Tag Archives: mcu

Mar 18 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home): Deluxe Doc Ock and Green Goblin by Hasbro

Hey, how about a Marvel Monday for old time’s sake! I’ve been picking up a lot of Legends lately on deep discount and I may do a couple speed reviews of some of those waves, but before even considering any of that I wanted to swing back and check out a couple of Deluxe releases that came out late last year. I have to imagine that it was a general malaise over the recent MCU films that caused Hasbro to drop their bucket back into the Spider-Man: No Way Home well and produce some new figures based on what was probably the last MCU flick that really hit home with the fans. No pun intended. We got a wave of retro-carded figures and these two Deluxes, which had me excited for MCU figures for the first time in a long while.

Both figures come in fully enclosed boxes with some nice artwork and shots of the figures. I don’t mind the enclosed boxes for these Deluxes, but I am getting tired of tiny accessories wrapped in tissue paper just begging to be accidently thrown away. Interestingly enough, Doc Ock is billed as being from Spider-Man 2 (the second Raimi film), while Gobbie is billed as being from No Way Home. Obviously the Goblin figure design is very specific to that movie, but Octavius could really work for either film. I’m guessing it was maybe a licensing issue, similar to the one that put the Andrew Garfield Spidey figure on an Amazing Spider-Man 2 card. Anyway… let’s start with Doctor Otto Octavius.

I’m starting with Ock, because I don’t have quite as much to say about this figure, but that’s not to say it isn’t fantastic. He comes out of the box with his articulator arms permanently attached. The body features a textured black top, black trousers, and brown shoes. He’s got some double trench coat action going with a brown one layered under the green. The brown coat has a set of gold zipper tracks while the outer coat has buttons and lapels with some tiny sculpted stitching. Wrapped around his waist is the silver harness to secure the arms to him. It’s a fairly basic costume design, but the figure handles it well with the different muted colors and some very subtle textures.

The head sculpt is pretty solid likeness to Alfred Molina. I really love the hair sculpt and the way the glasses turned out. Lord knows it ain’t easy to do decent looking specs in this scale, but Hasbro certainly pulled it off here. It killed me to turn down the Hot Toys figure, but that head sculpt just wasn’t working for me in terms of likeness or expression. Certainly not on a $300+ figure! So, at least Hasbro came through on the $40 version. I also dig the dour expression.

The articulator arms are cast in a very dense, but pliable plastic and they do a fairly good job of holding the shape you bend them into. They have a sharp, segmented sculpt and you get six sets of claws to work with: Two flat ones to act as feet, two grasping claws, and two articulated claws. Octavius himself even comes with two sets of hands: Fists and grasping hands.

And I have to say, posing the arms is lots of fun, especially when mixing up the different claws. There was certainly an issue of compromise here between durability and playability, and I think Hasbro made the right call by allowing just enough from each column. It was nice to really give the arms a workout without worrying about breaking or tearing them, even if that meant they weren’t always going to stay put exactly where I wanted them.

The arms are robust enough to act as legs and support the figure, but that stance does start to widen as the arms slowly attempt to pull back to their original configuration. I will likely use a clear rubber band to hold them closer together so I can display Ock with them supporting him. Although, I suppose a display stand supporting the figure would also do the trick.

Octavius turned out great! He’s one of those figures that takes up residence on my desk for a while after I opened him because he’s just so much fun to mess around with. I’ve wanted a figure like this ever since I first saw Spider-Man 2, and now that I have him, it’s nice to see he doesn’t disappoint. Let’s move on to Green Goblin!

So, unlike Octavius, who can work for either film, Norman Osborne is decidedly based on his appearance in No Way Home, where his armor is all kinds of messed up and modified. It’s an interesting look, which brings the design a bit closer to some of the comic book beats and away from the Power Rangery flavor of the original Raimi film design. Personally, I never had an issue with the older design, but this one certainly makes for a more interesting action figure. And boy is there a lot going on with this sculpt! Parts of the suit’s covering have been ripped away to reveal the internal supports and framework, painted in both gold and silver. He’s added a belt with shoulder strap and satchel as homage to the comic look, and you get the remnants of his purple hoody, cast in plastic and sitting on his shoulders. The green paint for the suit has a nice metallic sheen to it. He’s also has sculpted rockets on his both forearms and extended blades on his left. This is undoubtedly one of the most complex sculpts I’ve seen on a Marvel Legends figure and it looks fantastic!

Osborne does come with the Goblin mask head, even though it gets smashed fairly early on, but I’m happy to have the option to display it and it certainly maintains the quality found in the rest of the figure. The deep set eye globes are painted gold and if you look into the mouth you can see the mesh screen that covered Norman’s mouth on the costume. There’s a bit of swirl in the plastic here and there, but it doesn’t bother me. The only thing here that’s kind of off-putting is the lack of a neck piece for when he’s wearing the mask, so you just see his exposed skin. That looks kind of weird, but I don’t think this figure is really intended to be regularly displayed with the masked head. It’s probably more of a bonus.

Because you also get the unmasked head with goggles and hood, which is represents Gobbie’s new look for No Way Home, and Hasbro did a really nice job on this head sculpt! Willem Defoe certainly has a unique look about him, so I’m thinking that may have given the sculptors more hooks to hang their sculpt on. Either way, it turned out to be an excellent likeness, right down to his maniacal, toothy grin. And once again, the hair sculpt here is just pitch perfect! The goggles fit over the head pretty snug and the head goes into the hood and is secured around the neck hole. As much as I love the Goblin head, I’ll likely be displaying the figure unmasked and with the Goblin head somewhere on the shelf in front of him.

Of course, you also get the glider, which is a pretty fine piece of kit all on its own. The sculpt is pretty complex with panel lines, hydraulics and various mechanical bits and bobs all over the place. The bulk of the glider is painted in a metallic gray while the panels on the wings are textured and painted purple. The glider connects to a transparent stand via a ball socket, and this is the same type of stand that Hasbro uses for their Star Wars Black Series speeder bikes. The wings also articulate independently of one another. The only thing to watch out for here is the blades on the front of the glider, which are made of slightly bendy plastic. If you plan on storing this in a tote, I could see them getting bent or warped pretty easily.

Gobbie attaches to the glider by slipping his toes into the stirrups and pegging his heels into the pedals. The pedals are pegged into the glider, so they can swivel to accommodate different positions. It also helps to make securing him easier, as I preferred to pull out the pedals, attach them to his feet and then peg them back into the glider. A little balance is required when getting the ball socket on the stand to support his weight, but I was able to make most poses work out. I think a little nail polish might help make the socket connection more firm and supportive.

Green Goblin’s final accessory is a tiny grenade, or what passed for a pumpkin bomb in the films. It’s just a tiny orange ball with a green light painted on it, but it fits perfectly in the right grippy hand.

Goblin feels like the more substantial offering of these two figures with a crazy complex sculpt, extra head, and the glider, but considering how awesome Ock’s articulator arms are, I think everything balances out in the end. As for the quality of the figures, there’s not much to complain about here, as I think Hasbro knocked each of these right out of the park. I can distinctly remember the moment I saw that these guys were coming back for No Way Home and thinking about the opportunity for new Marvel Legends figures, and sure enough here they are. And at $39.99 each, I think the pricing is actually right on point, as they both feel like premium releases. I don’t really have any interest in a No Way Home Lizard or Electro, so displaying these guys with the Sandman from the retro wave gives me all the MCU Spidey villains I wanted!

Jan 8 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home Wave): Spider-Man, Spider-Man, and Sandman by Hasbro

What’s this? Marvel on a Monday? A sort of… Marvel Monday? Yeah, well don’t get used to it. I do have more Marvel Legends reviews planned for the first half of 2024, but I’m not ready to bring back Marvel Mondays. I am, however, ready to dig into the second half of this No Way Home themed wave of Marvel Legends! On Friday I checked out the Tom Holland Spider-Man along with MJ and Matt Murdock and today we’re checking out Tobey Maquire Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, and Flint Marko, aka Sandman!

As with last time, this assortment comes carded rather than boxed, but the standout oddity here is having Garfield Spider-Man appear on his own movie card, Amazing Spider-Man 2, as opposed to following the No Way Home theme like the rest. I’m sure this had to do with some kind of Fox-Disney rights issues, but it’s still odd to see. If you think multiverses are confusing to navigate, try corporate copyright law! And yes, the No Way Home cards are still inaccurate as they feature the wrong suit for the Holland Spider-Man. There are no BAF parts in this wave, as both the heavy hitters, Doc Ock and Green Goblin, were released as higher priced boxed Deluxes, and I’ll be getting around to them soon! Let’s start with Maquire Spidey…

I still adore the Raimi Spider-Man movies and can even find something to love in the mostly awful third outing, so it’s really cool to get this suit as a modern Legends figure. While the other two suits in this wave could very well stand in as a modern comic look for me, this one will always be totally unique to these movies and so I love the design as it’s own thing. The basic suit colors are very traditional with the bright red and dark blue looking as classic as ever, but it’s the addition of the silver webbing pattern that makes it so distinctive. Sure, thanks to the PlayStation games, Spidey has almost as many suit variants as Iron Man, and I’m not a big fan of that concept, but back in the early 2K’s this variant was a big deal to me and I thought it was totally bad ass. The execution is great, with the webbing and emblems all part of the sculpt and in this case the blue parts of the suit are textured as well as the red.

The head sculpt looks wonderful and the paint on this one fared better than what I got on my Holland figure. The silver on the lenses isn’t quite perfect, but there’s nothing here that is easily noticeable with the naked eye. Also, I really love the way that chest emblem is layered on top of the raised web pattern.

Of course, you get the unmasked head as well, and this one is not the slam dunk we got for the Holland likeness. I can definitely see a bit of Toby in there, but that’s with a bit of squinting and a lot of imagination. Less nose and more cleft chin would have been the way to go. Granted, I was a little shocked when I saw how much Toby aged in No Way Home before I reminded myself that at 51 I’m practically an old man and I’m not one to talk.

There are no surprises in the articulation, other than having to heat up the figure to get the ball joint in the chest to loosen up. The poseability is identical to the Holland figure, and the pinless joints are always welcome in my Spider-Mans as unpainted pins were often an eye sore on these figures. This guy is just tons of fun to pose and play with.

Toby Spidey comes with the same two hands as when he was first issued in that three-pack, so you get one pair of thwippy hands, a right fist, and a left graspy hand. And here’s the biggest disappointment, as it sucks that Hasbro couldn’t pony up for the same three sets that came with the Holland figure. That’s especially true when you consider this is the second time they are selling this figure, albeit with the addition of the unmasked head. Regardless, it’s a great figure and a much needed replacement to my horribly dated 2003 magnet-hands Toy Biz figure. In truth, I’ve been waiting for a figure like this for a long time, and I am thrilled to have it! Let’s move on to the Garfield Spider-Man…

It’s no secret that I hated the Amazing Spider-Man movies. Someone actually gifted me the Blu-Ray as a misguided, but well intentioned, Christmas gift, and that’s the only reason I ever watched it. I only begrudgingly made it through the first one with a scowl on my face and the trailers made me not even want to try to watch the second. I’ll concede that the problem was more the writing and bad creative decisions than it was Andrew Garfield, but he still got his share of the blame from me. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him show up in No Way Home, but I have to admit, he was great in it, and he really sold me on how likeable he could be given the right framework to hang his performance on. The suit design was one of the only things I liked about those movies, but I kind of feel this figure misses the mark. The sculpt is fine, but the colors are so dark. I shot this figure with the exact same lighting as the other two Spider-Mans and it just managed to absorb it and still come out way too dark. Also, I got more of an electric blue vibe off the screen used suit which just isn’t conveyed here at all. At least the texturing looks really good.

The head sculpt is fine. I like the pearlescent paint used for the lenses, but they didn’t convey the compound-eye style of the lenses. Maybe that’s asking a bit much for this scale.

The unmasked head doesn’t reach the heights of the Holland likeness, but I think it’s more on point than the Tobey likeness. The hair sculpt is a little chunky, but they got his outrageously tall pouf down pretty well. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way this sculpt came out and the printing on the facial features is pretty solid too.

As for articulation and extras, I’ve got the same praise and nitpicks as I did with the Tobey figure. The poseability is excellent, once I gave him a bath in hot water to loosen up that ball joint in the waist, however, it actually tightened up again the next day and manipulating it makes me feel like I’m going to twist it off. And, like Tobey, he comes with the same two sets of hands that were included when he was first released in the three-pack. This isn’t a bad figure at all, but it’s by far my least favorite of the three web-heads. But to be fair, some of that has to do with the suit being my least favorite as well.

Our final stop for this assortment is Flint Marko as Sandman. I wasn’t all that excited about this figure based on the solicitation shots, but in hand he’s actually surprised me quite a bit. The sand texture that covers the figure is extremely well done and it’s bolstered even more by some excellent paint work. This would have been an easy figure for Hasbro to cheap out on, but the the final product feels like they actually put some work into it, especially for what is likely to be a one-off body. The pinless body features some solid articulation, but it does lack the shoulder crunches and ab-crunch hinge that we got on the Spider-Mans. Still, the lone ball joint under the chest is perfectly serviceable.

The portrait manages to convey the character likeness while still being just a sandy facsimile. It actually does a remarkable job of recreating what the CG looked like in the film and that’s pretty cool.

While Toby and Garfield were hands poor, Marko makes out big time with two regular pairs and a pair of enlarged hands with adapter pieces for the forearms. So, you wind up with normal sized graspy hands and fists, and the bigger graspy hands too. I actually would have preferred one large graspy hand and one large fist, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t really have much else to say about this figure other than this Sandman came out really good. I was initially surprised they didn’t make him a BAF release for this wave, but in the end it worked out just fine.

And that’s the Marvel Legends No Way Home wave! All around, this was a solid wave, and really the only figure I had a lot of gripes with is Garfield Spidey, and that’s probably mostly due to personal taste. Sure, I would have liked to get an extra set of hands with the Sony Spider-Mans, but it was nice to see the extra big hands with Sandman. Also, I sure am glad I didn’t pony up for the No Way Home three-pack, but it’s not going to stop me from chastising Hasbro for re-releasing three figures so soon with bonus heads. That’s a really shit move and it just punishes collectors for running out and buying your figures. Probably not something you want to do, when a lot of people are already inclined to wait for clearance when so much Hasbro product is hitting discount stores. I have both the Deluxe Green Goblin and Doc Ock on deck for the near future, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to doing another complete wave of Legends. I did buy a bunch on deep discount late last year to complete some BAFs, so maybe I’ll run some speed reviews of those in the coming months.

Jan 5 2024

Marvel Legends (No Way Home Wave): Spider-Man, MJ, and Matt Murdock by Hasbro

I only looked at two complete waves of Marvel Legends here on FFZ last year, so let’s check one out in this first week of the New Year! Hasbro rolled out this No Way Home wave during one of their Fan Channel steams, which kind of worked like a Hail Mary Wave, because it actually got me excited to buy some Marvel Legends figures again, rather than just bottom feeding when they hit the clearance bins. It was a smart move to go back and revisit this film, because besides Guardians Vol 3, it was one of the few MCU films in the last few years that didn’t fall flat and had the appeal to sell merch. I think there are a lot of factors that go into Hasbro’s current financial woes, but you won’t convince me that Disney’s mismanagement of Star Wars and Marvel aren’t a huge part of it. Neither one has the gravitas they did when Hasbro signed the licensing agreements.

Anyway… This wave was released on cards rather than in boxes and there is no Build-A-Figure, so what you see is what you get. The assortment consists of six figures: All three Spider-Mans, MJ, Matt Murdock, and Sandman. The cards are heavy stock, which should please mint-on-card collectors, and the art is pretty enough, but there’s no retro charm here that makes me sad to tear into them. Also, it’s kind of odd that the art they chose for Tom Holland Spider-Man isn’t wearing the same suit as the figure we got, but I’m cool with that because the figure features my favorite suit from the films. Let’s start with Spider-Man!

Oh yeah, this is peak MCU Spidey for me right here. The classic blue and red deco looks so gorgeous! You get a fully sculpted web pattern on the red bits, a raised spider emblem on his chest and back, and some nice texturing on the red, while the blue is left smooth. The spider emblems are sculpted on, although it’s weird how the one on his back is so much more prominent than the one on his chest. Still, with all the gimmicky suits that have been showcased over the years, between the movies and the games, this is quite possibly my favorite and it’s great to see it released on the updated body.

You get two heads, one masked and one unmasked. The masked head is standard stuff in terms of sculpt, but has some issues that I didn’t notice until I punched in close with the camera. The white on the right eye bleeds into the top edge of the lens, while the center of the web pattern is offset toward the right eye. The first issue doesn’t bother me, as it’s not that noticeable with the figure in hand, but the second issue is pretty annoying, but it’s not going to ruin the figure for me.

The unmasked head is quite spectacular and it really shows how good these likenesses can be when Hasbro is on their game. Everything about this noggin is just wonderful from the sculpt to the printing and even the color in his cheeks. I even love the disappointed dachshund look he’s got going on, which is pretty faithful to some of Holland’s emotes on screen. The hair is a separate sculpt, which creates a clean hairline and looks fantastic. This is quite simply one of Hasbro’s best likenesses at this scale.

The body is built with the new pinless engineering, which is a huge win for a Spider-Man figure as unpainted pins are often an eye sore on these the Spideys. You do get a little of that still evident in the armpits, but it’s still a big improvement. Otherwise articulation in the arms and legs is standard stuff, and you do get the standard Spidey shoulder crunches. The combination of a hinge down in the waist and the ball joint in the chest is pretty cool. It’s definitely a fun figure to play with. Sure, the pattern of the suit breaks up when you work the ball joint in the chest, but it’s kind of unavoidable.

Spidey comes with three sets of hands, and you probably can guess what they are: You get a pair of fists, splayed wall-crawler hands, and thwippy hands. About the only thing missing here are any web effects. Hasbro experimented with these a bit in the past, but it sure would be nice to get a couple thrown in now and again. I didn’t buy the No Way Home three-pack Hasbro put out a short while ago, but as I understand it this is the same figure but with the new unmasked head included. Needless to say I’m glad I waited. This turned out to be a great figure and definitely my favorite version of Holland Spider-Man to be released so far. Moving on to MJ…

I believe this is the second version of MCU MJ in Legends, with the first being released in a Homecoming two-pack. I certainly don’t remember getting one from Far From Home. Either way, we get a bit of recycled parts here from that Homecoming release, mostly from the waist down with repainted pants and repainted socks. Instead of wearing a jacket, this time she’s got on a striped sweater, which is layered onto the figure, giving it some nice depth, and having the sleeves sculpted onto the arms. Because the legs are reused they have pins in the knees, while the newly sculpted arms are pinless. Unfortunately, the arms go with rotating hinges in the elbows, rather than the double-hinge elbow and bicep swivel, which I prefer.

You get one head sculpt, which appears to be entirely new. It’s not quite the total slam-dunk that we got with Peter, but I think the likeness is still pretty damn great. Once again the printed features are very much on point and I like the way they sculpted some strands of hair dangling on each side of her face. While I still quite like the heads included with the Homecoming version, I think this one is technically better in just about every way.

Michelle comes with two sets of hands, fists and open, which I assumed were going to be reused from the previous MJ figure, but the open hands are actually different and much more natural looking. She also comes with The Machina de Kadavus, the cube that Dr. Strange used to contain his wonky spell. It’s a pretty complex accessory and definitely a welcome addition to the figure. On to our last stop… Matt Murdock!

Murdock’s cameo in the film was a total surprise to me and I really got a kick out of it, and it’s pretty cool to have a figure of Netflix Daredevil in full-on lawyer mode. Yeah, it’s just a suited body but I was surprised to find that it was pinless, as I wasn’t aware that Hasbro had invested in a pinless suit body yet. Or is this the first? Sorry, but I just haven’t been paying very close attention to Legends this past year. The suited body looks great, but I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. I like that the tie is sculpted separately to hang down and the sculpted arm sleeves do a passable job lining up with the jacket.

The head sculpt is definitely the weakest likeness of these three figures, but I don’t think it’s a total miss. I’m not sure I could recognize Cox in there if you just handed me the head, but knowing who it’s supposed to be I can definitely see it. The glasses are pretty well done for this scale and the tinting looks pretty good.

Murdock comes with two accessories: His mobility cane and the brick that was thrown through Parker’s window. I like the idea of having him do all sorts of crazy Daredevil combat with the cane. The brick is pretty well done for what it is and is almost certainly my first vandal brick accessory, so I can cross that off my bucket list.

So far, I’m enjoying this wave quite a bit. As much shit as I give Marvel Legends these days, it feels great to get some figures that I’m interested in again. The Holland Spider-Man is definitely my favorite of the trio, being the best representation of the character in my Legends display. MJ is a nice upgrade from what was already a pretty solid figure. Murdock is fun. I probably could have gambled on him turning up on clearance, but it was just easier to pre-order the whole wave. When I come back on Monday, we’ll check out the second half of the wave with the other two Spider-Mans and Sandman!

Jul 7 2023

Marvel Legends (GotG v3): Kraglin, Adam Warlock and Cosmo BAF by Hasbro

Well, hello folks! I’ve been a bad host this week, but I’m happy I was able to show up before the end with at least one piece of content. I had my head buried in work with some big projects, which I swore up and down I would no longer be doing, but it is what it is. Anyway, I got some cool toys in this week and hope to have a full slate of reviews for next week. As for now, let’s wrap up the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Wave with the last two packaged figures and the Build-A-Figure!

If you need to get caught up, the previous figures were Deluxe Groot, Star-Lord, Mantis, Drax, Nebula, and Rocket. Groot was not technically part of this wave, and Star-Lord did not have any BAF parts, but collecting the rest allow you to build the Russian Space Pooch, and we’ll check her out at the end. Let’s start with Adam Warlock…

Warlock was fine in the movie, but I wasn’t expecting too much out of him. He certainly wasn’t worth the tease that we got at the end of Guardians 2. As for the figure, this was probably the one I was least looking forward to in this entire assortment. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad figure. The costume sculpt is actually quite impressive. There’s a nice layering effect from the super fine chain mail texture to the plates and contour lines which all add a very cool complexity to the base figure. This may be some of the best sculpting in any Legends MCU costume to date. But the MCU suit aesthetic is getting a bit threadbare and there’s just getting to be a general sameness about them to me. I feel like there are some similar design beats between this suit and Vision’s when they should be completely different. With that having been said, the coloring is very nice with a mix of glossy red and pale gold, and the printed pattern on the cape is sharp and snappy.

The head sculpt is pretty good. I was not familiar with the actor who played him, but the likeness here seems pretty good. I’m not thrilled with the gold plastic they used for his face and hair. It doesn’t really convey the same effect as the onscreen makeup, but it’s not bad either.

And that’s really all I have to say about this guy. The articulation is exactly what you would expect and the pinless joints are nice. I just can’t say I had a lot of fun posing him or playing around with him. If he didn’t come with a BAF part, I probably would have passed on him or waited until clearance. I also wish we had gotten a Ravager version of Gamora in his slot instead. But at the same time, I’m happy to add him to the shelf. Let’s move on to Kraglin…

Apparently even being the Director’s brother doesn’t guarantee you an action figure, at least not until you’ve been in all three movies. But here we are finally getting Kraglin in Marvel Legends. Granted, he’s had the biggest role in this last one, taking over the mantle (and fin) from his deceased Captain. I was pretty excited to get him and this figure does not disappoint. The attention to detail in the costume is very well done, with various textures and bits of padding in the sculpt. You also get some reinforced panels and a shoulder rig that includes a scabbard behind his shoulder and a sling for his arrow. There’s some extra fine sculpting in the zipper and I love the way his collar sits all folded up around his neck. But what the heck, Hasbro… we’re back to pins in the joints?

The head sculpt here is a pretty good likeness to Sean Gunn, although I don’t think they got his eyes quite right and the facial hair needed to be a touch more pronounced. Still, I like it a lot and it looks exceptionally good in profile. The fin is recreated beautifully with some nice panel lines and details. It’s also pretty gross how it sprouts out of his head like that.

The sheath behind the shoulder holds a tiny little knife, which his right hand can hold pretty well.

Kraglin’s other accessory is the arrow, which includes an energy trail to show it zipping through the air. The effect is very well done with a clear red plastic trail, but I really wish they had included a second arrow without the trail as well. It would have been a cheap and easy accessory that would have went a long way. Still, I like some of the poses you can do with the effect part arrow, so that’s cool. And that brings us to…

Cosmo the Space Dog! Usually I like my Build-A-Figures to be big figures that wouldn’t fit in a normal Legends sized box, but I can’t deny I’m happy to have Cosmo. There are actually nine separate pieces here which include the four legs, the tail, the body, the head, and two pieces for the space helmet, which does open and close. There’s something about animal legs that don’t always translate well to rotating ball joints, but these work OK. The suit looks great with some sculpted rumples and various bits of vintage space gear.

I had a lot of trouble getting the clear dome on the helmet to work, but eventually I got there. That may have just been me being an idiot. The head sculpt here is really quite fantastic for the first doggo in Marvel Legends. The sculpted fur looks really good as does the little flash of teeth in the corner of her jowls. The eyes are also excellent. Cosmo is a good dog!

And that’s the first complete wave of Marvel Legends for me this year! See how that works? I enjoyed Guardians 3 and that made me want this wave. Meanwhile there are absolutely no other MCU projects, film or otherwise that are even getting any of my interest. And with Hasbro dipping into stuff like Amadeus Cho Hulk for a Build-A-Figure, there’s little chance I’m going to be picking up any other current Legends waves. I still have some unopened older figures, and I may get to some of those this year, but with this Guardians 3 wave behind me, Legends is likely going to fall off the radar for a while now.

Jun 26 2023

Marvel Legends (GotG v3): Nebula and Rocket by Hasbro

It’s another Marvel Monday this week as I am working my way through the somewhat recently released Build-A-Russian-Space-Pooch Wave of Marvel Legends. So far I’ve checked out Star-Lord, Drax, and Mantis from the BAF assortment, as well as the Deluxe Groot, which is admittedly a peripheral release but still part of the gang. Today I’m finishing up the Guardians proper with Nebula and Rocket, and that will just leave two more figures to go, plus the BAF.

I’ve said my piece about this packaging. I like it well enough but I’ll also be happy to see the end to these windowless boxes. It also baffles me as to why Hasbro didn’t list the figures in this wave on the back like they used to do, but I bought the wave all in one shot, so I guess it didn’t matter. As for the characters, let’s be honest, it Guardians 3 was Rocket’s movie, and perhaps even his trilogy all along, if a certain line of otter dialogue is to be believed. As for Nebula, I’ve really enjoyed her a lot more ever since Endgame and it was interesting to see her get a bigger role in this one, even over her sister Gamora, who is conspicuously absent from this wave of figures. Anyway… let’s start with Nebula!

It’s Hasbro, so I was expecting Nebula to share a body with Mantis, and that is certainly the case. Still, considering the amount of new sculpting in this wave, I can’t say as I really blame them. I loved this uniformed body on Mantis, and I love it here just the same. There’s some excellent sculpted detail in the costume and the blue and red just pop so beautifully. The belt is a separate sculps from the body and it’s nice and snug around the waist.

Of course, you do get a newly sculpted arm with some really cool detail that looks like some kind of synthetic muscular weave. Like the regular arm, it’s pinless in the elbow and has a really tight bend which I love.

The head sculpt is excellent and reflects the differences from the last time we saw her in the Legends line as part of the Mantis BAF wave. The sculpt here is a little soft but it works fine. Still, I’m not sure I like it more than the metallic paint and Borg-like eye business going on with the previous release. Still, that’s apples and oranges, because we’re dealing with two different versions fo the character. I’ll just say what we got here is fine and leave it at that.

Nebula makes out really well in the accessories department, as she comes with no less than three weapons. The first is this little pistol, which is a cool design, but probably the least interesting of the weapons. Also, it’s so small I almost wound up throwing it out with the tissue paper it was wrapped in.

Next up is a sword attachment for her cybernetic arm. This one just pegs in by replacing the hand for and gives off some awesome Terminator 2 vibes. The sculpt carries on the cyber-sinew pattern of the arm and has some orange paint on the edges. The sword really makes me wish they had given her a right gun hand so that she could wield both gun and sword, but it’s still pretty cool.

And finally, you get a nice big rifle. It’s cast in gray plastic and I love it. She can hold it really well too. I wish they had painted the hole in the barrel black, but I might go ahead and remedy that with a sharpie. Ok, let’s move on to Rocket Racoon!

YES! He finally uses is full name in the movie, and embraces his inner Racooness, which was fun to hear. And yes, this is easily the best Legends Rocket I’ve seen yet. Plus, he looks so damn adorable in his little uniform! Just about all the details survived being shrunk down to racoon size, including the Guardians emblem on his chest and the belt. The colors still look great here although the red is a little more muted. The uniform even has a hole in the butt where his floofy tail juts out.

The articulation here is pretty impressive for such a tiny body. You get rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. The hips are ball jointed, there are swivels in the thighs, and ball joints under the chest and in the neck. He can be a little tough to balance on his tiny feet, but you can always use the tail for support in a pinch.

The head sculpt is by far the best we’ve seen for Rocket in this scale. I’m blown away by the amount of detail in his exposed teeth.

Rocket comes with one accessory and that’s his the huge blaster that he’s been carrying since the first movie. This is such a cool and complex design. It’s also made to work well with Rocket’s tiny hands and has a loop in the stock that goes around and under his shoulder.

With the core team of Guardians assembled, I have to say this has been a fantastic wave. I was a little hesitant to pre-order these as opposed to waiting for clearance, but I’m glad I pulled the trigger, because these are going to get a prime display spot on one of my shelves. But we still have two more figures in the wave to check out and the BAF, so we’ll swing back for one more Marvel Monday next week to have a look at those!

Jun 19 2023

Marvel Legends (GotG v3): Drax and Mantis by Hasbro

Hey, it’s another Marvel Monday, how about that! A couple of weeks ago I started my look at the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 figures with Star-Lord and Deluxe Groot, and today I’m pushing things along with Drax and Mantis!

This wave comes in the fully enclosed boxes, which Hasbro promises will be going away soon in favor of a return to the window boxes. I actually really like the look of these boxes. You get some nice character art on the side panel and the photos have been matching the figures pretty well. My only real complaint here is that it doesn’t show all the figures in the wave on the back like the window packages did. I’m not sure why they dropped that here, but it can be confusing if you aren’t sure which figures you’re looking for to build the Space Doggo. It just seems like weird omission. Let’s start with Drax!

It’s still kind of weird to see Drax wearing a shirt. I was half expecting him to yell, “Your flimsy cloth materials cannot contain me!” and rip it off at some point in the movie. But as I said last time, I absolutely adore these uniforms and they look great on the figures. Drax is as chonky as ever and the body uses an interesting mix of pinned joints for the knees but pinless joints for the elbows. The detail in the uniform is quite nice with just about every detail included in the sculpt rather than just being painted on. I particularly love the raised bronze Guardians insignia in the center of the chest. And the colors here are to die for. The vibrant blue and red mixed with the black just looks so damn snappy! All the usual articulation is here and all the joints feel great.

This is undoubtedly Hasbro’s best Drax head sculpt, but that should be no surprise since it’s been six years since we got the last MCU version of Drax in the Legends line. The likeness to Batista in the make up is spot on and his facial markings are part of the sculpt as well as painted in. The expression is pretty neutral, but everything about this portrait works for me.

Drax comes with his fighting knives, which have been included with each of the two prior releases of the character. I’m not sure if these are the exact same sculpts, but they look very similar. They are cast in pale gray plastic and have details sculpted into the grips as well as some markings on the blades. And despite the new uniform, I was happy to see that he still has the scabbards in the boots to stow them when he’s not in full-on stabby-stabby mode.

Drax is just another fantastic figure in this wave, and I have absolutely zero complaints. Sure, it’s a departure from his iconic look, but what can I say? I just love the uniforms! With the price hike forever in the back of my mind, this is one figure I did not mind paying the full $25 to get. The sculpt and paint are both top notch and pretty much everything you get here is brand new. Moving on to Mantis…

Here we get our first look at the ladies version of the uniform and once again it looks great! The finish on Mantis’ outfit is more matte than Drax’s which has a bit of a sheen to it. I’d also say that her red striping is a little less vibrant too. Neither issue is enough to bother me when they’re standing side by side, but worth pointing out nonetheless. Mantis sports pinless joints in both her knees and elbows, and I’m happy to see both double hinges in the elbows and swivels in the biceps. She also has a ball joint under the chest instead of the ab crunch hinge we see on Drax and Star-Lord.

And like Drax, we get a brand new head sculpt for Mantis. It’s still crazy to think that she was a Build-A-Figure when last released. This new noggin is a huge improvement over the last one, which wasn’t bad. You get a softer and more natural face with a far more realistic skin tone. The eyes are also phenomenal this time around and I like the sculpting on her pronounced eyelashes. The hair looks good and has some green highlights, and her antenna have a slight lilt to them. This is all around great work!

Mantis does stumble a bit because of her complete lack of extras. Yup, apart from the Cosmo BAF part, she has no accessories whatsoever. Now, I can’t off hand think of any accessories that she should have come with, but maybe at least give her an extra pair of hands. The hands she comes with are very specific with the right hand gesturing with two fingers, as if she’s focusing her telepathy, and the left hand just relaxed. She’s a beautiful figure, but at the $25 price point, she just needed something extra to justify the cost.

With four figures down, I still have four more to go before we can put together the Russian Space Pooch, but I have to say that I am really digging these figures a lot so far. Sure, I was a little lukewarm on Groot, but maybe he’s growing on me. HA! These figures are definitely helping me to come out of the general malaise I’ve felt about Marvel Legends for most of last year, and I’m genuinely excited to open up the next pair so let’s shoot for another Marvel Monday next week and check out Rocket and Nebula!

Jun 5 2023

Marvel Legends (GotG v3) Groot and Star-Lord by Hasbro

How about we do a nice Marvel Monday like the good old days, eh? At the beginning of the year I said I was pulling back on the Marvel Legends figures, and I’ve mostly been sticking to that. The Guardians Vol 3 Wave is the first complete wave I’ve picked up this year, and this is the first time I’m actually doing a Marvel Legends review since January! I am going to be covering this entire assortment and the Build-A-Figure Cosmo over the next month or so, and today I’m starting with the Deluxe Groot and Star-Lord himself. So lets fly away together into the forever and beautiful sky!

The figures come in Hasbro’s plastic free packaging, which means no windows, and yes word is we’re going back to window boxes at some point soon. Groot is not technically part of the Guardians 3 Wave and while Star-Lord is, he doesn’t come with a piece to build Cosmo. How did I like the movie? I liked it quite a bit, but I could have done with less of the animal misery porn peppered throughout. I appreciate that they were trying to give weight and tragedy to Rocket’s backstory, but it really messed with the tone of the movie. I particularly found the cybernetically grafted animals to be pretty ghoulish and upsetting and I wish they had confined it to the beginning of the movie so it could be easily skipped. As it is, I doubt I’ll re-watch it a lot. Let’s start with Groot!

OK, so this is without a doubt my least favorite version of Groot from a design standpoint. If I’m ranking the Groots they pretty much start at the top with the original and decline in my favorability until we get to this one. In a movie that was absolutely dazzling in its overall visual creativity, this Groot just looked like a guy in a rubber suit. He also didn’t sport a lot of personality either, but whatever. Hasbro’s take on this version is OK, considering what they had to work with, and they certainly invested some effort into the sculpt, but I don’t know. He kind of looks more like a chocolate sculpture than he does a tree-person. There’s plenty of detail to be had, and I appreciate the odd springs that jut out here and there and the patches of moss and greenery. They did a pretty cool job blending muscle and bark to make it look genuinely organic, but like the on screen version, this looks more to me like an animated Groot then one from an MCU film.

The portrait is a pretty good approximation of the movie, but there’s something about this design that I really don’t like. That having been said, they did a really nice job on the eyes. They’re well printed and actually look like they have a spark of life to them.

The articulation here is quite good, and despite his odd anatomy, he sports most of what we’re used to seeing in a standard Legends figure. The shoulder bark doesn’t inhibit the movement there too badly, and I was pretty pleased at the range of motion in those elbows. Most of the joints are fairly well mixed with the sculpt, although the ball-shaped hips stand out a bit. Groot comes with two sets of hands: Fists and relaxed.

Groot comes with a pair of wings, which we saw him flex in the third act of the film while escaping The Great Evolutionary. The wings come in two pieces, which plug together and then go into the hole in his back. There’s no articulation, and while the sculpt is decent, it follows the very cartoony aesthetic theme of this figure. They look decent, but I think most people would have wanted the extra arms with guns.

And finally, Groot comes with a baby version of Rocket, which is a cute accessory, but it also looks like it’s made of chocolate, and doesn’t look anything like baby Rocket in the movie.

Groot isn’t really a bad figure, but he ain’t great either. I think a lot of the blame goes to the movie design for just not being very interesting. As mentioned, I would have preferred extra arms to make his full-on berserker mode, especially since they made this a Deluxe release. Hell, it was originally listed at $50 before it settled down to $40, and either way that’s just too much. Let’s move on to Star-Lord.

Straightaway, it’s awesome to get a figure of Star-Lord in uniform, but as this movie giveth, it also taketh away. And as Quill finally dons an iconic Guardians uniform he also loses his helmet. It’s the MCU’s equivalent of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown at the last minute. Now, with that having been said, I really dig this figure a lot. The sculpt features a bit of the panel lining we’ve come to expect from the MCU costumes, but the blue and red combo is simply gorgeous. His hands look a little chunky, but everything else is just top notch. The belt is actually a separate sculpt worn by the figure and the insignia on his chest is sculpted as well as painted gold.

The portrait is quite good, and I think it’s safe to say this is the best Chris Pratt likeness that Hasbro has given us. It’s crazy to think how far they’ve come since the figure from the original movie. The printing on the beard does break down a bit as you zoom in close, but it looks fine with the figure in hand.

And with standard male Legends articulation, Star-Lord is lots of fun to play around with. I probably would have preferred a ball joint under the chest to the ab-crunch hinge, but that’s just me coming off a bunch of DC Multiverse figures and going back to Marvel Legends. It’s fine. One thing that I felt was odd was how deep set the pins are in the knees. They’re set so deep it almost looks like they’re black.

Quill comes with his trusty pair of blasters, while they’re pretty simple they get the job done. Likewise, he only comes with one set of hands to hold the guns, and that’s fine because I’ll likely always display him with his weapons drawn.

Suffice it to say I dig Star-Lord a lot more than I do Groot. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I have buyer’s remorse, because I still want to put him on display with the other figures, but I definitely should have waited for him to hit clearance. It’s possible he will grow on me… no pun intended! As for Star-Lord, he’s a great looking figure and I’ll have to dig out one of the other releases to see if I can swap the masked head on this body to create the look that the movie robbed from us. And speaking of robbing things, I gotta steal away Wednesday’s review, as I’ll be busy with other stuff for the next couple of days, but I will be back on Friday with something for sure.

Oct 17 2022

Marvel Legends (Armadillo Wave): Black & Gold Suit Spider-Man by Hasbro

Today I’m checking out the penultimate figure in the Marvel Legends Armadillo Wave, and I very nearly skipped it. Since I’m pulling back on Marvel Legends, I have been asking myself, why bother reviewing an entire wave if you aren’t buying everything anymore anyway? But in the end, I decided that if I bought all the figures in a wave, I might as well check them all out here. And that brings us to Black & Gold Suit Spider-Man.

There was a lot of speculation about this suit when it was first revealed. It seemed to have mystical glyphs imprinted in the material and the gauntlets had a certain Strange-ness about them, if ya know what I mean. A lot of these details can be seen in Hot Toys’ Sixth-Scale version. But in the end it was all a big nothing, and it turned out to be just the regular suit turned inside out because Peter Parker got paint on it. Yeah. I kind of wish they had the balls to just put Inside Out Suit on the package. Black & Gold Suit just sounds like he’s trying to make a fashion statement.

Just to recap, all the way back to my review of the Integrated Suit, I really didn’t like that design, but the figure came close to selling it to me. You could say the same about this suit and the Hot Toys figure, but in the case of this Legends figure, well, it’s just a load of crap that makes a bad design look even worse. The black suit with gold webbing might have worked for me if the webbing was consistent throughout, and it didn’t have those red bits on the sleeves. Now, this comes down to a design inconsistency, where the Hot Toys figure shows some beautifully intricate gold on the forearms, which I presume is the exposed circuitry inside the suit when it’s worn normally. Here you just get the out of place red bits that look terrible. Why the difference? Who knows? Who cares!

The paint on the head is really bad. At least the gold webbing on the rest of the figure is fairly well done. It has a nice gold leaf finish and most of the lines are pretty sharp. The gold webbing on the head looks like it was done with a crayon before slapping the figure into the box. There’s also a lot of sloppy spray around the white eye lenses. Yuck!

You get all the usual articulation in the modern Spidey bucks, and that includes the lateral butterfly joints on the shoulders. It may be ugly, but it’s still a pretty fun figure to play around with.

Hey, let’s talk hands… because I have to gripe about hands in EVERY review throughout this wave. Nope, still no crawling hands, but you do get thwippy hands and fists. No wait… not fists. Accessory holding hands. WHAT?? WHY??? Is it so he can hold on to the webbing he doesn’t come with and swing? How is it possible they made the hand selection EVEN WORSE?!?

Wow, do I hate this figure. In all honesty, the inside out suit gag in No Way Home was kind of funny and a very Peter Parker thing to have to do. Almost as bad as having to throw on a Fantastic Four suit and run home barefoot with a bag on your head. But this figure is just trash. Hot Toys is proof positive that something could be done with the design to make an attractive figure, and yes, I do understand that we’re talking about a big difference in cost between that one and this one. But even for what it is, this figure just looks sloppy and half-assed. Next week, I’ll wrap up the boxed figures with Miles Morales, and we’ll check out the Armadillo Build-A-Figure!

Sep 26 2022

Marvel Legends (Armadillo Wave): Doctor Strange by Hasbro

Yup, last week was another truncated week for content, and with a hurricane bearing down on my general location later this week, I’m not going to make any promises. But, I’m here today and it’s another Marvel Monday, and I’m pressing on with the Armadillo Wave of Marvel Legends!

Oh, look! It’s another Doctor Strange! When I saw this figure turn up in this wave, I truly knew what action figure fatigue felt like. We had the What If? version of him in the very last assortment I reviewed and here’s yet another version. Even if you’re only counting the MCU versions of the character, we’ve seen a handful of Stranges in recent years. I even skipped the Multiverse of Madness wave completely. Indeed, I was all ready to just skip reviewing this figure out of sheer boredom, but then I had a look at him, and I had to begrudgingly admit he’s the best Legends Strange we’ve had yet. But I’m still not going to spend a lot of time on him.

As the package suggests, this is Strange as he appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and while his costume still hits most of the beats that it did since Strange was introduced in his own flick, it has been tweaked here and there to become what we’re looking at today, but it’s not so much all those nips and tucks to the costume that make this figure my favorite version so far, but rather the crisp and clean sculpt and coloring that makes it work so well. The blue plastic tunic is more refined, and I love the sculpted pleats that converge down the center of his chest. The network of belts are particularly well done here, with some excellent texturing and some sharp detail in the fixtures and the Sling Ring. Alas, the tunic has no slits in the sides and as such in severely inhibits his leg articulation, and thereby inhibits a lot of the fun of the figure.

The Cloak of Levitation looks great, but it’s pretty close to what we got in the First Ten Years Infinity War set. This one seems to be blowing a bit more to the left hand side, rather than being more centered. Still, it looks more like a new sculpt than a re-sculpt. It only has a lick of gold paint on the fixtures by the collar, and the sculpted tailoring on the back of the Cloak is a little soft, but I dig the texture work on the interior. The Cloak secures fairly well on the neck and shoulders and pegs into the figure’s back for a little extra stability. The red plastic of the cape really compliments the blue and brown of the rest of the costume. I will say, however, that it would have been nice to get just one Strange with a softgoods Cloak with a wire in it. The Cloak is practically its own character. It deserved softgoods at least once.

The portrait here is also the best we’ve seen, both in terms of Cumberbatch likeness and overall sculpt and execution. The figure from the original film was fine for the time, but looks a spot too generic to me now, and the First Ten Years box release is also good, but maybe a bit too much caricature in it, compared to his one. That’s it! This one is great, Hasbro… You can stop now! No more Cumberbatches… please!

You get a new Eye of Agamotto hanging around Strange’s neck. It looks nice, but I prefer the one that came with the last release. It was a little less chunky. Wait, didn’t this contain the Time Stone in the MCU? Did he still wear it in No Way Home? Was it just an empty shell? I can’t even remember. These movies are starting to blur together.

And now it’s time to bitch about hands again, because apparently I have a real hand fixation with this wave. Once again, we get a pretty useless set of accessory holding hands with Strange, and I’ll point out yet again that we didn’t get any splayed finger wall-crawling hands with Integrated Suit Spidey. Strange’s stock hands are OK for spellcasting, but if we’re getting a second pair, give him those two finger extended hands that he uses to trace his spells with, not hands for holding accessories he doesn’t come with. Alls I’m saying is Hasbro should have shifted that little bit of hand budget over Spider-Man’s way.

He does come with a set of hands that are permanently attached to some magic effect parts, and these are pretty cool. They’re a huge step up from the clumsy grab-bar we got on the magic discs bundled with the previous Stranges. I like the rough edges, and the sculpted inscriptions look really nice.

It’s a real tribute to how great this figure turned out, that I didn’t just post a couple of pictures and write: “Here’s another Marvel Legends MCU Doctor Strange. I can’t even. The End.” So, kudos for that, Hasbro. But I’m seriously done with buying Cumberbatch Stranges in the Marvel Legends line. It’s enough. You’ve given us the definitive version and I would appreciate not having any future BAF parts locked away behind any more Cumberbatch purchases. Thank You and Good Day!

Sep 12 2022

Marvel Legends (Armadillo Wave): Integrated Suit Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson by Hasbro

Welcome back to another Marvel Monday! This week, I’m kicking off a brand new wave, and by that I really mean an older wave that’s on my backlog pile. The Armadillo Wave is a smattering of Spider-Man based figures covering everything from the MCU films, comics, and even the GamerVerse! I’d say only about two-thirds of this assortment really interested me, but the Armadillo Build-A-Figure was enough to tip me over to getting the whole wave. Let’s start today with Spider-Man in his Integrated Suit as he appeared in No Way Home, and then J. Jonah Jameson!

I re-watched No Way Home a couple of weeks back and I still really dig that movie a lot. Indeed, as sad as I am to say it, right now these Sony-Disney efforts are about the only thing holding my attention toward the MCU these days. Integrated Suit Spider-Man does not come with any BAF parts, but I’m guessing Hasbro figured this one would be the most desirable one in the wave and that he’d have no problem selling on his own.

The Integrated Suit is basically a merged version of both the Iron-Spider and Upgraded Suit, and the design is definitely not one of my favorites. I tend to like my Spidey suits red and blue and vibrant, although the straight-up Iron-Spider Suit was spiffy enough to get my approval. This one takes the black and red from the upgraded Suit and adds some gold trim and a gold spider emblem on the chest and back, as well as gold web-shooters. The gold does spruce up the Upgraded Suit design, but I still think this whole design is just a mess. Of course, none of that is the figure’s fault, and to be fair, I think Hasbro did a pretty nice job with what they had to work with. The paint here is very sharp, and the texturing on the red parts of the suit looks fantastic. I do, however, think a little wash or panel lining in the web pattern would have looked nice.

You get only one portrait, which feels kind of cheap given the lack of a BAF part. Hasbro has enough Tom Holland heads by now that they really should have thrown one in here. And if not an unmasked head, than maybe a second masked head with squinting eyes.

The articulation is everything I expect from my Spidey Legends these days, which means it has all the usual points plus the shoulder crunches. You won’t get some of the extreme poses you will out of the more expensive imports, but I still had a whole bunch of fun playing around with this figure, and he’ll likely spend some time on my desk so I have something to fiddle around with on my down time.

You get two sets of hands: Fists and thwippy hands, and once again here the figure comes up short. With no BAF part and no extra head, the least Hasbro could have done was throw in the splayed finger hands we’ve seen with some previous Spidey Legends releases. I think this wave came out before the big price hike, but with Legends now approaching $30 each, I’m going to need more to get me to keep going even as a selective buyer.

Overall, I think this is a decent figure, it’s just based on a suit design that I’m not terrifically fond of. Still, if anything I think the design works better as a toy than on the big screen and Hasbro did a decent job making me like it a little more here. An extra head, another pair of hands, and a little linework on the web pattern, and I’d have no other complaints. Still, even with no BAF part, I’m glad I picked him up. Let’s move on to J.J. Jameson!

OK, so I absolutely lost my shit when I saw that post-credits stinger at the end of Far From Home with J.K. Simmons reprising his role as J. Jonah, and again in No Way Home. Say what you will about the Raimi Spider-Man movies, and I am most definitely still a fan, but Simmons as Jameson was pitch-perfect casting. It was inspired. Still, this figure is something of a consolation prize, because I would have much rather had younger, newspaperman Jameson from those films as a modern Legends figure. But hey, I’ll take what I can get, and I still think this figure is a real treat. This looks to be mostly a reuse of the business-suit body that we’ve seen in the past with characters like Agent Coulson and Chameleon, but the lack of tie puts it a lot closer to the Bruce Banner figure we got in the Age of Ultron 4-pack. The key difference is Jameson here has one button of the sports jacket buttoned. I don’t remember seeing that on a previous suited figure, so it may be some new sculpting there, or just recycled from a figure I missed. The suit is blue, the underlying shirt is white, and he’s got a freshly polished pair of black shoes. Yup, this was a pretty easy figure for Hasbro to knock out, and as such I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

The two portraits are really spot on for a contemporary Simmons. And even without the full head of hair and the trademark silver wing tips, this is still J. Jonah through and through. The sculpt does a beautiful job of recreating every line in his face, both in the relatively calm portrait and the angry shouty one. And let’s be honest, who among us is going to display this figure without the shouty face?

You get two sets of hands, the first of which are relaxed hands. Well, I say relaxed hands, but they really aren’t. They’re actually more like flat karate chop hands, and they don’t really fit this figure unless you want to have Jameson doing the robot at the Daily Bugle’s annual Christmas party. And honestly, I just don’t think that’s his style. A pair of actual relaxed hands would have been more welcome here, and we all know Hasbro has done them before, so it’s odd they went with these instead.

Now, the second pair is more his type. You get a pointing finger on his right hand and a left hand that is clenched into a tight fist of righteous anger. Combine these with the shouty head, and you’ve got all you’ll ever need!

As I stand with one foot ready to step outside the Marvel Legends collecting circle, figures like these give me hope that maybe I’m not quite done yet. Jameson surely isn’t the most exciting figure around and he isn’t the version of Simmons/Jameson that I really wanted, BUT… I love him, and I love that Hasbro gave him to us. Likewise, the Integrated Suit ranks pretty far down on my list of Spider-Man’s MCU suits, and yet I can still find some fun and joy in this figure. Off the top of my head, I honestly couldn’t tell you what other figures are in this wave, so it’ll be a surprise when I dive into the box to get my next figure to review, but so far the assortment is off to a pretty OK start.