I gave notice on New Years that Marvel Monday’s days were numbered in 2023, and since then I’ve decided that I’m going to pull the plug after I’m done looking at the Bonebreaker Wave. That means that next week I’ll finish off this wave with Sabretooth and the Bonebreaker BAF and then that will be that. Just to clarify, that doesn’t mean I’m done with checking out Marvel Legends figures here, but rather the line will no longer have a dedicated day, and Marvel Legends reviews will be few and far between. The goal is to be more selective in what I buy from this line, but I’m not quitting entirely. Case in point, I did pre-order the Franklin and Valeria figures, but then I’m always going to go for the Fantastic Four stuff. OK, so let’s get this penultimate review started with a look at Darwin and Siryn…

These figures each come with a half of Bonebreaker’s tank chassis, and it makes sense that these would be bundled with the figures with the slightest build. Seeing these also make me really excited to see how Bonebreaker’s assembly is going to work. For the most part, BAFs are pretty much all the same: plug the limbs and head into the torso and you’re good to go. Bonebreaker is a whole different thing, and that intrigues me. Anyway, let’s start with Darwin, because I’m going to have the least to say about him.

Darwin is yet another figure that primarily makes use of a painted buck, in this case one of the Spider-Man bodies, for the bulk of his costume. Indeed, like Vulcan the only original sculpted piece here is his belt. Does it work for the character? Yeah, it sure does. Darwin is one of those Mutants who’s ability isn’t really visible or tangible and the slight build of the body is certainly appropriate. But, at the same time, this is the third “budget” figure in this wave and this is a big part of what’s making me grow tired of this line. As the price goes up, Hasbro is going to need to cut this shit out and find a way to give collectors something more, or else they’ll continue to lose people like me. I suppose you could argue that the BAF in this wave required a lot more tooling and maybe that’s the case, but still. The paint is appropriate, but nothing special. At least the pattern of the suit makes the colors of all the pins match.

The head sculpt is certainly decent enough, with his bug eyes, sunken cheeks, and atrophied ears. It conveys the creepiness of his appearance pretty well and it’s quite reminiscent of a Roswell alien.

You get two sets of hands: One pair of fists and one pair of grasping hands. Their enlarged size adds to Darwin’s creepy aesthetic. It’s kind of interesting that between Darwin, Vulcan, and Havok we got three different bodies and all three of them have the shoulder crunches. That extra bit of articulation is always nice, but we’ve seen this body countless times, so I won’t run down all the points here. I don’t know, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this figure, but it’s nothing special either and with the $25 MSRP, I could never have justified buying Darwin had I not found him on Amazon for $17. It’s kind of funny that as Hasbro raised their prices, I’ve subsequently lowered what I’m willing to spend on these and $17 or less seems to be my new sweet spot. Let’s move on to Siryn.

After the drab colors and tired sameness of Darwin, Siryn offers something a little more interesting. I could go into how outrageous it is that we get Siryn before Banshee, but Sean quickly followed in a 60th Anniversary set with Gambit and Psylocke in the blue and yellow uniforms. It’s a great looking set, but I’m trying to get out of this line so I’m going to give it a pass unless it goes on discount somewhere. But, back to Siryn… She’s certainly a nice looking figure with some beautiful colors. The hunter green and the bright canary yellow look so great together, and the yellow paint looks pretty fresh and doesn’t suffer from much in the way of bleed through. Sure, the body doesn’t utilize much in the way of fresh sculpting, apart from the tops of her gloves and boots, but the addition of the cape goes a long way to make her distinctive.

I like the head sculpt a lot, but I’d like it a lot more if it weren’t the only one we got. Yup, no shouty head and it’s like Shriek all over again. And honestly, if we’re only going to get one head, I would rather it be the one that shows off her super power. It’s an especially egregious omission when the shouting portrait is featured on the freaking box art. With that being said, what we got is still a fine effort. The hair sculpt is rather dynamic, giving the sculptors a chance to strut their stuff. It looks great, but I would rather it was blowing back, like she’s flying. I don’t want to be too hard on it, because I do think it’s overall some very nice work.

The body is one of the newer female bucks, which means we actually get the double-hinged elbows. Maybe there’s some irony in the fact that Hasbro is finally addressing one of my big gripes after I’ve decided to scale way back on buying these figures. You get a pair of fists and a pair of open hands as display options. That’s nice, but I’d rather they just included the open hands and poured the fist plastic into a second head mold. The joints all feel great, and she’s lots of fun to play around with, but the cape can be problematic.

The cape is what it is. It’s made of a thin, almost papery fabric and attaches to the figure at the shoulders and wrists with holes for those joints to pass through. The shoulder attachments seem fine, but I’d be worried about the wrist holes tearing if I were changing the hands out a lot. As it is, I’ll likely just keep the open hands as opposed to the fists. The cape is difficult to work with when it comes to posing her. Sometimes it looks great and sometimes it just looks awkward. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it, because it’s hard for me to come up with a better way to do it. It’s just a fact that some things that look great on a comic panel aren’t always going to translate well to a figure.

If Siryn came with a second head, I would have loved this figure, but as it is I just like her. I’m at the point with Marvel Legends where I see all the new releases through the filter of the new price tag, and it isn’t usually kind. And I gotta tell you, Hasbro, if you’re asking $25 for this figure, you really needed to toss in that second head.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, and it’s fear of doing just that which is a big reason as to why I’m scaling way back on my Marvel Legends buying and reviews. And that’s no way to start every week. I can still get enjoyment out of these figures, but more often than not it just feels like reviewing them is becoming a chore. That wasn’t so much the case with Siryn, but it sure as hell was with Darwin. It’s just the same old body over and over again with a bit of paint and new head and new hands slapped onto it. I want to be excited about what I write about here, and maybe by cutting way back on the frequency of these reviews I’ll be able to be excited about writing about Marvel Legends now and again. Next week, we’ll wrap this whole thing up with Sabretooth and Bonebreaker!