So, I was originally planning on doing Iron Monger next Monday and making that the last Marvel Monday, but I got an unexpected invite to The Pub tonight and I needed a feature that wouldn’t require a whole lot of time. Iron Monger is just that figure, so that’s why I decided to bump him up to today. Iron Monger’s pieces were spread throughout the Iron Man Legends wave, so to build him, you needed to buy Classic Iron Man, Heroic Age Iron Man, Mark 42 Iron Man, both versions of Iron Patriot and Ultron. We’ve got all the parts, so let’s pop him together! And by “pop him together,” I mean, almost break all the bones in my hand trying to get his legs attached to his torso. Holy hell, this guy ain’t coming apart again anytime soon!

Sweet Christmas, I love this figure! He’s not all that much taller than your average Marvel Legends, but what he lacks in length, he makes up for with girth. Giggity! Let’s start out with the plastic. I’ve given Hasbro some grief over their quality of plastics lately, particularly the crap they used for Ultron in this very wave. This stuff is glorious. It’s a deep, midnight blue with a subtle metallic sheen. Yes, it has that swirly pattern that I generally don’t like, but on the darker plastic, I think it looks phenomenal. Like Ultron, this figure has almost zero paint apps. You get a little red for his chest and visor, and some black on his arm cables. The look of the plastic was crucial, and the result is glorious.

As a comic based figure, Iron Monger is a great mix of minimalism and hyper-detail. You get large smooth surfaces like his shoulder armor, his chest and even his head. But then you also get some wonderfully sculpted detail on his lower abdomen and the access port on his back. The sculpting for the segmented fists are crazy detailed and even the soles of his feet have detail and thrusters. The particulars of the sculpt are all wrapped up in a figure that is superbly proportioned. You needn’t bother with any crazy poses, because he looks amazing, just standing right there on the shelf.

What’s that? You do want to bother with crazy poses? Well, that’s Ok, because Iron Monger brings some solid articulation to the table. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and ankles. The arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs feature swivels in the thighs and double hinges in the knees. Lastly, you get a very versatile ball joint in the torso. No doubt, this is a fun figure to play around with.

As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of BAFs and C&Cs is to deliver figures that are too big to fit in a regular carded figure’s package and price point. I’m looking at you Hit Monkey… You should have been a pack-in!!! Iron Monger was a good choice, because he’s certainly a big bulky slab of a figure. He’s a fantastic looking piece that will find a prominent place on my Iron Man shelf and while not every figure in this wave was a hit, even the weaker ones were worth buying to piece together this bad boy!