It’s Marvel Monday! I did ship my Pile of Loot from BBTS last week and there are a handful of Marvel Universe figures in it, so hopefully next Monday we’ll come round and start looking at MU stuff again. In the meantime, let’s finish off the first half of Hasbro’s Iron Man-themed Marvel Legends wave. As I’ve no doubt said in the past, I wasn’t terribly excited to get any of the figures in the first half of this wave, but once in hand the first two have been pleasant surprises. Let’s see if Hasbro can keep that ball rolling with… Classic Iron Man!

Yep, that’s the packaging we’ve seen the last two times. Not much new to say here. The figure comes mounted on the tray beside one of Iron Monger’s legs, as well as a swappable variant helmet mounted on the other side. It’s worth noting here that Classic Iron Man is another repack, as he was originally released as a TRU Exclusive some time ago. That puts Heroic Iron Man as the only genuinely new figure out of the three. In this case, I don’t mind so much since I’ve never seen the TRU version of the figure, and I don’t have a 6-inch Iron Man on my shelf.

Before we get to the rest of the figure, Iron Man is packaged with his “horned” helmet, which is a look that I’m not crazy about. It’s nice to have options, but I’m popping that baby off right now and forgetting it exists.

Ah, that’s better. Over the decades, I’ve gone back and forth over my feelings for the classic armor aesthetic. I loved it as a kid, probably because that’s all there was. I turned on it at some point in the 90’s, and lately I guess nostalgia has kicked in because I’m back to digging it a lot. It’s those ribbed boots and gloves and the organic looking gold limbs that really drive home that memory of peddling my bike down to the Woolworths and leafing through comic books until I was thrown out for not buying anything. Part of what I dig most about it is that it looks appropriately primitive besides the various other armors and it’s cool to line them up “Hall of Armors” style to see the progression. But yeah, the rest is pure nostalgia. It’s that same clean and classic look that makes me love a lot of vintage sci-fi designs.

There’s not a lot to say about the sculpt, other than it is fabulous. The muscles look great, particularly his abs and his back. That great ribbing, I mentioned earlier, is sculpted into the boots, gloves, and pelvic area. Unfortunately, the discs on his hips aren’t hinged so they will interfere with some wider stances, and I’m afraid to go too far lest I pop them off. As usual, Iron Man has one hand sculpted in mid repulsor blast and the other balled into a fist for punching fools. The soles of his boots are sculpted with repulsors and some panel lining too.

Threre’s actually very little paint on this figure to speak of. Hasbro molded the bulk of him in red and gold plastics. The faceplate is painted gold, as are the little bit of forearms before the gloves. The paint matches the gold plastic fairly well. The red plastic looks more metallic than the gold, but all in all it’s a fairly attractive deco.

Classic Iron Man features some very nice articulation. The neck is ball jointed, plus you get the extra hinge. The arms feature ball joints in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps, double hinged elbows, and swivels and hinges in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, and swivels and hinges in the ankles. The torso swivels at the waist and features an ab crunch hinge. My only complaint here is the awkward ball joints in the hips. Sure they’re poseable, but you really need to work to get them to do what you want. Hasbro… stop using these!!!

I didn’t include a shot of the BAF progress when I looked at Heroic Age Iron Man, but now that I’ve got two legs and a torso, I thought I’d put together what I can. Holy hell, Hasbro, why is it so difficult to snap the legs on this goddamn thing? I seriously had to put the torso against a wall and lean on the leg to finally get it to pop on. Apart from that, Iron Monger is looking mighty damn cool.

And so, I tried to resist this trio of figures, but they turned out to be a nice little set, and Classic Iron Man here is certainly a worthy addition to my Hall of Armors. It’s worth noting that these were a lot easier to find on the pegs than other Marvel Legends waves. All three figures were plentiful at both the Target and Walmart in my area, so I didn’t have to hunt for any of them. They were all pretty much just impulse buys. Hopefully that will be the case with the second half of the wave, because those are three figures that I’m really excited about getting. Alas, if these three don’t start selling down, the second half of the wave will likely rot in the backrooms, and I’ll wind up paying a premium for those online in order to complete my Iron Monger.