It’s time to start a brand new wave of Marvel Legends, and rather than going back to one of the older ones in my backlog, I’m once again going for a more recent assortment. This one is based largely on The Age of Apocalypse, and more X-Men is never a bad thing, right? I’m really tight for time today, but I’m still going to try to tackle two figures from this wave because I’m really far behind on these and I want to sprint a little to get back in the race. I’ll probably try to double up a few more times with this wave if possible. Today I’m checking out Morph and Wild Child, and as always, let’s start with the packaging!

The boxes have the Age of Apocalypse logo on the top panel and some wonderful artwork on the side panels by David Nakayama. I don’t usually call out the artists for these packages, but I’m a big fan of Mr. Nakayama’s cover work with Zenescope Comics, so it’s really cool to see his work turn up here. In addition to the character art, you get Apocalypse mean mugging you from the top of the side panels. Great stuff! Imma gonna tear open Morph first!

Egads, this guy used to piss me off in the X-Men animated series. Besides being an asshole, I could never get that stupid laugh of his out of my head. Of course, this here is the comic version who got a new lease on life during the Age of Apocalypse. As expected, this is a fairly simple figure, making use of mostly paint for the costume. The blue and black deco is really dark and it takes some good lighting to bring out the differences. He does feature some new sculpting for his gauntlets and those righteous buccaneer boots, and the addition of that bright yellow throws a much needed zing into the color mix.

The cape is a new piece and I like it a lot. It not only hangs around his neck, but also plugs into the hole in his back. There’s a really wide neck hole and it’s studded with giant sculpted rivets. It’s a distinctive looking addition to his costume and the purple adds yet another layer of color. I think my only gripe with this figure so far is that maybe fists weren’t the right choice for his hands. Or rather, maybe an additional set of hands that were not fists.

The head sculpt is excellent and conveys lots of personality, while also driving home the comic relief nature of the character. Appropriately enough, it looks kind of like a lump of clay waiting to be molded into something else. And that brings me to another little complaint. Maybe Hasbro should have included some kind of shape-shifting piece with this figure. I don’t know, maybe another head or an arm or something similar to what they did with Mystique a little while back. Actually, an homage to his animated series portrait would have been a cool nod back! With that having been said, I like his little smirk and the fact that he has one eye popped a little bit.

I wish I had more to say about this guy, but that’s all I got. Don’t get me wrong, I like this figure a lot. The coloring is really nice and Hasbro did a wonderful job with the portrait. Yup everything that’s here is great, and he’s undoubtedly a fine addition to my X-Men line up. But I think Hasbro missed an opportunity to toss in a few extras to showcase his Mutant abilities, especially since they got by without a whole heck of a lot of new sculpting here. OK… let’s move on to Wild Child!

Like Morph, Wild Child gets by with very little sculpted detail on his body, other than the usual musculature that comes along with this Spider-Man body. Yeah, I originally thought this body was going to be too big, and maybe they should have used one of the smaller teen bodies, but in hand I’m actually fairly pleased with how it came out. I think the addition of the rather large, and newly sculpted, clawed hands and feet help make the proportions of the body look more lankier. I would have liked some added texture, maybe at least on lower legs and forearms. Still, it’s nice to get those extra lateral crunches in the shoulders that come with this body. In addition to the hands and feet, the collar is a new sculpt, and it’s funny how I’m just now noticing that it’s similar to the collar on Morph’s cape. Weird.

The head sculpt is undoubtedly the star of this show. It’s absolutely fantastic. Some points of particular note include the open mouth displaying his fangs with the tongue sculpted inside, the mutton chops coming off of his jawline, and the wild hair that’s mostly swept back, but includes those fly away strands that fall over his eyes. And the wide pupil-less eyes with the red coloring around the edges of the skin are just so creepy. I’m a huge admirer of some of the portraits Hasbro turns out for this line, so when I say this one ranks far up at the top, it really means something!

Wild Child also comes with a chain that can be clipped to the back of his collar. It’s sculpted in a rather dynamic coiled manner making it almost like an effect part. You can come up with some pretty cool poses of him wielding it and it’s definitely a nice addition to the figure.

And that’s a solid two figures to start out this assortment and I’m really happy to welcome these two characters to my X-Men Legends shelves. Wild Child has come a long way since the Toy Biz days when he was relegated to being a mere static accessory to the 1998 release of Sabretooth, but in fairness that wasn’t one of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends. I seem to recall Toy Biz did a mail-away ToyFair Exclusive figure of the Age of Apocalypse Morph back in the day, but I never had it and again, I don’t think it was part of their Marvel Legends line, so these are both first for my collection! Next week, we’ll dig further into what is shaping up to be a very interesting assortment!