Its the fifth day of FigureFan held hostage by Marvel Legends. Today, we’re checking out another of the baddies from the wave: Klaw. Yes, he’s packaged as Marvel’s Klaw as I’m guessing this is another instance where Hasbro didn’t have the rights to the name for the figure and tacked Marvel’s in front of it. Hey, it makes more senese than calling him Autobot Klaw, eh? Klaw is yet another figure in this wave that was previously released in 3 3/4″ format as part of the Marvel Universe line, and one that I actually don’t own, because I somehow missed that Secret Wars pack. Right, let’s check him out.

Paaaaaaaackage Shhhhhhot! I’m running out of things to say about the new Marvel Legends packaging, so I’ll just reiterate that I still like it a lot. Klaw comes with the left leg of Terrax, which is a bit surprising, since he’s the smallest figure in the assortment. I thought he would come with the torso. The character artwork is ok, but not great. I do like the way they got his sonic emitter arm into the portrait on the card, since it is his trademark feature.

Out of the package and wow, this figure is seriously underwhelming. Klaw uses a fairly slight body style, which doesn’t bother me too much. Klaw is sometimes drawn a lot bulkier than this, but the body works well enough for me. What’s not so great is just the near complete lack of original sculpting and paintwork on Klaw’s body. The body is molded all in red plastic with a pair of terrible jaggy purple shorts painted onto him. God, I hate these shorts, or more particularly the heavy outline jagged edges. I’m fine with painted costumes, but this just looks outlandish and fake, particularly when displayed next to other figures in the wave.

There is, however, some original sculpting at work here. Naturally, the head sculpt is new and I like it quite a bit. The eyes and mouth are rather creepy and suits the character well. The other unique piece is his sonic emitter on his arm. It features some nice panel lines and detail work.

Klaw sports decent articulation. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips. He has double hinges in the elbows and knees. His ankles and wrist are hinged and swivel. He swivels at the waist, and he features the ab crunch hinge in the torso. Overall, I’m pleased with the poses I can get out of him. I think its likely this will be a heavily reused body in the line, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

So, Klaw is not a stellar figure, though its possible he may grow on me. My only real issue with this figure is the way Hasbro chose to execute the paintwork for the shorts. In another line it might have worked better, but the realism at play in all the other figures of the wave just make Klaw seem a bit out of place. Maybe the biggest problem I have with Klaw is the price point. $17.99 for this figure, Hasbro? No way, no how! I don’t hate him, but I’m not going to count him as one of the wins for this initial assortment. And if we’re keeping score, Hasbro, that’s three out of five.

Tomorrow… Steve Rogers!!!

Its day three of Marvel Legends Week and this time we’re looking at Constrictor! He’s another character in this initial wave that also had a recent release in the 3 3/4″ Marvel Universe line. I’m a little surprised that Hasbro has been double dipping as much as they have in this first assortment, but I happen to love Constrictor, so I’m not complaining. And as an aside disclaimer, forgive me folks, but my time spent boozing at the Pub yesterday and today reading books to orphaned kittens cut into my editorial duties, so if this one feels like a quickie, that’s why. Nonetheless, I’ll try to give Constrictor his due.

The new Marvel Legends packaging is still appealing to me, and I’m particularly happy with Constrictor’s character art, both front and back. The bundle includes Terrax’s torso piece, which is proudly displayed on the bubble next to the figure.

So far, with Ghost Rider and Iron Man, we’ve seen some figures that rely on some pretty specific sculpting. Constrictor, on the other hand, is one of those figures we all new was coming. He gets by with a standard body and a costume executed strictly with paintwork. Now, clearly this works for some characters, and I do believe this figure proves that Constrictor is one of them. The paintwork is nice and clean with no real bleeding or smudging and there is some unique tooling used for Constrictor’s adamantium whips, which are cast in soft, bendy grey plastic. I think they look a lot better than the translucent gummi worms that we saw on the 3 3/4″ Marvel Universe version of the character.

Of course, the head sculpt is brand new, and I’ve got to say it is pretty darn awesome. Constrictor sports a maniacal grimace with a prominant chin that would make even Bruce Campbell envious. The detailed sculpting in the teeth is exceptionally well done and overall this is a head sculpt that is brimming with character. He’s one twisted looking dude.

Articulation? Wow! Constrictor sports some seriously nice poseability. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips. The elbows and knees are all double jointed. You get swivels in the biceps, forearms, lower legs, and waist. The ankles feature both hinges and swivels. The torso has a ratcheting hinge and hinges in the shoulders to allow for the arms to crunch together or apart. I haven’t seen those shoulder crunches since one of my older 6-inch movie Spider-Man figures, and I really dig them.

No doubt about it, Constrictor is a great looking figure and he’s amazingly fun to play around with. I’ve had him on my desk since I got this wave and I’m constantly picking him up and posing him. The 3 3/4″ Universe was a perfectly fine figure, but this ML version really turns things up a notch. If we’re keeping score, Constrictor definitely lands in the plus column, which currently puts the first wave of Marvel Legends figures at two out of three.

And here we go… So I picked up the first wave of Marvel Legends figures at Toys R Us’ website, all except for Ghost Rider, which they didn’t have In Stock. That was cool with me since I really wanted to hunt down the orange variant rather than the bewilderingly standard blue flame version, or as I like to call him Hellespont Ghost Rider.  As luck would have it, I ran across the orange version the very next day at Walmart just standing there on the shelf and I snatched him up. It was the first time I’ve seen these at retail, so they must have just put them out because there was almost an entire case there.

Behold, the new Marvel Legends packaging! The first time I saw pictures of this my head almost exploded from sensory overload. It is a very busy package deco with word explosions coming at you from all angles. Overall, I like it for its “in your face” comic book style motif. I’d almost say I prefer Mattels more elegant and refined DC Universe Classics cards if it weren’t for the personalized character artwork on the front and back of the new ML cards. Yep, that’s Ghost Rider’s huge mug on the upper left hand corner of the card and I’ll always go for a personalized cardback over a generic one anyday. Among the scattering of declarations on the card is the figure’s name, the fact that it is part of the Terrax wave and includes both the left and right arms of the figure, and that this is indeed the “Return of Marvel Legends.” Whereas Mattel hides their C&C pieces at the bottom under the insert, Hasbro has chosen to feature them by putting them off to the side in front of a segmented part of the card. I think I like it!

Surprisingly, the back of the card is a lot less cluttered. You get a huge, really nice piece of character art with a little tag line about Ghost Rider. You get a picture of the BAF, Terrax, and you get pictures of each of the other figures in the wave and which BAF piece they come with. So, my only complaint here is that Hasbro should have included a little bio and stats on the character like Mattel does with the DCUC figures. At the very least a “First Appearance” stat would have been nice.

Wow. I was pretty nervous about what Hasbro was going to turn out here, but once out of the package, Ghost Rider has set a lot of those fears at ease. Yes, he’s a really solid and detailed sculpt. Let’s face it, a character with a flaming skull is not the easiest action figure to sculpt convincingly, but I really think Hasbro’s team did a great job here. The skull itself sports a lot of character with narrowed, squinting eyes and the a rictus grin worthy of The Rider himself. The use of the sculpted, orange translucent plastic on the top of the skull and the shoulders really looks fantastic, and I’m willing to bet it also looks pretty good in the regular blue version too.

With the exception if his forarms and lower legs, Ghost Rider’s armor and chains are sculpted in separate, softer plastic pieces and worn over the figure’s core body, with the trench coat style top coming down off of his back to just above his ankles. The leg and arm armor have a nice rough-hewn, pitted texture, as does his shoulder armor. The whole ensemble really delivers on Ghost Rider’s sinister and iconic look very well. In terms of overall sculpt and design, there’s really nothing I would change here.

The paintwork, on the other hand, doesn’t impress me as much as the sculpting. Here’s the problem: There’s some subtle orange paint wash on the armor, chains, and the inside of the collar that is probably meant to convey the flames reflecting off the metal. It was an incredibly nice idea that shows a lot of thought went into the deco. Unfortunately, its something that is probably hard to pull off with exacting detail on a figure in this price range, and I don’t think it turned out quite as intended. It just looks more like tarnish than reflected flames. It doesn’t spoil the figure for me, but I’d have preferred the figure without it.

How about articulation? Ghost Rider features ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips. You get double hinges in the elbows and knees. The wrists and ankles feature both hinges and swivels, and he has a ball joint in the torso. While the number of points may seem lacking, the truth is that between the ball joints and the double-hinges, you really can get an amazing amount of good poses out of him and overall he seems to have a bit more range of motion than Mattel’s DC Universe Classic figures.

Accessories? Nada. Unless you count Terrax’s arms, Ghost Rider doesn’t come with any accessories. That’s a bit disappointing since his right hand is obviously sculpted to hold something and even the Marvel Universe version came with a length of chain for him to hold.

And there we go. I’m going to give Hasbro a pass on the paint, since its more a personal preferance on my part than anything else. That being said, Ghost Rider is certainly a home run in my book. The inaugural wave of Marvel Legends really needed to shock and awe collectors in order to get them to bite, and I think that makes Ghost Rider a nice pick for this wave. In a line that will inevitably feature a fair number of figures with standard bodies and painted costumes, this guy flaunts a lot of specialized sculpting and shows off what the line will be capable of at its best. As the first figure in this line that I opened, I come away very satisfied and looking for more.                        Tomorrow… Extremis Iron Man!

Yes, folks, I’m gearing up to write my features on the first wave in the return of Marvel Legends, and I’m pretty damn excited about it. But before getting into the figures, I wanted to have a couple belts of Jameson and say a few things about what the original Marvel Legends line meant to me. I actually started collecting the Toy Biz line back when I was on the hunt for Transformers or GI JOE or Star Wars and couldn’t find anything new. I got tired of coming home from my hunts empty handed and I decided to pick one up. I really don’t remember my first one, but it might have been The Thing because I’ve been a Fantastic Four fan since I was barely able to read a comic and I do remember having a special fondness for that figure. Either way, I brought that figure home and it was love at first sight. I was back at the store that weekend buying everything Marvel Legends that they had. What was at first a consolation prize had become a prized new line of figures.