Tag Archives: galactus

Oct 31 2022

Marvel Legends (HasLab): Heralds of Galactus by Hasbro

It’s Halloween afternoon, and I had hoped to have some special spooky content for today, but that figure in question did not arrive in time, and so we’ll have to raincheck him until later in the week. Instead, we’ll press on with Marvel Monday but still look at something special by tackling the three Heralds of Galactus that came with the HasLab Galactus release! I mean, this set was scary expensive, so that’s sort of in the Halloween spirit. I showed a brief look at Silver Surfer, Frankie Raye, and Morg when I did the unboxing and first impressions last week, and I’ve since had a little time to play around with them. I suppose you can consider this Part I of the overall Galactus Review, because I’m shooting on getting a better look at the Big Guy for next week’s Marvel Monday!

In case you missed it last time, here’s a look at the box, and how the regular sized figures come inside it. They are each resting on a very large clear plastic tray with their accessories and extra bits beside them. Given the cost of this set, a big part of me wishes Hasbro had actually given them individual boxes, but that would have probably made the box even bigger, so I’ll let that slide. Let’s just start from the top and work our way down!

The Silver Surfer was previously released in Marvel Legends as a Walgreens Exclusive. It was a figure that I never did find in the stores, and one that goes for all the monies now. Since I don’t own it, I can’t make a direct comparison, but based on pictures, this one appears to use the same body but has a new head sculpt. And yeah, that kind of makes this bundled figure feel a little less special. Granted, how could they not include him in the box? Even Masterworks Galactus came with a 3 3/4-inch Silver Surfer! Obviously there’s not a whole lot to talk about here, as he’s a generic buck painted all in silver. Ah, but what a beautiful coat of silver he is! The paint on this guy really feels premium and looks great. I also appreciate that they used the extra-articulated body with the lateral crunches in the shoulders.

The new head sculpt looks good, but I do not think it looks as good as the pictures I’ve seen of the Walgreens release. The expression here looks a little more dour, and whether that’s good or not is down to just personal preference, but I think the definition in the face is a lot softer on this version. I would have really liked to get that other head in the box as well.

You get the exact same three sets of hands with this figure as came with the Walgreens release. That includes fists, flat karate chop hands, and splayed fingers that look good for flinging the cosmic powers, or just balancing on his board. Honestly, I don’t think the flat, closed finger hands are necessary. I do, however, really like the effect part he comes with. The purple plastic looks really nice. Of course, it’s something else that we’ve seen before. Many, many times before.

The board is simple and effective. It has a single peg, which holds the figure fairly well. You also get an effect part that doubles as a stand. This piece grips the board snugly and can be stood on its own, or attached to Galactus’ left hand, which we’ll see next week. I like this figure a lot, but it’ll still just be a consolation prize for me not getting the Walgreens release. Maybe someone who has both can tell me otherwise, but I think this is the inferior of the two, albeit still being a decent figure. Moving on to Frankie Raye…

The Human Torch! Nova! Frankie is a most welcome addition to the Marvel Legends line up… so much so that it might have been a bit unfair of Hasbro to lock her away behind this paywall. Like Silver Surfer, Raye gets by with a single colored buck, this time a brilliant gold and it looks marvelous! The body doesn’t feature the same level of muscular detail as Surfer, but it still looks great, and I was very happy to see the double-hinges in the elbows and swivels in the biceps, as opposed to just putting rotating hinges in the elbows.

I absolutely love the head sculpt here, especially the amazing flaming coif, which spreads out behind her. The translucent mix of orange and red plastic really catches the light well, and makes for quite the spectacle.

You get three sets of hands with Frankie, and these include splayed finger hands, fists, and accessory holding hands. And, yes, the accessory holding hands feel unnecessary, since she doesn’t come with anything to hold.

Like surfer, Raye comes with an effect-stand, which is designed to fit into Galactus’ hand, but it also serves as a pretty good base all on its own. There’s a sculpted footprint and peg inside this geyser of plastic flame, to keep her attached with the flames snaking around one of her legs. I love it! OK… Let’s wrap this up with Morg!

Morg The Executioner has the most original sculpting of the three and as such it’s probably no coincidence that he comes with the least extras, and that means no effect parts and no extra hands. You can easily see the give and take with each figure when it comes to cost to produce. The sculpting here, however, is superb. I love the way they sculpted his craggy red flesh, and the spikes protruding from his shoulders and the biceps. His armor is also awesome, with the sleek and organic curves of his wrist bracers and knee guards, which flare out beautifully. The segmented, spiked leg armor looks pretty bitchin too! This is an epic looking figure!

The portrait is excellent! Just look at that fiendish, toothy grin and beady read eyes! But easily my favorite thing here is the way they sculpted his long, flowing white hair.

It’s somewhat ironic that Morg doesn’t come with any extra hands, because Hasbro couldn’t even get the two he does come with right. MY MORG HAS TWO RIGHT HANDS!!! Yeah, you’d think for how much this little package costs, the highly paid toyologists at Hasbro Labs could get a simple left and right hand correct. Hell, I have over 300 Marvel Legends in my collection and not one of them came with two of the same hand. Very disappointing!

Morg does, however, come with his trusty ax, and it’s OK, but nothing special. I do try to keep him away from Nova when he’s holding it. And I suppose since he does have two right hands, that makes him ambidextrous.

And that’s the three Heralds of Galactus. They’re all fine figures, even double-righty Morg is still plenty cool. I stand by what I said about Silver Surfer probably being the lesser of the two when it comes to the Walgreen’s Exclusive release. But seeing as I don’t have that one, I’m happy to have this one in the collection. In the end, I’m going to give Frankie the nod as my favorite of the three. I’m going to do my darndest to get a proper review of Galactus together for the next Marvel Monday and we can look at all these figures together!

Oct 26 2022

Opening HasLab Galactus!

If you follow me on Twitter, than you may be aware of what a harrowing three days it was to get HasLab Galactus home. He was supposed to be delivered last Saturday and since there was a signature required, I hung out all morning and all afternoon waiting, only to find that Fed Ex didn’t bother knocking or ringing the bell, but rather just stuck a Sorry We Missed You note on the door some time around 2pm. Now, that driver must have been a goddam ninja, because I was walking past the front door in anticipation probably five times an hour, and my front door is mostly glass. And there’s no way he could have pulled that off dragging the huge ass Galactus box to the door, so I suspect he just left it on the truck. I grant you 100 points for stealth, Fed Ex Man, and take back 1,000 points for DO YOUR JOB YOU LAZY F*CK!!! Since I wasn’t going to be home the next day to sign, I diverted it to a local hold location where it was supposed to be delivered by end of day. Two days later, I was able to pick it up. And thankfully it just about fit in my backseat. Anyway, here’s the giant box!

The HasLab Campaign ended in August of 2021, so it’s been a little over a year of waiting, which all things considered wasn’t too bad at all. I’m shooting today’s content in my office, guerilla style, because I have no proper staging area that will fit this behemoth and no way to properly light it either. Eventually I hope to fix up a work around for that, but until then, this isn’t really a proper review, but more of an unboxing and first impressions. I do really like how the box turned out. The artwork is both colorful and beautiful. I especially like the mural on the back panel. The front panel not only shows Galactus but also Silver Surfer, Morg, and Frankie Raye. It really feels like we’ve been building toward this, given that the very first wave of modern Marvel Legends featured Terrax as a Build-A-Figure!

Open the box and out comes a giant slab of styrofoam! The big guy slumbers under tissue paper covers, which are wrapped at the bottom to make two adorable booties! Also visible on this side are his two alternate face plates and the full-on Doctor Doom alternate head. The blades of his headpiece are positioned to the right, as are the three Heralds, each with some accessories. The only assembly required is to attach the blades on his head, and sadly it feels like they aren’t meant to come out again, so while the package is collector friendly, Galactus probably isn’t going back into his styrofoam bed again.

You get one slip of instructions, and that’s just to show you how to install the batteries. Yup, $400 and batteries aren’t included. Sons of bitches! I don’t have a fresh set, so I’ll have to pick some up to test out the electronics.

And here he is perched on his very own table! Aesthetically, the body strikes me as being very similar to the Masterworks Galactus and I’ll do some comparison shots when I do a proper review. I’m very pleased with the overall detail and heft of this beast. I also appreciate how heavy his feet are, giving him a nice low center of gravity and making him feel sturdy and balanced. I did not opt in for the Haslab Sentinel, but as I understand it, that figure had some loose legs, which seems to have been corrected here with some decent ratchets.

The head sculpt is phenomenal, with the stock face plate being appropriately dour. He definitely looks hangry. The face plate is soft and rubbery, so you can easily swap it out without having to dismantle any part of the head.

The other two plates include skull face and exposed teeth. These are both pretty terrifying. I’ll likely swap these out for display every couple of weeks or so, but right now I’m leaning with the snarling teeth as my default. I neglected to snap the Doom head, but I’ll leave that for the proper review.

The fingers are all fully articulated, so Galactus is capable of balling up his hands in fists as well as making all sorts of unsavory gestures. I’ve only just started to explore the rest of the articulation and he’s got some great range of motion in the arms. I’m interested to see whether he’ll be able to hold any kind of action poses from the waist down.

Silver Surfer has an effect part which allows him to perch on Galactus’ hand and this is incredibly well designed. The board slides into the top and the bottom is contoured to snugly fit around the open hand. I’ll confess, I am considering displaying him with my 3 3/4-inch Marvel Universe Silver Surfer to give the big guy an even more impressive scale by comparison, but this works so well, I may have to go with this for the regular display.

Frankie also has an effect part that works with Galactus’ hand, this time the right. This piece is a little less intuitive than the other, so I’ll need to experiment with it some more.

And Morg doesn’t get any effect part, but he does get his axe.

By all respects it looks like Hasbro really knocked it out of the park with Galactus. Even the wait didn’t seem that long. This is only my second experience with HasLab, the first being the Razor Crest, but I’m very pleased with the whole experience. Well, not the Fed Ex part, but that’s not Hasbro’s fault. I’ll have to pick up some batteries to power him up and check out the electronics. As of now, I’m planning to check out the three Heralds this coming Monday, and maybe by the following Monday I can get something rigged up to do some better pictures of the Big Boi and give him his due.

Mar 4 2012

Marvel Legends: Build-A-Figure: Terrax

Sometimes I have to swallow some pretty bad figures in order to build a Collect & Connect, Build-A-Figure, or whatever you want to call these things. Hell, just look at the unspeakable depravities I had to purchase to complete my Hall of Justice. [Oh yes! Its finally complete. But more on that next week! -FF] But I’m happy to say that I didn’t make out too badly on the road to completing Terrax. His parts were spread out over six figures in Marvel Legends first wave of seven figures. As we’ve seen not all of them gems, but the great definitely outweighed the mediocre. So let’s see what we got…

If you’ve ever assembled a C&C figure from DC Universe Classics, you’ll be right at home snapping together Terrax. The head and pelvis plug into the torso and the arms and legs plug into that. The only thing that’s a little more complex here is attaching the soft rubber pieces of his garment together, which plugs in by the front belt buckle. His socket joints are nice and solid and he holds together great. In terms of size, he’s not one of the biggest BAFs/C&Cs we’ve seen, but he’s not small either. He easily stands shoulder to shoulder with C&C Darkseid from DCUC.
The sculpt here is pretty solid, with a lot of original sculpting and extra bits. The soft plastic chest armor and skirt are worn on top of Terrax’s body, which gives the figure some cool extra depth and complexity. His gauntlets and boots feature unique sculpting and the buck has good sculpted muscles.

Of course, the head sculpt is where a lot of the figure’s character lies. If there’s one common theme to the new Marvel Legends figures, it would be the excellent head sculpts, and Terrax is no exception. Its wonderfully detailed and he looks royally pissed.
Terrax’s articulation is pretty consistant with what I’ve come to expect from the line. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders and hips. The arms feature swivels in the biceps, hinges in the elbows, and the wrists have hinges and swivels. The legs feature double-hinged knees and the ankles have hinges and swivels. The torso swivels at the waist and features an ab crunch hinge. Thanks to the softer separate armor, he can still work his chest articulation pretty well.

Terrax also comes with Morg’s axe, which is as tall as most of the packaged figures in the line and actually comes in two pieces by itself. He can hold it in his right hand.
I can’t say as Terrax was top of my list for possible Build-A-Figures, nonetheless, when I heard it was going to be him, my reaction was, “ok, that’s cool.” When I actually saw him I was more excited, and now that I have him in hand, I’m pretty damn satisfied with him. He’s a great looking figure that really captures the spirit of the character and makes for a mighty nice treat for completing my collection of this assortment.

Marvel Legends: Epilogue:

And that wraps up the first wave of the new Marvel Legends. If Marvel figures aren’t your thing, than I appreciate your patience and indulgence. Its been a fun ride, and there’s no doubt that Hasbro put up a good showing with this initial assortment.

In the end, there were only two figures here that I wouldn’t outright recommend and those were Iron Man and Klaw. Besides his scale issues, Iron Man just paled in comparison to the other figures in this line and frankly should have had more attention paid to sculpt and paintwork. Klaw just looked too inconsistant with his cartoony paintjob. Neither of those figures are terrible, but considering the price tag, they just aren’t worth the money.

But let’s not go out on a negative bent because all the other figures were at the worst very solid and worthwhile efforts, and at the best superb. Wave 2 is already starting to turn up at retail and I’ve already got it pre-ordered, because I’m really excited to build my Arnim Zola figure.
Feb 3 2012

Marvel Universe: Masterwork Galactus Figure by Hasbro

It’s taken me a long time to finally get my hands on this figure. I shyed away from ordering it online because it was so friggin expensive to ship. I had it in my hands at Toys R Us a whole bunch of times, but I always opted to pick up four or five figures that I needed over this one, single beauty. And then, naturally, when I was finally ready to buy him, he was gone. I hunted him at three TRUs and he had already been replaced by The Sentinal figures and he was starting to go for a premium online. Thankfully, an online retailer that I’ve done business with a bunch of times was able to set me up with one at the original retail price and didn’t beat me up on shipping too badly either.

So the other day the postman dropped him off outside my door and when I went to retrieve him I was pretty taken back by the sheer weight of the package. Yeah, like I said, I had him in my hands at the store a couple of times and still every time I pick him up I’m impressed by the heft on this figure. He was shipped to me in the original Hasbro casepack, which holds two, which means it must have required super strength just to get it from the stockroom to the shelves. Yeah, I’m exaggerating a bit, but it is a weighty figure. In a perfect world, dealers selling this toy would have to mail you the Silver Surfer figure a few days ahead of time so that he could herald the coming of Galactus to your home. But, alas, no.
The packaging is a thing of beauty. It’s a massive slab of a box littered with gorgeous Marvel artwork. Lift up the flap and you can see Galactus and the tiny, by comparison, Silver Surfer in all their splendor. Naturally, there’s a “Try Me” hole so you can hear the mighty Galactus threaten and taunt you without even having to take him out of the package. Honestly, the speakers are mostly located on the back of the toy, so he does sound rather muffled when he’s still boxed up, so let’s get this sum’bitch out and witness him in all his glory. The box is very collector friendly and you can slide the whole tray right out of the package. A bunch of twisty-tie untying later and I had a figure that is not big enough to devour worlds, but big enough to send FigureFeline running for his goddamn life. Seriously, he was terrified of this thing for a while and then was just content to nest in the tray that I discarded on the floor.
Let’s get the Silver Surfer out of the way first. He’s a great figure, but let’s face it, by definition there isn’t much to him. He features a pretty standard and early version of the MU buck painted with a nice, shiny silver. There are some black paint apps around his eyes, but that’s about it. I actually picked up this figure carded a while back but opted to leave him in package because I knew one day I would have a loose one when I bought his oversized cosmic master. The surfboard isn’t the same shade of silver, but rather more like a matte grey. It has two pegs for Norrin to stand on, which brings us to Surfer’s articulation…
Norrin sports the older degree of articulation from the MU line. He has ball joints in the neck, shoulders and hips, double hinges in the knees, hinges in the elbows and ankles, and swivels in the biceps and forearms. He also sports that ball joint in the torso. The problem is that his lack of swivels in the legs and rocker hinges in the ankles makes it a little tough to get him to peg onto the board with both feet. Peg one foot in and the other one wants to pop out. You can still get him on some nice poses with the board, but he always seems just a bit too precariously balanced.
As for Galactus… holy shit. To place him in proper scale, your average MU figure comes up just to the top of his boot. But besides being a whopping 19-inches tall and weighing a ton, he features a really amazing sculpt, particularly in his bucket of a head. The helmet is magnificent with translucent bits that show off the light up features nicely. The small portion of his exposed face is also beautifully sculpted with an appropriately smug impression. I particularly love the detail work on all the bits coming off his helmet around his chin and the sides of his face. Stunning! The rest of the body is packed with little striping or interlacing bands that give the figure a lot of depth, and the chestpiece and skirt are both sculpted separately in softer plastic. All the details on the figure are sculpted in, rather than rely solely on the paintwork as Hasbro often does with the regular MU figures.
Of course, Galactus is an electronic figure. Press the central disc on his chest and his eys light up, as do all the clear bits on his helmet, and he speaks one of his 10 phrases, which include….
  • You serve me now!
  • Who is so ignorant as to confront Galactus?
  • You will witness the end, for I am power incarnate!
  • Behold! The world eating machine!
  • I hunger!
  • Know me mortal. Know me and know fear!
  • So speaks Galactus!
  • Who dares defy Galactus?
  • I am the devourer of worlds!
  • Tremble at the might of The Power Cosmic!
Sometimes electronic features can hinder a figure, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Galactus speaks a nice smattering of phrases and the voicework is particularly well done. Bravo, Hasbro!
Ah, but Galactus may be a brick in size and weight, but not in articulation. In fact, he actually has better articulation than Silver Surfer and many of the older MU figures. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, wrists, and hips, double hinges in the elbows and knees, hinged ankles, and swivels in the biceps and forearms. What’s more the joints are all nice and strong to support his bulk and allow him to retain the poses you put him in.
It takes balls to put out a toy at mass retail and refer to it as a “Masterwork Figure.” You’re setting expectations pretty high, and yet I really think Hasbro stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park with this one. I’m sure few Marvel collectors ever expected a better Galactus figure than the Marvel Legends Build-A-Figure, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Hasbro delivered it here. The sculpt, the coloring, and the sheer size do this magnificently terrifying character justice. Now granted, he set me back $70 when you factor in shipping, and I still think he was well worth it, but if you happened to not hesitate like me and got him at retail at more like $50-60 than I think you really got a deal. Galactus is an awesome figure and a great centerpiece to any Marvel Universe collection.