have a lot, but at least here what he does have is done well. First of all, he has two sets of hands: fists and open, “clenchy,” hands. That’s fine as it allows him to look menacing, dramatic, and you can even get those clenchy hands to grab onto another figure. He also has two heads: an angry one and a stoic one. The angry one is reused, and the stoic is new. As a comic inspired sculpt, I think the angry head is fine. As an animated Apocalypse? It’s terrible. He basically never looked like this in the show so I probably won’t be using it. The stoic head is more my thing. It’s still done in the Legends style so it’s not a toon-accurate look for the character, but that’s been true of almost every release in the VHS line as well save for Wolverine. I refer to it as stoic, but he is frowning and looks kind of ticked off. I do wish the shape of both was different as Apocalypse tends to have a wide jaw compared with the top of his head, in both the comics and the show, but these heads are pretty uniform. If it were up to me, I’d have gone with this head, but with less detail to remove the frown and paired it with a laughing head. Imagine a laughing Apocalypse on your shelf with his fists on his hips or his arms crossed? Perfection. Lastly, we have the optional gun part. It attaches to the forearm and the cable can even plug into it. It is taken directly from the “Beyond Good and Evil” plotline when Cable confronts Apocalypse at the start so it is pulled right out of the show. It looks nice and Hasbro even included some blast effects for it which I would not have expected. It’s nice to have as it allows you to display Apocalypse as a menacing overlord on your shelf, or as someone willing to get his hands dirty which was rather true of the character in the show. They could have loaded him up with more arm attachments, but this feels like a fine selection of stuff for Apocalypse. It just would have been nice to get a new effect part for the main part of the gun that plugs into both of the center barrels. Since they instead gave us three separate pieces, one barrel will always be empty.

The gripping hands are wide enough that you can make your Apocalypse perform chokeslams on Wolverine.

Time to talk about the articulation. Despite being a big boy, Apocalypse moves okay and is pretty standard for the line. We have the ball-hinged head that lets him look up and down, all around, and even tilt the head a smidge. The collar doesn’t really get in the way until you try to rotate the head, but the range is decent. The shoulders are just ball-hinged and he can raise his arms out the side and rotate them pretty well even with the shoulder pads getting in the way slightly. The elbows are single-jointed and he can’t quite hit a 90 degree bend, so that could be better. The wrists rotate and hinge horizontally. In the torso, we get an ab crunch that lets him bend back a bit, and crunch forward a decent amount. It’s mostly colored plastic here so paint rub shouldn’t be of great concern, but it’s worth being mindful of. The waist is just a twist and the legs are ball-pegs. He can damn near do a full split and is capable of kicking forward just fine, though the cheeks will prevent much rear leg motion. There is a thigh cut which does what thigh cuts do and the knees are double-jointed. There’s no boot cut, but down in the ankles you have the usual hinge and rocker combination which works just fine. More importantly, everything is nice and tight so he shouldn’t be toppling over on your shelf. Apocalypse really only needs to hit a few poses and this figure is capable of doing that.

He is here to crush the mutants, and seems capable enough.

All in all, I am quite pleased with this release for Apocalypse. Yes, I would have preferred this come in the VHS line for both the packaging and the cel-shading, but since it didn’t, at least we got a fairly robust release as far as accessories go. I’ve been pretty disappointed with the majority of the VHS line because of the poorly applied cel-shading, inappropriate reuse of some sculpts, and the dearth of worthwhile accessories. It’s really been a money-grab kind of line and at least this Apocalypse feels more substantial and like a better value. They actually did some re-sculpting to make the figure more cartoon accurate, and while they didn’t go as far as they could with that, I think most will find they went far enough. My preference would have always been to receive figures with sculpts actually designed to mimic the animated look, but Hasbro was never committed to doing that for one reason or another. This figure does suffer a bit as a result because the head isn’t right and the veiny biceps look stupid on Apocalypse (and they would look stupid on any version of Apocalypse so I don’t get the thinking here). The rest of its shortcomings are just par for the course with Marvel Legends, like the dearth of paint apps (the cables look especially plain), so regular Legends collectors will likely be content. Unless someone else can get the license to produce animated X-Men figures (highly unlikely), this is unfortunately the best we’re likely to get. And at least with Apocalypse, this one does indeed feel good enough. Most of the VHS figures are not and the feeling of settling is palpable with each one, but here I don’t feel that way. At least not as much.

Apocalypse does come at an inflated price though of $40 which is obviously a lot for a Marvel Legends release. This one at least feels more worthy of that price compared with the VHS figures at around 28 bucks. A comparable figure would probably be NECA’s Chrome Dome from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line which was also $40. I would argue that the NECA release is a better value than this as it came with more stuff, more paint, and was 100% new tooling, but it also came out a year ago so maybe in 2022 it would be $45. Value, as always, is rather subjective, but in this case I think the value is there. If you’re interested in picking this one up, you may have to dig around a bit as it is sold out in several places. Hasbro Pulse still has it open for order so that may be the safest bet. Amazon does as well, but they can be hard to trust. Re-stocks may be on the way too so I don’t think it’s one you’ll have to spend a fortune on eBay for, but I also would recommend acting fast since I don’t think this one is ticketed for big box stores which would indicate there will be fewer of these out in the wild than the Age of Apocalypse version, by comparison. More importantly, if you can find some time today (admittedly, difficult given the holiday) or maybe even just this week throw on some classic X-Men and take a trip through time. It’s incredible to think I was watching the show as a kid 30 years ago, and while it may not hit the same as it did for me then, it’s still a worthwhile nostalgia binge and a show I think is worth celebrating. Or if you want to read more about it, I’ve covered both Previously on X-Men and the X-Men art book and recommend both to fans of the show. Here’s hoping the sequel series due next year is able to carry on its legacy.

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