It’s time once again for Marvel Universe Legends Monday! This has been a polarizing summer of movies. Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Into Darkness… battle lines have been drawn in the Interweb forums and fanboys have been having at each other over these films. I quite enjoyed Iron Man 3, although I’ll admit one of the sticking points for me about the movie early on was the use of the Iron Patriot armor. It took me a little while to come around and concede that copyrights being what they are, there was no way we were ever going to get Norman Osborne and The Dark Avengers, so having War Machine don the paintjob and the name only made sense. I can (begrudgingly) see that now and have accepted it. Debates over the use of the character aside, I love the aesthetics of the War Machine armor in the movies, and I must admit it certainly looks sexy decked out in the Iron Patriot colors.

We’ve already looked at the three figures that make up the first half of this Iron Man Legends wave. There’s not much new here. The character art looks fine and the figure is mounted on his tray beside the Iron Monger BAF part.

Iron Man 2 had its own line of Legends scale figures, and I’m guessing that this release is based off that War Machine mold, but I don’t own it and the Jameson is making me too fuzzy to do proper research, so I’m only guessing. Either way, I confess that I really love this sculpt. It’s both curvy and angular in all the right places and there are plenty of little panel lines to spruce things up. What I’m not as keen on are some of the plastics being used here, particularly the bare red plastic used for the hands and arms. It’s a little swirly, and it doesn’t hold up to the beautiful metallic blue and silver used for the rest of the figure. The quality also doesn’t feel quite up to par. It’s hard to put my finger on what it is exactly. The seams are a bit uglier than usual as well.

And speaking of paint, it’s worth noting that my figure has some stray paint on the face mask. If I was buying this guy off the pegs, I probably would have passed and tried to find a better one, but I got him sight unseen online. In retrospect, it sort of looks a little battle damage-y, so I can live with it. I am, however, really happy with the way the little tampo marks came out, particularly the Lt. Col. James Rhodes on the breast plate. It’s just a nice cool touch.

Patriot comes with a detachable shoulder mounted gun. There are two peg holes in the back so it can be positioned over either shoulder, but it really only looks right to me over his left shoulder. The gun features a swivel, as well as a hinge so that it can fold up or retract entirely behind his back. Of course, you can also just pull the whole thing out if you prefer.

Let’s roll out the articulation… The head is ball jointed and hinged as well, which gives it that little extra bit of movement that I love. The arms feature ball joints in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps, double-hinges in the elbows, and hinges and swivels in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed in the hips, swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and hinges and swivels in the ankles. There’s also a ball joint in the torso that features a really nice range of motion. It’s also worth mentioning that the shoulder armor is soft, rubbery plastic so as not to impede the range of arm movement. What does bother me is that the sculpted armor on the wrists won’t let the left hand bend back to bring his palm repulsor to the ready unless you cock the arm at the elbow.

Despite my issues with the plastic and a couple of paint flubs, I still really like this figure. He’s far from perfect, and that’s a shame because he could have been a homerun if not for some of the niggling little issues. That having been said, he looks damn fine on the shelf and he really is fun to play around with. It’s too bad the QC guys were asleep on the job and let this one slip out the way it did. Not a terrible figure, but he doesn’t live up to some of the better work we’ve been getting out of the Marvel Legends line.