Poor Janet Van Dyne, it’s not enough that she gets slapped around by her husband, but she hasn’t been getting a lot of love from Hasbro either. I remember how pissed off I was that neither she nor Hank Pym were going to be in The Avengers film. Outrageous! How can you omit the two founding members? Of course, after basking in how awesome the movie turned out, I quickly forgot my haughty principles and shut the hell up. Wasp sort of got her due in the Avengers Assemble cartoon (it was a great portrayal), but then that got shit-canned. And now Ant-Man is getting a movie (assuming the production stops imploding) and she’s still left in the dust. Well, at least now she’s finally been represented in the action figure aisle, possibly for the first time since that Legends MODOK wave from the Toy Biz days. Unless, of course, you count the tiny wasp that came in the Secret Wars comic pack.

Here we see Wasp comes in the drab and joyless Marvel Infinite packaging. Blah. These cards are an opener’s dream come true because they’re so ugly I actually want to shred them to pieces to get the toy out.

This figure features Wasp in her most recent comic look and at 3 ¾” scale if you want to imagine she’s shrunk down, you can even consider this a 1:1 scale figure. Neat! Just like we saw last time with Ant-Man, Wasp makes use of a pretty standard buck and uses paint apps to make up her costume. She’s cast in black plastic and there’s a little bit of gold paint used for the deco on her torso and the soles of her boots. The gold looks nice next to the matte black of the rest of the costume. There’s some uneven application of the paint on her chest, but the rest of the deco is sharp and overall it still looks pretty good.

Of course, the other aspect of Wasp’s costume is her wings and I absolutely love the way Hasbro handled these. They actually come detached from the figure and make use of hinged pegs that fit snugly right into her back. Between rotating the pegs and working the hinges, you can get a pretty good range of poses out of them. The wings themselves are cast in a clear yellowish green plastic, which look great.

The portrait on this figure is among one of my favorite Marvel Universe headsculpts that Hasbro has turned out so far. It’s clearly defined and attractive with some very sharp paintwork on the eyes and lips. What really makes it work is the wonderful pixie-style hair sculpt. One look and there’s no mistaking it… that’s Janet! As Wasp uses one of the more modern female bucks, the figure delivers a good degree of articulation. The shoulders and elbows are pegged and hinges and the wrists have swivels. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, double-hinged at the knees and feature swivels in the thighs and lower legs. The ankles are hinged and have lateral rockers. There’s a ball joint just under her chest and the neck features both a hinge and a ball joint.

As with Ant-Man, Wasp comes with a tiny static version of herself. It’s pre-posed in flight with some basic paint apps and translucent wing parts. This piece is a tad bigger than the tiny Ant-Man and I’ve actually managed to not lose it. I dig that Hasbro includes these bonus items, but I really have no use for it and I can’t even think of a decent way to display it.

I’ve been waiting for Wasp to get her due in action figure form for a while now and I’m so happy to finally get her. This is a great little figure and it’d be really cool if we could see a repaint in her classic red and blue costume, which happens to be my favorite. I wish there were some way Hasbro could have worked a simple flight stand into the deal, but I can see where that would have been cost prohibitive. Still, I have to say, crappy package design aside, Marvel Infinites has been impressing me a lot so far, and I’ve only just started opening these!

I love Hank Pym. He’s one of those wonderfully flawed and ultimately very “human” characters that are oftentimes scarce in mainstream comic books. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to love him, but I think that’s what makes him such an interesting character. Anyway, the sad truth is that up until now I had absolutely no representation of his Ant-Man persona in my collection. But now, thanks to the new Marvel Infinite Series, I finally have me an Ant-Man figure. And thanks to the wonders of Pym Particles, he’s a figure that can fit in with my Universe, Legends, and hell even my Hot Toys Marvel figures.

There’s the packaging and I’m still not a fan. There’s no craft of presentation here. All this does is protect the figure and allow you to get a good look at what you’re buying. As far as I’m concerned Hasbro might as well dropped it into a Ziploc bag and wrote Ant-Man on it. Blah!

Ant-Man makes use of the same slender buck that Hasbro used for their previous Hank Pym figure, Yellowjacket. This is also one of those figures that rely almost entirely on paint apps for the costume details. In this case, you get his red costume with blue and black deco and there’s an effective use shading to give the outfit a little more depth. Yes, from the neck down Ant-Man is an extremely simple figure, but in the case of this character it certainly works. Articulation consists of ball joints in the neck, chest, shoulders, hips, and ankles. The arms feature hinged elbows and swivels in the biceps. The legs have double hinged knees and swivels in the thighs.

The head sculpt is where it’s all at. I’ve always the design of Ant-Man’s helmet and Hasbro did a nice job reproducing it here for the 3 ¾” scale. The front part of the mask is actually sculpted separately and permanently attached to the helmet. Having it separate from the face gives the portrait a lot of depth and credibility and I’m surprised to see something like that done in this scale. Even the deep set eyes are clearly defined and look great. Critics may take note of the lack of antennae. I don’t think that was an oversight, but rather just a concession that it would have been impractical to do them, make them look right and have them not break off.

Ant-Man comes with one accessory… himself! Yes, it’s a tiny little PCV version of himself, which features some remarkably good sculpting and paintwork for such a teeny little piece. I thought this was going to be the same pack-in that was included with the Marvel Universe Yellowjacket figure, but it’s actually brand new. It’s also something that I lost almost immediately after opening him up. It must have dropped onto the floor during the photo shoot and in my house anything that small that drops onto the floor instantly becomes the posession of the cat. Poor tiny Ant-Man no doubt currently resides in the kitty’s personal cave of trophies that is also sometimes known as “under the sofa.” Perhaps the little guy will find some ants under there to help him escape.

Ant-Man is one of those characters that was mighty high on my list for the Marvel Universe line and it’s good to see him finally getting the spotlight in the Infinite Series, especially when his film seems to be languishing in developmental purgatory. Speaking of which, it’s kind of odd to me that Hasbro went with Pym over Scott Lang, since it is the latter that will be taking on the mantle of Ant-Man in the movie, but I’m glad they did because finding out that Hank Pym wasn’t going to be the focus of the Ant-Man film really knocked it down a couple notches for me. Either way, as simple as this figure is, Hasbro did a fine job on him and it’s great to have him in my collection. Next time I revisit the Infinite Series we’ll check out Wasp!