Well, it took me long enough, but I’m finally getting to the last figure in the Marvel Legends GotG Wave: Nova. Wait, didn’t I already look at this figure? Oh, right that was the Marvel Universe version. Yes, I continue to find it odd just how many characters Hasbro is releasing in both the 6-inch and 3 ¾-inch formats and how close together these releases are. It’s possible to wander down a toy aisle right now and find a Marvel Universe Red She-Hulk hanging next to a Legends She-Hulk on Clearance. At the same time, you could probably find a Marvel Universe Nova on clearance beside this Legends version. It’s been going on ever since Marvel Legends came back and I think it’s a bit weird, but that doesn’t stop me from buying the same character in both formats. As I start moving into featuring the Marvel Infinite figures we’ll see a lot more of this curious phenomenon.

Here’s the packaging and we’ve seen it enough times now to give it a quick look and move on. With no accessories apart from one of Groot’s spindly limbs, the package looks a little light inside, but we’ll try not to hold it against him. Nova’s been getting a lot of attention lately and I think that’s a good thing. Will Richard Rider actually appear in the GotG movie? Well the rumor that Nathon Fillion is playing him has been quashed, so the answer to that question remains to be seen. At this point it’s probably safe to chalk this figure up as a comic tie-in much like the Iron Man figure we looked at last time, although it’s not the current Marvel NOW! look of the character and it’s also not what the Nova Corps will be wearing in the movie.

Laying aside the context of the outfit, I think this Nova is a really great looking figure. The design of the suit is identical to the one featured in the Marvel Universe version, however, Hasbro makes use of every advantage of the larger scale. The biggest improvement is in the gold armor bits. The spires on his legs and arms aren’t all floppy like on the smaller figure and that’s a huge plus. Hasbro also went all out and put the shoulder armor on hinged arms so that it doesn’t interfere with the arm articulation. It’s the same concept they tried with the GotG Iron Man figure, only it works much better here and they don’t pop off when posing him.

The sculpt here is pretty involved and features all sorts of panel lining on the suit itself, particularly in the torso. Everything that’s painted is also part of the actual sculpt and that always goes a long way to add to the figure’s credibility. The head features a very pronounced starburst stuck on to the front, which looks good, and I can’t help but get a strong Judge Dredd vibe from the exposed portion of Rider’s face.

The coloring on this figure is quite striking. The combination of sparkly blue plastic used for the bulk of the costume and the metallic gold on the armor is extremely effective. I’m not quite as keen on the bare gold plastic used for the belt and the helmet. I think they should have been painted to match the rest of the armor, but I can live with the difference.

Nova sports most of the articulation that I’ve come to expect and love in this line. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, double hinged at the elbows, hinged at the wrists, and there are swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, double hinged at the knees, and have swivels in the thighs. The ankles feature both hinges and lateral rockers. The torso can swivel at the waist and has a ratcheting ab-crunch, and the neck is both ball jointed and hinged. All the joints on this figure feel good and he’s lots of fun to pose.

Nova is a very welcome addition to my Legends shelf. The only really bad thing about him is that he exposes all the problems with his smaller Universe version. But unlike the Iron Man figure, I would have still happily picked up Nova even if he didn’t come with a part that I needed to build Groot. Overall, I’d say this was my favorite wave of Legends in a while, but I think that has more to do with how excited I am for the movie. Like the Winter Soldier wave, it still had its ups and downs, and I’m still hoping in vain that we might get a second wave with Nebula and Ronin and a movie version Nova Corps. I’m tempted to say they could have given us those characters with swap out variants, but then I’m still hunting for an AIM and Hydra soldier at a good price. That whole variant concept has done more harm than good and I’d like to see the end of it. Anyway, now that I’m pretty much caught up on my Legends, I’m going to start digging into the new Marvel Universe Infinite line, and I’ll start doing that at the end of the week!

As promised, and in an attempt to get through the Wave before the damn movie gets here, I’m bookending this week with another GotG figure from Marvel Legends. This time we’re checking out that gorgeous green babe, Gamora, The deadliest woman in the whole galaxy! Can I take this time to mention how epic the Angela and Gamora brawl was in the Guardians comic? Holy shit, I was squeeing like a little kid during every panel! Oh, right… this figure is from the movie. Can I take this time to mention how epic every trailer of this movie looks? Holy shit, I was squeeing like a little kid during every second! So far this wave of figures has been nothing short of amazing… let’s see if Gamora can keep it going.

Hey, it’s the packaging! Hey, we’ve seen this before! With her rather slight build and only one accessory, Gamora doesn’t fill out her tray as well as Star-Lord or Drax did. The giant tree truck that constitutes the Groot BAF part, however, does help her along.

And here we have what is the first speed bump along the road. Gamora has a few notable flubs going for her right out of the package. For starters, there’s some high profile paint slop going on right inside her cleavage. Not that I was looking or anything, but yeah it’s rather noticeable. Normally I wouldn’t lead off with a single paint issue, but the other figures were so immaculate, I found it to be surprising. I’m happy to report the rest of the figure’s paintwork seems quite clean and precise, so maybe I just got bad luck in the chesticles department. As long as we’re leading off with paint, there are indeed some nice touches on this figure, including the metallic blue that mingles with the black of her outfit. I also like the transition of color in her hair and the green they used for her skin tone.

The next hiccup here is the portrait. It’s not a bad head sculpt in and of itself, but the likeness to Zoe Saldana just isn’t there for me. I think most of the issue lay in the eyes, which appear as if the sculptor was going for more of an Asian look. It doesn’t ruin the figure for me and normally, I would let it go, but again the first two figures that I opened in this wave set a really high standard.

The rest of Gamora strikes me as quite good, but just not exceptional. There’s a lot of detail in her outfit, particularly all the sculpted straps and buckles on her leggings, but none of them have any paint hits to really make them stand out. The texturing for the mesh of her shirt is well done and I do like the sculpting on her wrist and hand wraps. Gamora also has a separate belt that hangs loose on her hips.

As is sometimes the case with Marvel Legends women, the articulation on Gamora also takes a bit of a hit. The arms feature ball jointed shoulders and both hinges and swivels in the wrists, ball joints in the elbows, and no bicep swivels. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, but the sculpt prevents a lot of lateral movement. She has swivels in her thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and both hinges and swivels in the ankles. There’s a ball joint in her torso and again in her neck. Considering some of the crazy acrobatics I expect to see Gamora doing in the movie, the figure’s articulation could have used a few more points. I’ll also mention that the top hinge on my figue’s right leg is splayed out making the joint rather loose.

Gamora comes with one accessory, a very thin sword. It’s easily the weakest accessory of the wave so far, although there is some detail work in the design. She can hold it pretty well in either hand, and while I’m not sure it’s intentional, you can clip the sword onto her belt for storage.

This third outing for the Guardians of the Galaxy Legends wave is by no means a bad figure, but it doesn’t hold to the high pedigree of the first two releases that I looked at. Had I opened Gamora first, I might not have been as hard on her, but even with a few issues, I’m still glad to have her on my shelf to complete the team. And speaking of completing the team, usually I hold off looking at the Build-A-Figure until I’ve covered the entire wave, but next week I’m going to break tradition and look at both Rocket and Groot in the same feature. That way I can complete the core team and I’ll get to checking out Nova and Iron Man sometime in the following weeks.

Happy Monday, Toyhounds. Things got a little derailed last week, so I’m trying to get back on track and actually looking at what’s landed on my doorstep over the last few weeks. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since I looked at Star-Lord and I do believe a return to the Marvel Legends Guardians of the Galaxy figures is long overdue. Today we’re looking at Drax the Destroyer!

As expected, Drax comes in a compact window box that can also hang on the pegs. Have I noted yet how odd I think it is that the flaps on these boxes are never taped? Well, they’re not. It must make it a lot easier for toy brigands to steel figures, BAF parts, and accessories. Drax doesn’t come with nearly as many extras as Star-Lord did, but his big bulk and the Groot BAF part fill up that tray quite nicely. I’ve got a pretty good idea from the trailers how the movie is going to treat most of the characters, but Drax is still a bit of a mystery to me. I’m really excited and curious to see how they’re going to handle him.

And there’s Drax in all his movie glory. Yes, this is actually the second time we’ve seen Drax in the modern Marvel Legends line, but this is the first time we’re getting the character as part of a complete team. The first thing I need to point out on this guy is that all of his tattoos are actually part of the sculpt, and I think that is amazing. It would have been so easy for Hasbro to reuse the old Drax body and paint him up, but they are clearly going all out for this wave. The pattern that covers his torso and extends to his arms and face is crazy complex and the combination of sculpt and paint make what could have been a pretty ordinary figure into a stand out deco. The pants feature a ton of sculpted detail as well and the boots are fantastic and even feature functional sheathes for his knives.

The portrait here has a passing resemblance to wrestler Dave Bautista in the Drax makeup. Either way, it’s definitely a well fleshed out sculpt with impressive definition to the facial features and more of those awesome tats.

Drax’s articulation is pretty much perfect for this line. The arms are ball jointed in the shoulders, double-hinged at the elbows, have swivels in the biceps and swivels and hinges in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, double-hinged at the knees, have swivels in the thighs, and the ankles have both hinges and rockers. Drax can swivel at the waist, he has an ab crunch hinge in the torso and the head has both a hinge and a ball joint. On the downside, my Drax’s right elbow was stuck and I had to do some boiling. The hinge on the forearm gave it up pretty easily, but I’m still working on the hinge in the bicep.

In addition to the Groot BAF part, Drax comes with his two trusty daggers and these are very cool pieces. They’re each cast in simple silver plastic with no other paint operations, but they do have ornately sculpted handles and some decorations etched into the blades.

When Hasbro suggested that the Infinite Series of Marvel Legends would be more of a premium line of figures, I sure had my doubts. I think we saw glimmers of that coming to light in the Winter Soldier Wave and not so much in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 Wave. But here, in the Guardians of the Galaxy Wave, I think it’s on full display. Drax offered Hasbro many opportunities to cheap out, but they rose to the occasion and delivered a truly excellent figure. Just because of the simple nature of the character design, I thought it would be difficult to make a Drax figure that matched Star-Lord, but they stepped up. Stuck joints aside, Drax is a fantastic addition to this wave, and I’m all the more excited to keep opening these figures and assembling the team on my shelf. I’ll swing back to this series again on Friday with a look at Gamora.

To say I’m excited about the Guardians of the Galaxy movie would be a galactic understatement. After two amazing trailers and a lot of time spent re-reading the comics, I am seriously pumped for this movie. I was also really excited about the associated Marvel Legends wave, so much so that I picked up the case as soon as it went up for sale at Hasbrotoyshop. Sure, it meant getting a couple of doubles (the case has two Star-Lord and two Iron Man figures), but it worked out to only be about twenty bucks more than the single figure assortment at that other retailer. Either way, it also meant that I could instantly assemble the BAF Groot instead of worrying about hunting down one last figure like I had to do with the SHIELD Mandroid. I thought about covering this whole shebang in one week, but since I’m just coming off a theme week, I decided to parse them out to a couple figures a week. Let’s go right for the intended star of the movie… Peter Quill: Star-Lord!

The packaging here is right in line with the Legends Infinite Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Winter Soldier waves. The main difference is that this assortment pulls a lot more heavily from the movie whereas the others populated with comic characters at the expense of film-based figures. Seriously, Hasbro, no movie version of Falcon? Why would you do that? Anyway, I don’t have much new to say about the packaging other than I still dig the look of these window boxes and the fact that it’s totally collector friendly. I’ll also point out that Hasbro really packed a lot of shit into this package. Between the figure, extra head, accessories, and BAF part, there’s not a lot of free space left on that tray.

Star-Lord comes packaged with his masked head on, but I’m going to start out with the alternate unmasked head. But before we get to that, check this shit out…

Yeah, we have one of those rare examples where the actual figure is better than the package photos. In this case, the package photo shows a very different figure where the top of the trench coat is part of the torso sculpt and the bottom made up like a skirt on the bottom half of the figure, with an awkward waist swivel running right across the middle. It looks terrible. Thankfully, the final figure got the trench coat cast in soft plastic and attached to the buck with the arms sculpted to look like sleeves. Yeah, it’s the old sleeveless jacket trick, but it works great and is such a vast improvement over the crappy figure they photographed for the back of the box.

For what is basically a guy in a t-shirt, trousers and trench coat, Hasbro went all out on the details. Under the coat you can see all kinds of subtly sculpted pockets and texturing to the pants and he has the little jets, the ones we see used in the second trailer, sculpted and painted onto the outsides of his boots. The coat has a great weathered wash to it and again all sorts of little details. It’s also worth noting here that his loot satchel is a separate piece and easily removable.

The two portraits consist of Star-Lord masked and unmasked. The masked head is fantastic. I really dig the movie version of the mask and Hasbro did a beautiful job recreating it here for the figure. The detail is sharp and with the exception of some minor slop on the red goggle paint, the paintwork is immaculate.

The alternate unmasked head is quite good, but I don’t know that the likeness to Chris Pratt is all that great. The eyes are painted a little too intense and the paint for the beard, while certainly tidy enough, is a little too heavy handed. That having been said, it’s still a perfectly serviceable portrait and for what it’s worth the sculpting for the hair is particularly well done. All in all it works for me.

Star-Lord features the kind of articulation we’ve come to expect from the Marvel Legends line. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, double-hinged at the elbows, swivel at the biceps, and have swivels and hinges in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinged knees, and both hinges and rockers in the ankles. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab crunch hinge in the torso and a ball joint in the neck. I will note that Star-Lord’s joints feel very soft and mushy. Those super soft joints are usually a huge pet peeve of mine, but here it just doesn’t seem to work against the figure at all.

Accessories! In addition to the extra head, loot satchel, and BAF part Star-Lord comes with some nice extras. First off, you get that orb that is so prominently featured in the trailers. What is it? Well, apart from probably being one of the Infinity Stones, I don’t know. Unfortunately, since Star-Lord’s hands are designed to hold his guns, it’s pretty tough to get him to hold the Orb. I’d argue that an extra hand would have been in order, but there’s so much stuff in this box already, I guess I’ll let it slide.

Next up, you get his Walkman and headphones and I think it’s a hoot that Hasbro included these. Sure, the headphones are way too big and no, there’s no cord connecting them to the Walkman, but I don’t care. I just love that I can have my Peter Quill figure chilling to some Blue Swede while standing on my shelf.

Lastly, you get his guns and these are absolutely bitchin. I presume they are meant to be the Kree weapons he uses in the comics. There’s still no sign that his Element Gun will appear in the movie. Nonetheless, I love these things! The designs are great, the sculpt is great, and the little touches of gold paintwork? Great! He can hold them well and he looks like a total badass while doing it.

Hot damn, this figure is so much fun to play around with! The guns alone had me posing him on my desk long after I’ve put most figures down. This guy is going to be standing on my desk for a long time before going off to the display shelf.

With the new boxes, shiny new branding, and heftier price tag, Hasbro has been trying to pass off Marvel Legends Infinite as a premium line of action figures. I liked all of the figures from the Winter Soldier and Spider-Man waves, but most of them felt more like regular Legends figures than anything super special. Star-Lord here certainly ups the ante. I think this is one of the better 6-inch figures that I’ve opened in a while. It’s clear that Hasbro put a lot of love into this figure and I’m very interested to see whether the rest of the wave can sustain that level of excellence. Either way, I’m glad this one came two per case, because now I can display him with both heads and all his different gear.