It’s another Marvel Monday and Thanksgiving week to boot! Obviously, I’m thankful to Hasbro for giving us so many amazing Marvel Legends figures, even if this line is becoming almost impossible to keep up with! Today I’m digging into one of the recent two-packs with Rogue and Pyro! So allow me to pour myself a tall glass of Jameson’s patented holiday cheer and let’s get to it!

The packaging here is just lovely, and it makes me sad that I don’t have the room to keep these boxes. You get some wonderful character art on the side panels and the back, and a big window in the front that lets you get a good look at the stuffing inside. It’s a fairly compact box, and that coupled with the number of extras, makes it look like a well-rounded package of goodies! Where to begin? Well as Rogue would say… it’s ladies first, sugah!

Cards on the table, I was really hoping the next Legends Rogue we got was her Savage Lands look, but I think deep down inside, I knew better. Instead we get one of her more modern costumes, which I think is… OK. It’s not my favorite look for her, but she’s done a lot worse over the years. And to be fair, this figure is so well executed, that it’s hard for me not to get behind the choice to go with this look. Particularly clever is the way the belt piece is sculpted to include the short skirt, making it look like it’s all part of the torso, when it’s just a nicely done fake out. With the exception of some sculpted boot tops around the knees, the rest of the costume gets by with white trim painted onto the rather striking green buck. Yeah, the coloring here is just gorgeous and despite the fact that some of those white paint lines could have been sharper, the color combo is what really sells this figure to me. A sculpted white scarf cascades down Rogue’s back to complete the ensemble. Maybe they overdid it a bit with the X-branding on this costume design, but heck, I don’t mind.

Since I’m squeezing two figures in today, I’m not going to run down all the articulation points. Besides, there’s nothing new here. The only thing really worth mentioning is that the skirt does inhibit her range of motion in the hips just a tad. I will also point out that Rogue comes with two pairs of hands: Fists, and those sort of spell-slinging, psychic power type hands.

The portrait is solid enough, but there’s something about it that keeps it from being great, and it’s just hard to put my figure on what exactly that is. The paint is pretty sharp, and she’s got a cute expression going on between her smirk and her eyes, but I vastly prefer the portrait from that classic Jim Lee figure. The hair sculpt here isn’t one of Hasbro’s best either. It looks a little more like putty than hair, and the white is kind of splotchy. I do, however, dig the ponytail. I don’t know, maybe I’m being too hard on this one. She does come with an alternate head, so how’s that one?

Well, I’m not entirely sure what expression they were going for here. At some angles it looks like anger, in others it just looks like she’s showing off her pearly whites. Come to think of it, it’s actually a bit saucy! In terms of the face, I’d say this is a lateral move over the other regular head. It’s not better, not worse, just another option. They did re-sculpt the hair to give it a more dynamic look, but it doesn’t help the complaints I had about it on the previous portrait.

I like this figure well enough. It’s a cool look for Rogue, and I think the fact that I nitpicked her a bit just goes to show you what a great line Legends is, and how expectations run high. I have no doubt that there are collectors out there for whom this is the Rogue they were waiting for, and that’s what makes the prolific nature of this line so great. And make no mistake, I am by no means unhappy about adding this one to my collection.

No offense to Rogue, but they could have bundled anyone with Pyro and I still would have bought this set. Once the onslaught of X-Men (no pun intended) starting hitting Legends, I kept hoping that Pyro would be in the next wave, and then the next, and so on. I’m kind of surprised that he wasn’t a regular release, but either way I ain’t complaining because this is an outstanding figure. Pyro’s flame retardant suit is almost entirely painted onto the bright and beautiful yellow plastic of the buck. We get a deep maroon for the boots, and a muted orange-tan for the upper sleeves and torso. The paint lines are crisp and everything about the coloring here is just gorgeous.

Pyro’s flamethrower rig is molded as part of the shoulders and chest piece, which fits around his neck and rests on his shoulders. It’s all cast in soft maroon plastic to match the color of the boots, and there’s a big yellow diamond painted on the chest. There’s some sculpted detail in the backpack, and the two flexible hoses snake their way down his arms and attach to the cuffs on his wrists with the nozzles positioned under his wrists. The hoses work well and are flexible enough so as not to impede the range of movement in his arms. And speaking of articulation, Pyro’s got it in all the usual places, and even includes those extra swivels down in his lower legs.

The standard head sculpt makes for a great portrait, with his orange mask sculpted as well as painted on. His prominent and expressive brow frames his bug-like red eyes, and the part in the mask advertises his sharp nose, jutting chin, and wide, beaming grin. The shock of blonde hair juts upward, like a flame on a match. This is just another one of those Legends portraits that oozes personality, and really brings the character to life.

As with Rogue, Pyro comes with an alternate head, which simply features a different expression. Here, Pyro’s grin blooms into a full on kinda yellow toothy, psychotic grin. I’m just going to go ahead and characterize these heads as Before He Sets You on Fire, and After He Sets You on Fire. It’s a close call as to which one I’ll use most for display, but right now I’m leaning toward the second one.

Pyro comes with two fire effect parts, and here’s the only part about the figure that leaves me disappointed. These effect parts are meant to fit around the fists, but even if I didn’t recognize them as recycled parts, it’s easy to tell that they were clearly not designed for this figure. They don’t work well with the nozzles and tend to fall off pretty easily. I really wish Hasbro could have given us something that did work with those nozzles, like a jet stream of flame. Yeah, I realize that we got TWO extra portraits in this box, so maybe asking for brand new effect parts is a lot, but even still, these effect parts just don’t work that well.

No doubt, this is a solid set of figures. I like the Rogue well enough, but I didn’t feel like my collection was incomplete without her. She’s a decent figure, but she isn’t going to replace the bomber jacketed Jim Lee version on my main X-Men shelf. And so, she’ll be relegated to that “other versions” shelf, which is constantly in danger of getting taken down to make room for other figures. Pyro on the other hand, was the “must have” in this box, and despite a swing and a miss with the flame effects, the figure itself is a homerun. He’ll be taking up a place of honor on my Brotherhood shelf. Either way, this box was a welcome pick up, and now I can go back to trying to hunt down the Storm/Thunderbird two-pack.