Ah, the Build-A-Figure! On the one hand it gives you an extra reward for being a good little collector and completing a Marvel Legends wave. On the other hand, sometimes you’re beholden to buying figures you don’t want just so you can get an arm or a leg. In the case of The Allfather Wave, I was perfectly happy buying all the figures in the assortment so that I could could build me an Odin. And yes, I said Odin as opposed to King Thor. You do get two different choices on how you want to go with this figure. The “Maidens of Might” variants gave you different heads, capes, and weapons and the “Avenging Allies” variants gave you the two different sets of arms. The obvious choice is, why can’t I have both? Well, if you’re welling to do a little boiling and popping, you could probably have your Asgardian cake and eat it too, but without applying some heat, it’s pretty tough to get those arms out once they’re in. I’m mainly only interested in Odin here so that’s the route I’m going. Of course, there’s no packaged shot, but let’s take a look at the pieces instead.
If you’ve completed the wave then you have all eight pieces needed for the build. That’s a head, a torso, two arms, two legs, a cape, and a staff. Everything locks together beautifully and the resulting figure is as solid as any of the individually boxed releases. Most of the time I tend to associate BAFs with larger figures that wouldn’t have been cost effective as a single release, but in this case Odin would have had no problems fitting into a Marvel Legends box. Then again with past precedents like Rocket Raccoon and Hit Monkey, Hasbro has certainly been redefining what it is to be a BAF and these days it isn’t just all about size anymore.
This is possibly my favorite look for The Allfather to date. It’s a nice cross between comic book style with some groundings in gritty historical garb. The plate armor that makes up the torso, shoulders and lower legs is just gorgeous. Not only is it sculpted with all sorts of different plates and rivets, but also with scrapes and weathering. The paintwork here is also quite amazing and creates a convincing patina that makes it look like genuinely well used armor. It’s hard to believe that this is the same company behind some of the shoddy or non-existant paintwork we’ve been seeing in the Transformers line, although I concede that it’s been getting better. In addition to the armor plate, you get a soft plastic “leather” skirt with a detailed belt, wraps for the wrists and a blue cape that pegs into the back. The shoulder pieces peg in pretty securely while still offering the luxury of detaching rather than breaking if you put too much stress on them.
And then you have this wonderful head sculpt. Odin oozes personality with the tip of his grey beard gathered into a… what is that, a beard pony tail? Honestly, I have no idea about the proper terminology here, but it looks great. The winged helmet is cast in a somewhat dull goldish plastic with two mighty ram horns coming off the sides. Odin sports a fierce expression with one eye patched and the other narrowed on his foe. Brilliant!
Despite being a BAF, the articulation here is more or less in line with what I’ve come to expect from the current Legends line. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, as well as swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, and double hinged at the knees. There are swivels in the thighs and the ankles feature hinges and lateral rockers. The is a ball joint in the torso and another in the neck. I expected the costume to impede articulation a lot more than it does. The slits in the “skirt” actually allow for a decent amount of leg movement and if you cast off the cape, you can get more in the shoulders.
Of course, Odin wouldn’t be complete without his kingly staff and one included certainly fits the bill. It’s a great sculpt, although I can’t deny I would have liked some more paint apps on it. Maybe they blew the budget on that beautiful armor.
If you decide to go for King Thor Odinson, you get all the great work that went into the body with just a few changes. The Thor head is excellent, albeit not as elaborate as Odin’s. You also get the artificial left arm with the right one being identical to the one used for Odin. Finally, the cape is the same sculpt only red in keeping with Thor’s traditional color of garb, and instead of the staff you get his Axe. The Axe is probably the only thing I would consider disappointing here. It looks too scrawny to me. It’s definitely going into the Masters of the Universe armory.
There’s no better way to wrap up a fantastic wave of figures then by following it with a fantastic BAF and Odin is certainly that. He was a great choice of character and I think they did an absolutely… dare I say it? Marvelous job on him. He also means a little something special to me as I still kick myself every once and a while for not picking up the Hot Toys Odin when he was first released, but at the time Hot Toys were just something I admired from afar. Obviously, that version of Odin is a whole nother beast entirely, but it’s still nice to fill that Odin shaped hole in my collection, even if it is in a different scale.
FigureFan Zero 