No Marvel Universe today, but it is still Marvel Monday and with my anticipation growing for Iron Man 3, I thought we’d mix it up a bit. Hasbro is crapping out on the toys for Tony’s third box office outing, and so I’m forced to look elsewhere to express my excitement for the film in plastic form. Today we’re turning the clock back to 2010. It was a time when Hasbro was supporting the Marvel Movieverse by producing some excellent 3 ¾” Iron Man figures. In fact, the only problem with the Iron Man 2 line was that the pegs were clogged with dubious variations of Stark’s armor, making it hard to find some of the figures I really wanted. Case in point: I never saw Whiplash on the pegs. That is until a few days ago when he was hiding at Target behind some Avengers figures. Let’s check him out…

Holy hell, it’s the Iron Man 2 packaging! The last time we saw this on FigureFan Zero was over a year ago, but hey if Walmart can fill their pegs with Rise of Cobra figures, why can’t Target sneak a little Iron Man 2 behind their Avengers? I usually buy my figures when I’m going grocery shopping so it isn’t as apparent, but on this day the young lady running the register was faced with a 40 year old dude buying nothing but a single Iron Man figure. She looked at the figure and said, “Wow he’s an ugly guy!” I simply replied, “That is Mickey Rourke, my dear!” then I took my purchase and walked off whistling a jaunty tune. I’d like to think it was a transaction she would long remember. Anyway, seeing these cards again is a real blast from the past. I love the presentation here and Hasbro really packed these bubbles with goodness.

This version of Whiplash is from the scene in the film where Ivan tried to get all up in Tony’s shit at the race. He’s wearing his own version of the arc reactor rig and wielding two energy whips. The rig is one seriously complex design and I was dubious as to whether it could be pulled off effectively in a 3 ¾” scale figure. I’ve got to say, Hasbro did a pretty good job with it. The metal framework is sculpted right onto the figure and carefully painted silver. Hasbro even did their best to replicate all of Ivan’s crazy tats. Most of these are just drizzles of black paint, but it’s a nice attempt all the same.

The lower half of the figure features Ivan’s rumpled jumpsuit with the top half of it draped down around his waist and behind his legs. There is some wonderful sculpted detail at work here as well, with all the wrinkles and tearing. Unfortunately, Hasbro went off the reservation on the coloring. They used brown for the jumpsuit when it should have been orange.

As for the portrait, well, he’s got long hair and a mustache so you can kind of see who it’s supposed to be. Truthfully, the face gives off some kind of creepy baby vibe for me. I think it’s the large forehead. There are some paint apps for scars and wrinkles in his forehead. It’s certainly not one of Hasbro’s better likenesses, but getting all the “character” of Mickey Rourke’s face into this scale would have been all but impossible. I’m going to give Hasbro a pass on this one.

Whiplash has just about all the articulation you could want in this scale. There are ball joints in the neck, shoulders, hips, and ankles. The arms feature swivels in the biceps, hinged elbows, and swivels at the wrists. The legs feature swivels at the thighs, and double-hinged knees. He also has a ball joint in the torso. The only issue with articulation on my figure is the top hinges in the knees don’t want to work and with the hinges being soft plastic, I don’t want to try to force them. At least I can still bend his knees using the bottom hinges.

Naturally, Whiplash comes with his whips. These are cast in sculpted bendy plastic and can be posed in a variety of ways. They are rather heavy and don’t fit rather loosely in Whiplash’s hands. If you have an extra pair of those tiny clear rubber bands kicking around, this would be a good opportunity to make some use of them.

One thing I miss about the Iron Man 2 figures were these awesome stands and illustrated card overlays. I think these were a great idea and really do a lot to add to the presentation of the figure. Here, Hasbro wasn’t just giving us a stand, but a cool little display backdrop as well. I can’t recall anyone else doing anything like this in this scale and it only serves to remind me how much we’ve lost in only two years. Blame the cost of plastic or profit-mongering, but we just don’t expect to see this kind of thing these days.

I dig Whiplash a lot and I’m really glad I stumbled upon him hanging on the pegs, especially since I doubt I ever would have gone out of my way to hunt him down online. He couldn’t have been an easy figure to tackle, but Hasbro brought their “A-game” and rose to the occasion. Best of all, I can finally close the lid on my Iron Man 2 collection, as this guy was the only figure I was missing, apart from some of the more wild and undesirable versions of Tony’s armor.