Tag Archives: the beast

June 17, 2026

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Beast – Limited Edition

By Joe
I don’t normally do this, but for once I figured why not try to emulate the box art with the pose?

Back in the old Toy Biz line, it felt like we had to wait a long while for an action figure of Beast, or The Beast as the opening title of X-Men: The Animated Series referred to him as. Perhaps that was due to the character spending the bulk of the first season out of sight and out of mind thanks to being incarcerated. And I say it was a long wait, but what is a long wait to a child? It may have been about two years, but Beast eventually arrived with flipping action and an accessory that let him hang off of a smooth surface via a suction cup. I believe I got my figure for Christmas in 1994 and it felt like a big deal as he arrived alongside Morph and nearly filled out the roster from the cartoon. All that was missing was a proper Jean (we’d have to settle for her as Phoenix) and Jubilee (who eventually received a figure in the Generation X subline) while Rogue would arrive shortly after, if memory serves (action figure producers in the 90s were quite reluctant to make women). When Hasbro returned to X-Men for its Marvel Legends line based on the show, they made sure to get to Jubilee and Jean pretty early, but never did release a Beast. For the X-Men ’97 line, once again Jean and Jubilee made it out along with Rogue, but Beast got the shaft yet again. Finally, Hasbro unveiled a ’97 version of Beast on June 8th which is set to go up for preorder in August and will presumably release at some point in 2026. And that very same week I got a shipping notification from Mondo for its take on Beast who will get us ever closer to completing the main roster from the original series.

If you stand him up as tall as he’ll go then he’ll look down on the likes of Wolverine, but I think this is about right for his posture.

Beast has the distinction of arriving before Storm despite going up for preorder after her. And in this case it was well after as Storm went up around Halloween while Beast went up in February, but for some reason the blue guy beat her out of the factory. Maybe it’s the soft goods needed for Storm’s cape? I’m not sure, but I’d be lying if I said I was disappointed for while I do look forward to getting Storm, Beast was a pretty sizable want for me (literally). He’s just a fun design and we really have never received a proper animated Beast. Even that old Toy Biz figure featured more of a comic look as Beast had his whited-out eyes while the animated version had normal, blue, human eyes. Most of the Legends versions have followed a similar pattern with perhaps the only deviation being the very first Marvel Legends Beast which, apart from the eyes, didn’t bare much resemblance to the cartoon version (not that it was aiming for that). This Beast unquestionably is and like most Mondo releases in this line it arrives first as a limited edition with a bunch of extra goodies thrown in the box. It is yet another wonderful sculpt by Alex Brewer with paint by Mara Ancheta and packaging artwork Dan Veesenmeyer. The packaging does follow the same design as Mr. Sinister with no flap on the front and a write-up by Eric and Julia Lewald on the back detailing their affection for Hank. It would seem this is the standard going forward which is honestly fine as the front flap on the old boxes revealed little since these figures ship wrapped in plastic to protect the paint.

“Eureka!”
“Let me tell you about this wonderful resource.”

Beast is a big hunk of plastic coming in it at about 11.75″ per Mondo. Since he is a character often depicted standing with a bit of a hunch, exactly how much vertical space he’ll occupy on your shelf is certainly variable. He does pack some heft though as he’s solid. He doesn’t look out of place among the other figures and I do like that Mondo appears to have a mostly no compromises approach to size and scale with these releases. He’s also very much a ’92 design. While there isn’t much separating Beast from the original series and its sequel series, there are some subtle differences most notably in the shape of the face and the linework of the body. This Beast has the wide face of the original series with tufted bits of fur along the jaw line. His stark, black, eyebrows also sit more in-line with the eye as opposed to stretching well beyond them and his hair is a bit more unrestrained. It’s also reflected in the paint job as the original series was more likely to paint the inner lines of Beast’s musculature in a rougher manner. Instead of one, curved, line it was more like several shorter lines arranged in a curve shape to create a subtle illusion of fur. The ’97 art mostly goes with an all blue body with the fur only appearing as a means of breaking the silhouette in key places, something the original series also did. For this figure, Mondo did not sculpt any fur inside the body, but painted it withing the muscles such as in the base of the pectorals and basically along all muscle groupings. It means Beast has a slightly furrier appearance in plastic than he does on celluloid, but given the scale I think it’s a necessary touch to give him a bit more depth and the paint job is subtle enough that it doesn’t detract from the source material. Instead, it feels like this is how Beast is represented in the show on episode’s with the biggest budget or in close-ups as opposed to when he’s just lost in the background.

Beast is known for being well-read.
He’s not really known for being well-dressed. This is as formal as he gets.

Apart from the paint job, this is just a really great looking take on the character. Initially, I thought the shoulders looked a little bulbous in the promotional shots, but in-hand I don’t see the same. Beast always had quite large shoulders on the show and sculpt reflects that rather accurately. My favorite X-Men character designs are the ones that bely the personality of the individual underneath. A great example is Nightcrawler, the character who looks like a demon but is actually a devout Christian. In the case of Beast, it’s a monstrous individual who is actually a scholar and medical doctor. What makes me prefer the animated design over all others rests with his face. Beast has this very gentle, human-like, visage as opposed to the more primal one he is often given by comic book artists. And for this one, Brewer really nailed the different expressions contained in this set. We get a neutral face by default that has a faint hint of a smile which feels like the perfect default Beast. There’s also an angry one, and a yelling one if you want more of a battle setup. We also get this humorous toothy grin which is the only face that might be from X-Men ’97 though it still reads as a ’92 look to me. Lastly, there’s sad Beast and this is likely pulled from his spotlight episode, “Beauty and the Beast,” though he does have moments of sadness in other episodes that it could work for. I really like that Beast is the chosen character to wear his emotions on his sleeve as he’s basically the first to cry in X-Men ’97 when things get heavy.

It’s not easy being a beast.
A Howard the Duck shirt will be a smile on even the saddest face.

Those are just the expressions available, for hands we get a solid spread that includes sets of fists and gripping hands. There’s also another set of gripping hands that are asymmetrical, a very wide or style posed right hand, a pointing right hand, and an open left hand. He also has two books, one that is open and one that is closed. The closed book contains a shoutout to showrunner Erik Lewald and writer Julia Lewald as it’s titled Lewald’s Book of Words. The open book is The Genus of Genius, a bit smug for someone like Beast. For seeing that small print, Beast has his glasses which slot over his ears well enough without the need for any ugly cut-outs. They’re just black, plastic, frames without a lens and I think it serves the prupose here. He also has his tactical backpack which has a few different accessories all pulled from the original series. There’s a set of goggles that come up and over the head as well as a little blaster that pops out. These just plug into the backpack if you wish to use them or you could have the backpack appear closed. The goggles don’t slot into anything on the face, so you basically have to position his head and the pack itself to get it to sit right. Even so, you’ll probably have a hard time getting him to look in any direction other than straight ahead with these on. Beast also has a little handheld device that served as a communicator in “The Phalanx Covenant – Part One” in conjunction with a radio inside the pack, but that would have been a little too ambitious to include the whole thing. If you don’t want him out in the field though, there’s also an included lab coat accessory which he actually comes packaged wearing. This necessitates the swapping of arms as it’s setup just like the coats that came with Logan and Cyclops. It looks nice when in place and there’s even a little pocket with optional tongue depressor on the left breast, something that showed up in both shows. Because the coat adds a little more bulk to the shoulder area, I’d say it actually casts the slightly better silhouette as a result which was also true of the Cyclops figure. Lastly, Beast also comes with his Howard the Duck shirt as seen during The Phoenix Saga episodes. Unfortunately, it’s just a lump of painted plastic meant to represent the shirt folded up and it’s not something he can actually wear. An actual soft goods one he could wear would have been the icing on the cake. Beast also has the typical Mondo display stand. Unfortunately, they didn’t deem him worthy of the flight stand which is what I’d prefer to see become the standard for the line as these doll stands are pretty poor. If you think it’s a matter of heft my counter to that would be the recently solicited Goliath from Gargoyles comes with a flight stand so if it can support him then it could likely support Beast.

Beast is ready to head out into the field.

Beast has a pretty standard array of articulation for Mondo, but to my surprise, it’s among the most well-executed. For joints, we get a double ball head, hinged shoulder pegs, bicep, single elbow, ball-jointed wrist, diaphragm, ball-jointed waist, ball socket hips with swivel, double-jointed knees, ankle hinge and rocker, and a toe hinge. The head is perhaps the most limited as his sloped posture and large head means his range is a bit subtle and it’s easy to pop the head off by mistake when posing him. The shoulders have terrific range for what they are and the elbow hinge is pretty deep so Beast has no issues bending his arm 90 degrees, be it sleeved or not. The diaphragm joint actually works and he can arch back and crunch forward a bit and the waist enhances both directions. Both spots swivel and provide for a little rock. Nothing outrageous, but better than other figures in the line. All of the joints are also firm, but smooth, out of the box so I’ve had more fun messing around with Beast than a lot of figures from Mondo. The heads and hands are pliable enough to easily swap and all of the pegs are nice and thick so there’s no durability concerns here. Still, without a neck or butterfly joint, Beast will be confined to mostly simple poses. He can’t quite get down into a three-point stance nor can he look up well enough to emulate his pose on the cover of X-Men #1. He can crouch down and I was able to do so without the aid of a stand. I probably wouldn’t trust him on a shelf without one in such a pose (and I did have him take a dive already), but it is doable.

“Open your mouth and say, ‘Ahh,'”
Like Nightcrawler, Beast can get into a crouch.

As a result, Beast is probably the most fun character to handle since Nightcrawler, with Nightcrawler being the only one that’s obviously superior to him in the articulation department. He fits in really well among his teammates and I do love the big splash of blue it adds to the shelf. Or rather I will when I find a way to fit him in. The Mondo shelf is getting extremely crowded and it only gets worse when figures are released. I’ll have to find a home for Storm as well at some point this summer and eventually there’s Jean. That’s all that’s been shown so far and with the release of Jean that essentially completes the default team from the ’92 show with the exception of Professor X. And honestly, I don’t know if I want a Professor X for this line given the likely size and cost of such a thing since he has to come with the hoverchair. I do absolutely feel that we need a Morph since he was in the first episode and is a full-time member in X-Men ’97. After that, there’s Bishop, Cable, and Archangel which would all be nice to have, but aren’t necessities for me. If Mondo thinks it can do Apocalypse justice without a massive price hike, then I’d certainly be interested in him as well. He is really the only villain I feel like I need. Juggernaut would be cool as well, but he really didn’t show up much in the original series and has yet to make an appearance in X-Men ’97.

That’s a lot of plastic.

All that is to say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for this line, but also not. I just listed out probably a couple grand in “maybe” figures not to mention shelf real estate so I guess we may not be as close as I would like to think. With San Diego Comic Con on the horizon, I am sure we’ll see a new figure or two in this line, though it would not shock me if Mondo prioritizes Spider-Man a bit more since that line has only put out three characters so far. Then again, X-Men ’97 returns to Disney+ in just two weeks so they’ll want to strike while the iron is hot with some new reveals. For now, Beast is a clear enhancement to the collection and one of Mondo’s best. I feel like I say that a lot with new releases in the line, but Beast really does vault up to the top or near top of my personal rankings for the line. He’s definitely one to get whether you’re cherry-picking the line or looking to assemble a full squad. And best of all, this limited edition version is still available on Mondo’s website. He is not cheap coming in at $255 and Mondo charges a lot for shipping these days. He is also still listed as coming with a tariff surcharge even though they’ve been reduced dramatically. That’s probably to not enrage the customers who preordered and paid that upfront. With the limited edition of 1,500 units not selling out, it’s possible that a standard version is not inbound either and there’s no indication on the listing what is part of the limited version and what would not be in a hypothetical standard edition. I’m not sure if any of these figures are truly worth what they cost, but if any are then Beast is among them as he’s very well executed. I am certainly happy to have him in my collection.

For more Mondo X-Men figures, check out the below:

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Nightcrawler

Yes, I’m afraid this is another toy review that needs to begin with a word about tariffs. It was the talk of 2025 in the toy collecting community because it caused considerable delays, disruptions, and worst of all, increased prices across the board. One line impacted by the introduction of these new costs more than…

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by Joe

Mondo 1/6 X-Men ’97 Wolverine – Limited Edition

Back in 2021, Mondo unveiled for San Diego Comic Con a sixth scale Wolverine action figure based on the X-Men animated series from the 90s. It was a presale to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the show’s premiere and product went out in 2022 closer to that actual anniversary. At the time, Mondo wasn’t…

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by Joe

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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.

More from the world of X-Men:

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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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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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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