I’m pressing on with my look at the Rocket Raccoon wave of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends. Today it’s all about Jean Grey. Back in the 90’s when I was an X-Men whore, I couldn’t get enough of this character. That fondness has dulled a bit, along with my X-Men fetish, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy to add her to my Legends shelf… especially since this is the long awaited Jim Lee version. Forgive me if today is brief and incoherent, but I’m coming to you all with absolutely no sleep in the last 28 hours… Yay!

Here’s the Marvel Legends packaging and I don’t have a lot new to say about it. Word is that Hasbro was planning three variants as running changes for this figure, but only the one version of Jean appears on the card art. Jean comes packaged beside a raccoon body and tail! Let’s get Jean out of the package and we’ll set the raccoon parts aside for a later feature…

Wow, am I torn on this figure so let me start there. When I first got her open, I went round and round in my head over the buck used here. After seeing the magnificent female buck used for the Thunderbolts ladies, this one seems scrawny and ill-proportioned by comparison. But then I flipped through some of my old X-Men comics and I’m thinking… No, if we’re going by the art, the body used here actually works. I’ll come back to some of my issues with the buck when I talk articulation.

Jean looks pretty good. There isn’t a ton of original sculpting here. You get pouches sculpted into her thighs, bracers on her wrists, and the shoulder pads, all of which look fine. The combination of yellow plastic and yellow paint looks great. Hasbro, why can’t you use this yellow plastic for your Bumblebee figures? And the pearlescent blue used for the other half of her deco really makes the figure pop. It just goes to show you there’s a right time and place for this swirly plastic. I hated it on Ultron, but I loved it on Iron Monger, and I love it here too. The subtle metallic paint on the thigh pouches is a pretty nice little touch.

The head sculpt is OK. I am not crazy about her eyes. They’re narrow and they look like she just woke up. The rest of it, however, is fine. The copious hair looks great and I dig the way her hood is executed. It all conspires with the long neck to make for a very iconic looking figure. Her hands are sculpted with one in a fist and one in a “I’m using telekinesis on you” manner. The open hand seems a tad big, but it’s not something that ruins the figure for me.

Ok, so here’s the breakdown on articulation. The arms have ball joints in the shoulders, hinges in the knees, and swivels in the wrists. The legs feature those crazy ball joints in the hips, swivels at the hips, double hinged knees, and hinges and rockers in the ankles. Her torso features a ball joint and her neck is ball jointed. There’s obviously some stuff missing here, and the biggest offender for me is the lack of bicep swivels. Hasbro, bicep swivels in a six-inch scale figure should be mandatory now… even if it is a female! I also find the lack of hinge in the neck rather conspicuous. She’s also very top heavy, which makes her not a lot of fun to play around with because she just keeps falling over. Thankfully, I have a lot of stands from a previous Legends wave.

It may not sound like it, but I dig this figure well enough. Since it’s rebirth, Legends for me has had three main categories. There have been a good number of Triple-A releases, there have been a larger number of adequate releases, and just a few total duds. Jean falls squarely in the adequate releases. She looks fine standing on my shelf amidst the other figures, but unlike the top tier releases, I don’t want to have her on my desk to play with. If I was still a huge fan of the character, I suppose I would be a tad disappointed, but there’s nothing terribly wrong with her either.