Tag Archives: x-men

Mar 23 2022

Marvel Legends (Colossus Wave): Cyclops and Rogue by Hasbro

I’m in the process of making my way through the second Age of Apocalypse themed wave of Marvel Legends. So far I’ve checked out Magneto and Sabretooth, and today I’m doubling up with a look at Earth-295’s Cyclops and Rogue!

The figures feature some great character art on the side panels and the X-Men logo on the fronts. I think it would have been cool if they did a little more branding for Age of Apocalypse, but I throw these packages out anyway, so it’s no big deal. Each figure comes with one of Colossus’ limbs, and Rogue comes with an extra Colossus hand. Let’s start with Cyclops!

I think Cyclops’ AoA makeover is pretty fun. He’s no longer the clean-cut, straight-arrow, as his dystopian reality (and the glory of mid-90’s comic design) has taken its toll on him. The base figure here is quite simple, with generic blue buck, representing his sleeveless bodysuit. His arms are left bare, but he has some painted gloves to match his suit. The bulk of the new sculpting comes in his gold belt with shoulder armor strap, as well as the reinforced armor on his right glove, and a full armored sleeve on his left. The electric blue used for his suit is absolutely gorgeous and makes for a nice contrast with the gold used for his extra bits. I’m not usually a big fan of the type of gold plastic Hasbro used here, but they did add some scrapes and scuffs to the armor pieces, and I think it actually looks quite good.

The head sculpt is of course new, and like Magneto, Cyclops has trouble finding a barber in Earth-295. I’m actually getting a little bit of a Tommy Wiseau vibe off of this portrait, which is kind of awesome. The copious coif of brown hair is parted to the left to expose the additional gear attached to his visor, and the lone crimson lens covering his remaining eye, while it hangs over his missing peeper. A grim expression is chiseled into the exposed lower half of his face.

Cyclops features pretty standard articulation for this line. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps, double-hinges in the elbows, and hinged pegs in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed in the hips, have swivels in the thighs and lower legs, double-hinges in the knees, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. You get a waist swivel and ab-crunch hinge in the torso, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. Cyclops comes equipped with a pair of fists, but sadly no other hands. Let’s move on to Rogue!

Wow, these colors! Despite her grim surroundings, Rogue went for some eye-assaulting colors on this outfit. You still get the usual yellow, but here it’s mixed with some dark green for her upper sleeves, reinforced panels on her hips and thighs, and electric green for the rest. She has a pair of yellow wrist bangles, and one wide yellow thigh strap on her right leg. We got a fair amount of new sculpting for this figure, mostly evident on her baggie upper sleeves, and her chunky yellow boots, complete with red oval fixtures on the fronts. Lastly, she has a loose green collar resting on her shoulders, with silver studs.

And then there’s the head sculpt. You know how some people say there are comics that are un-filmable? Well, this may be a case of a comic hairdo that’s un-sculptable. I’m sure Hasbro did their best, but this thing is just a mess. And it doesn’t help that they also had to give her a giraffe neck to make it work. The face itself is OK. She looks kind of gaunt next to the Earth-616 Rogue, but maybe it’s because she isn’t on a steady diet of Gambit’s gumbo.

Articulation here is in line with most of the Marvel ladies, which means you get rotating hinges in the elbows, instead of double-hinges and bicep swivels. You get a ball joint under the chest, instead of a waist swivel and ab-crunch hinge. And Rogue has swivels in the thighs, but not in the lower legs.

Unlike Cyclops, Rogue actually does come with a second set of hands, so you get fists, and the same style of splayed finger hands that we got with the previous Rogue.

Coming into this duo, I expected to like Rogue a lot, and not care for Scott Summers at all, but the truth turned out to be the opposite. I think Cyclops is a great looking figure with a style that really tickles my nostalgia for 90’s comic tropes. Rogue is by no means a terrible figure, but it’s just hard for me to get past that hair sculpt.

Mar 9 2022

Marvel Legends (Colossus Wave): Sabretooth by Hasbro

I had originally planned on tackling this second Age of Apocalypse-themed wave by doubling up each review, and that’s still the plan going forward. But I was at a loss for time last week, so I gave Magneto his own review, and now I’m doing the same for Sabretooth!

Magneto did not come with a BAF part, but Sabretooth comes with Colossus’ head and a second piece for the tie on his mask. I was surprised to see that this is the first time Sabretooth is getting the spotlight here on FFZ, as I never did get around to reviewing his release in the Apocalypse Wave, but I will bring in that figure for a comparison picture at the end.

Besides the new look, this Sabretooth is a helluva lot bulkier than the previous release. He’s a big boy with a decent mix of generic figure buck and some fresh sculpting for his costume. The torso, goin, and legs are all just standard muscle, cast in a light tan, which borderlines on orange. The boots and left gauntlet are dark brown, and all have some nice texturing to look like rough leather, and he has a simple belt to match. The right gauntlet has a matched hand, but the gauntlet sleeve is reinforced to look like metal, with heavy bolts and an extension to fortify the back of Sabretooth’s hand. The final piece of the costume includes a dark brown collar that extends out to his shoulders, and has silver bolts. Meanwhile, the arms are cast in flesh-tone plastic and have sculpted and painted hair, similar to what we’ve seen in some past Wolverine figures!

You get two head sculpts, and I really dig both of them a lot! It’s packed with personality. with a wonderful smirk, exposing just a hint of tooth. The eyes are deep set with big bushy eyebrows, and the well-detailed face is punctuated with a glorious butt-chin. The hair sculpt is also worthy of praise. It’s a separate sculpt, which gives it a clean hairline, parts around the ears, and there’s a plug in ponytail that can swivel.

The second portrait is all business, with his pupils gone, and his mouth drawn up into a big, toothy snarl. You also get a second ponytail to plug into the back of this head as well. That may seem like a no-brainer, but you never know with Hasbro these days. They could have opted to save a few pennies and only include one.

Articulation here is textbook for this bulkier Legends buck. That includes rotating hinges in the shoulders and hips, swivels in the biceps and thighs, hinged pegs for the wrists, hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles, double hinges in the knees, and elbows, a waist swivel, an ab crunch hinge, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. Sabretooth also includes two pairs of hands: One pair of fists, and one pair relaxed. There aren’t any other accessories here, but I can’t say he’s really missing any.

I love this look for Sabretooth. It’s clean and tight and just the right mix of generic buck and new sculpt. I also think he looks great on the bigger, bulkier body. And while he still looks pretty damn tough, he appropriately lacks the savage and terrifying expression of the Earth-616 Sabretooth. So far, this Wave is hitting it’s mark two-for-two. Next week, I’ll double up with a look at a couple more!

Mar 4 2022

Marvel Legends (Colossus Wave): Magneto by Hasbro

Oh boy, am I backlogged on my Marvel Legends reviews! I mean, I was already behind, and then I had three new waves arrive and I just keep getting in deeper and deeper! Today, I’m going to start in on the second Age of Apocalypse themed wave and I was going to double up, but I was so pressed for time that I wound up going solo with Magneto. I am going to try to check in again this weekend with Sabretooth and then double up the rest of the reviews for this assortment, so we’ll see how that goes!

It goes without saying, that I was a huge fan of the first Age of Apocalypse wave, and I was surprised to see Hasbro serve up a second so quickly. The first assortment had some heavy hitters and the amazing Sugar Man Build-A-Figure, so it’s going to be a tough act to follow. But, this second assortment is also bringing some major players and the Colossus BAF looks like he’s no slouch!

Magneto arrives sharing most of the body used for the Earth 616 Magneto packed in with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and that’s to be expected. The red plastic is the same, and even the belt is lifted for this figure, albeit looking more purple than blue. You get some minor paint changes to the boots and gauntlets, his undies are now left red, and the addition of some shoulder pads, but that’s about it from the neck down. The cape is now red, and notably smaller. It still has the bolted neck ring, but that’s been reworked a bit, and this cape doesn’t hover over the shoulders like it did on the previous figure. All in all, this Magneto brings just enough new sculpting to the table to make him stand out.

The head sculpt is completely new, with Erik sporting his manly dystopian pigtails. The portrait packs a lot of personality, with Magneto’s struggle to lead The X-Men clearly taking its toll on him. The plastic coif is pretty magnificent too, and his braids are soft and bendy enough so as not to impede articulation too badly.

You also get a helmeted portrait, which sadly I am not nearly as impressed with. I like the styling well enough, but the paint application could have been a lot more precise. There’s some notable slop around the purple accents, and while on the subject of paint slop, the neck ring is pretty messy too. I also think the helmeted head looks too small, compared to the un-helmeted one. Not only does it look like his head might have shrunk a bit, but it seems unlikely he could get al that hair in there. There’s nothing terrible here, but enough issues to be disappointing.

Since we’ve seen this body many times, there are no real surprises when it comes to articulation, so I won’t run through it all. He does come with two sets of hands: One set of fists and one set of power-wielding hands!

And speaking of powers, you get two effect parts to wrap around his wrists or project from his hands. These are cast in the standard soft plastic with a translucent purple color.

Despite some issues, I really do like this figure, especially since I was sorry to see him omitted from the first wave. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, as Hasbro didn’t have to do a whole lot to convert their regular Magneto to the AoA version, so it’s fair to say he’s one of the budget saving figures in this assortment. But that having been said, he’s a great representation of the character’s look in the comic and a fine addition to my growing Age of Apocalypse shelf!

Aug 2 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentinel Wave): Tri-Sentinel Build-A-Figure by Hasbro

If you stopped by last Friday only to find no new content, I offer my apologies. It was a busy work week, which flowed right into a working weekend. But now it’s Monday and I have a couple of days off to spend some time opening some toys! And it’s one of those Marvel Mondays, where I can sit back, have a pour of Jameson, light up a fine cigar, and reap the rewards of having dutifully purchased all the little plastic people in a Marvel Legends Wave. Sure, I was going to buy them anyway, but now I can finally assemble the Build-A-Figure, and in this case, it’s a three-headed mutant-hunting robot freak! Let’s take a look at the Tri-Sentinel!

While this guy’s design is a tad unconventional, he’s not all that different from most BAFs. You get a torso, four limbs, but in this case three heads instead of one. And yet with a total of eight pieces, they still stiffed Wolverine and gave him BAF parts at all! Tri-Sentinel goes together just fine right up until I got to those heads and then things turned into a nightmare for my pour thumbies. The heads are on ball joints and getting them into the sockets required a nightmare or pressure. At one point, I thought the problem was that each head was designed for a specific socket, but nope, I just wasn’t pressing hard enough. You’d think with all the video games I play, my calloused thumbs would have been better suited to the task, but apparently they are still soft and delicate. Anywho… As you may have already surmised, this isn’t Loki’s Tri-Sentinel, but rather the Theta Sentinel. Why’d they change the name? Who the hell knows! I’m pretty sure, this guy is original to the House of X/Power of X stories. At the very least I can say that it’s the first time I encountered the design.

And what a slick design this is! Like most technology (except for maybe televisions), Sentinel tech seems to get smaller as it gets more advanced. And while Theta Sentinel has some significant height on most regular Legends figures, it isn’t the towering, bulky arsenal-type Sentinels of old. Quite the contrary, this fellow has almost organic in his curves, and he’s super lanky in the limbs. I love me some spindly robots, because it just makes them creepier and more realistic when you know there’s no way it could be a guy in a suit. Unless it’s Doug Jones. I’m pretty sure that guy could fit into anything. This Sentinel does have some bulk in the upper torso, and those flared shoulders give him an aggressively stylish look. I also dig how the upper body tapers to such a narrow connection to his hips. He’s also got some seriously long claw-like hands, which are intimidating enough to make Lady Deathstrike take a second look!

I absolutely love the deco on this guy. The metallic purple and silver contrasts nicely with the matte black. It’s only a little bit reminiscent of the old Sentinels. Maybe just enough to get a whif of familiarity, while still looking new and fresh. It looks like all the paint lines are incorporated into the sculpt, which is always a good thing. Otherwise, there aren’t a lot of panel lines or other busy details in the Sentinel’s armor, which serves to drive home its advanced futuristic look.

The three heads are damn creepy, with what I can only describe as techno-skulls for faces. All three faces are identical with elongated mouth pieces and narrow, angry red eyes. Their heads are capped off with what could be considered a more stylized version of the old Sentinel caps. The heads all connect to an exposed area of the upper body, which is sculpted with some really nice detail, giving us a glimpse at the mechanisms under the purple armor. Ironically, as difficult as it was to get the heads in, they tend to pull out when I try to manipulate them. As a result, I find the ball joints they connect with to be too frustrating to use as a point of articulation. Instead, I tend to just turn the head where it connects to the stalk. It’s serviceable, but also a shame that I can’t get much use out of the ball joints.

And speaking of articulation, despite his rather unique design, Theta Sentinel has most of the usual points. You get rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. There’s a swivel in his waist. His legs have rotating hinges in the hips, double hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. He’s pretty nimble, and while it can take a little practice to get him to stand, he’s actually a bit better balanced than I expected him to be.

As far as Build-A-Figures go, this one was a real treat to finally get together. I kind of wish Hasbro released this figure as a Deluxe, because I wouldn’t mind having a couple more of them. Sure, we’ve seen Hasbro re-release BAFs as single packaged figures before, but somehow I doubt that’ll be the case with this one, so I’ll just be happy with the one I have for now.

And that wraps up this wave! It took me a while to get through it, but was worth it in the end. It was actually fun to be able to review some Legends that were based on a fairly modern book that I actually read for a change. As much as I can’t stand the direction Marvel has taken these days, Hickman will always bring me back to the fold. And this was a damn solid wave of figures. Indeed, the only one in the batch that I would consider a letdown is Marvel Girl, and that’s just because of her restricted leg articulation, which not only makes her no fun to play with, but she really can’t even stand up without looking awkward. And that’s a shame, because the sculpt and colors are pretty tight. I may be starting a new wave next Monday, or I may be detouring to check out something of the Hot Toys variety. We’ll see how much time I have on my hands, between now and then!

Jul 26 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentinel Wave): Omega Sentinel by Hasbro

After some Marvel Monday meanderings, I’m finally down to opening the last figure in the House of X inspired Legends wave, and I saved the figure I since I was most excited for: Omega Sentinel! So, let’s check out Karima Shapandar…

I caught myself almost referring to Karima as a recent character, but holy shit, it’s been 21 years since she was introduced in the pages of X-Men Unlimited. God damn, I’m so old! One of the things that always fascinates and terrifies me is the blending of body horror and cybernetics, so it should be no surprise that I find her to be a compelling character, with lots of opportunity to explore the lines that divide human and machine.

And it doesn’t hurt that she just looks do damn cool! The towering robotic hunters have given way to compact elegance in Karima’s poetic female form! Omega Sentinel sports a form-fitting white and red suit with black trim, which gives a telling nod to the colors used to brand this wave’s packaging. Given the arms, I expected to get some fresh and original sculpting on this figure, but I was surprised to see that the entire figure appears to be new, which makes up for the fact that a number of releases in this assortment were done on the cheap with paint and recycled parts. In this case, every last detail in the paint on the figure is also reflected in the sculpt. That combined with the coloring makes this figure really pop!

While most of the body is all woman, Omega Sentinel’s technological side mostly manifests in her shoulder, arms, and neck, as well as the two plugs that appear down her front. I like the dark gray plastic, Hasbro used for the arms, you get some more black trim around the shoulder pieces, and some red paint hits on the shoulder nodules.

Omega Sentinel includes two portraits, but the one that comes on the figure is the synthetic head that reflects her appearance in the House of X. Hasbro did a beautiful job with this one, using more of that snappy red paint for the majority of the head. She has white panels, which are also part of the sculpt, and her eyes and eyebrows are painted with some crisp applications. It’s a great likeness to the character’s appearance in the comic panels.

The alternate and more human head is an absolutely amazing sculpt, and from a design standpoint I love it. She has a gray mask partially covering her face, but leaving the mouth and chin exposed, while a mane of wild hair splays out in all directions. Unfortunately, as great as it looks, this portrait is also a bafflingly huge missed opportunity to give us something comic accurate for the character. I don’t know why Hasbro chose to go with this rather specific look, nor can I comprehend the choice of skin and hair coloring, but it’s a shame they didn’t go with something more… correct? I’ve poked around a bit to see if I could come up with any answers as to what happened here, but I had no luck.

For the most part, the articulation here is pretty normal stuff. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. There’s a ball joint under the chest, which is standard for the female Legends, but this was an example where I really missed having a waist swivel. Maybe it was because I had a hard time putting her down and just kept playing with her. The neck is ball jointed and hinged, and offers a nice range of motion for either head. The big change here comes in the arms, and that’s because you can swap out Omega Sentinel’s fore arms for weapons. The shoulders and wrists have the usual rotating hinges, but the elbows are hinged pins, so you can pull the arms out at the elbows and replace them.

I don’t know what either of these weapons are supposed to be, but let’s just go with some kind of focused energy beam emitters. One has some paint apps to make it look like it has glowing bits, while the other is just a giant maw. You can use either weapon for either arm, or just double her up for extra firepower! It’s a great gimmick and it really adds to the fun factor of this figure!

Coming into this wave, I was excited to get Omega Sentinel and now that I have her in hand, I’m very pleased with how she turned out. Yes, I’d still say that Hasbro needs to serve up an apology head at some point down the road. Hell, I wouldn’t mind a re-release, because there’s nothing wrong with having extra Sentinels. It’s a shame, because they really did do a nice sculpt for that portrait, I just don’t know what they were going for when they colored it. It doesn’t really detract from the base figure, and I still love this one a lot. Next week, I’ll put this wave to bed with a look at the Tri-Sentinel!

Jul 19 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentinel Wave): Moira McTaggert by Hasrbo


After meandering around a bit for the past few Marvel Mondays, I guess it’s time to swing back to my unfinished business with the Tri-Sentinel Wave! There’s just two more figures, and today I’m going with Dr. Moira McTaggert!

I’ve said my piece about the packaging for this wave over and over again, so let’s just say I dig it a lot and leave it at that. Moira seems to have been a polarizing character in House of X, thanks to some major (and heavily Hickmanesque) retconning. I actually had a pretty spirited discussion with one of my co-workers over it. It was admittedly weird to see such a major reassessment of a comic character that’s been around almost as long as I’ve been alive, but in the end I was pretty cool with it. It certainly wasn’t done out of hand, it was a major push forward in the X-Men story as a whole, and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes, assuming she ever decides to leave No-Place. Thanks to two sets of arms and two heads, you get a couple of display options, but let’s start with how she comes out of the box.

Dr. Moira, as lab-coated geneticist looks pretty good. She’s sporting a violet sweater with a maroon skirt and shoes. The coat is molded in soft plastic like a vest, with the sleeves sculpted onto the arms. It’s an old Hasbro trick and it works great, even if you can see the gaps in the shoulder holes in certain poses. Like any good nerd doing The Science, she has her coat pocket well stocked with pens. She also comes with two sets of hands. One is a pair of fists, the other features a right hand with the fingers splayed, which I believe is the usual powers-casting hand, and another to hold her accessory.

The scientist head sculpt is OK, but it’s definitely the lesser of the two. I don’t want to pick on the glasses too much, because it’s really tough to get those right in this scale. These don’t look too bad, but the paint on the frames is a little sloppy around the lenses. They also kind of look like Coke-Bottle Glasses, which makes this portrait unintentionally funny looking to me. But my biggest gripe here is that the painted lipstick does not match the mouth. Moira’s mouth was clearly sculpted with a dour, down-turned expression, while the lips are just painted straight on. It just doesn’t look good.

There are no surprises when it comes to articulation. Despite having swap-out arms, all the points function normally. I am happy to report that Moira’s skirt does not inhibit her articulation nearly as badly as Marvel Girl’s did. It feels like it’s made out of a softer plastic, and there’s a generous slit running up the right side. Not that I need Dr. Moira to be doing anything crazy, other than holding her Genetics Book, which is the only accessory she comes with. To change up Moira’s look, you basically pull out her arms to remove the lab coat and replace them with her sweater arms. Then you pop off the bespectacled head sculpt, put on her neckerchief, and pop on the second head. I should note that it’s really hard to pull the lab coat arms out of my figure.

So yeah, Casual Moira ditches the lab coat in favor of the white neckerchief and fashionable hat. Overall, I do like this version of the figure better, but I think a lot of that has to do with this second head sculpt.

The glasses are gone, the lipstick still doesn’t quite match the mouth, but I still think it’s a huge improvement. It’s like in those dopey comedies when the unpopular girl is obviously just a really attractive actress wearing glasses and has her hair up, only to have her get a makeover, which just involves taking off her glasses and letting her hair down. The hat could have used a bit more detail, but it’s fine.

Moira may not be the most exciting release around, but her Marvel Legends figure is long overdue. I really dig the extra effort they put into her. I mean, it’s only fair that a woman with an untold number of lives should at least get two display options for her action figure. And you can always pick up a second for Pyro to light on fire. That brings me to just one more figure in the wave before the BAF! So, next week I’ll wrap things up with Omega Sentinel!

Jun 28 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentenel Wave): Marvel Girl by Hasbro

After a detour last week, I’m returning to the Tri-Sentinel Wave from Jonathan Hickman’s House of X! Today I’m opening up my fifth figure in the wave, leaving just two more to go before I can assemble my Tri-Sentinel. And while I didn’t intentionally plan it this way, all the remaining figures are ladies! So, let’s go ahead and open up Jean Grey, aka Marvel Girl!

Once again, I love the package design for this wave. The futuristic stylings of the X-Men logo, the clean black, white and red deco, and the character name printed on the front in the Krakoan language. Every once and a while I’m tempted to save the boxes for a wave and this is one of those times. But I’m not. Because, no room! Jean looks absolutely smashing amidst this presentation, and as we’ll soon see, I might have been better off leaving her in there.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is a fantastic looking figure. House of X sees Jean return to her classic Marvel Girl outfit, and I do dig me some classic X-Men costumes! Naturally, I was excited to get this figure and I was quite pleased with what I initially saw. While the soft plastic skirt is cast separately from the torso, it’s pretty damn convincing as being all one dress. And it’s a simple one at that, especially when you consider that every damn superhero costume these days are made out of colored basketball skins! The green is perfectly matches from the skirt to the upper body, and on to the sleeves. That simplicity is only broken up by the textured black belt with green belt loops, and an old school rectangular X-branded belt buckle. The yellow boots are painted on the legs, but some sculpting for the modest heels on the feet, while the yellow gauntlets have sculpted flares to give them that cool buccaneer style! Going strictly by looks, I love the way this costume turned out and the coloring on this figure is very striking!

The portrait is equally solid. The yellow mask appears to be sculpted separately and attached to the head sculpt, which gives it a lot of depth. The face is pretty, and they captured her flowing red hair particularly well. OK, the hair is more orange than red, but I think it adds to the overall coloring here nicely. The hair parts at each shoulder, and it hovers a bit to not inhibit the neck movement too badly. While Hasbro has been employing halftone printing for their faces lately, this one appears to be painted, but that’s fine because the paintwork is pretty sharp. I had to get in pretty close to notice any imperfections.

What could possibly drag down such a great looking figure? Terrible articulation! Despite having a bit of a slit running up the right side, the plastic skirt renders the leg articulation above the knees pretty much useless, and that really limits what you’re going to want to do with the knee and ankle articulation, other than make small adjustments to try to keep her standing. Unless you just want her flat out kneeling, those double hinges in the knees just aren’t going to help. The legs are also a bit rubbery, and mine were slightly warped out of the package.

The normal ball joint that we get under the chest in the female figures has been moved down to her waist, which feels weird all by itself. And finally, the elbows hardly allow for even a 90-degree range of movement. Tally all of this up and you get a recipe for a figure that is absolutely no fun to play around with. I’m doing full slits on each side of the skirt to free things up a bit, but I’m not sure yet. Look, I do understand that a lot of these problems are trade offs for the costume’s aesthetics, but it doesn’t change the fact that it makes for a rather boring figure.

As far as accessories go, Marvel Girl comes with two sets of hands: One pair of fists, and one pair of the old powers-slinging hands. She also comes with a Krakoan Flower, fresh from Mars or perhaps The Savage Land. It’s an excellent choice, since these flowers played such a major role in the book. The purple bulb comes sprouting out of a gray spherical flower pot. Jean can sort of hold it in her powers hands, but because there isn’t a lot of room for leg adjustments, she frequently wants to fall forward when carrying it. So, don’t ask her to be the Flower Girl at your wedding!

Wow, this was a quick in and out as far as reviews go, but truth be told there just isn’t a lot more that I can do with poor old Marvel Girl here. She looks outstanding on the shelf, and the fact that Hickman brought back the Marvel Girl costume gave Hasbro a great excuse to give us this classic costume in a figure. I would imagine that even collectors who aren’t a fan of the House of X series would want this figure for their display. It’s just too bad that articulation had to take such a hit here and there’s only so many pictures I can take of her standing straight and waving her arms about. Sure, I’m still happy to have her, but I wish she was more fun.

Jun 14 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentinel Wave): Wolverine and Cyclops by Hasbro

Howdy, Toyhounds! This week I’ve got Marvel Monday right back where it belongs… on a Monday. I had a fairly relaxed weekend and plenty of time to open some toys, so let’s jump right in with two more figures from the House of X-inspired assortment of Marvel Legends X-Men figures! Last time I had a look at Professor X and Magneto and I came away a little lukewarm, if I’m being honest. Let’s see how we make out with Wolverine and Cyclops!

Once again I really dig the packaging this time around. The boxes are perfectly branded to the books, complete with the futuristic X-Men logo on the front and the characters’ names in the Krakoan language beneath it. The figures themselves also look quite stunning against the backdrop of the red and white illustrated panel behind the clear tray. And if you lift your eyes to the top, you can see that when all is said and done we’ll be building a Tri-Sentinel, although Wolverine does not come with a BAF part. Let’s go ahead and start with him!

Wow, do I love this figure! The design takes the classic coloring of Wolverine’s brown suit and mixes it up with the tactical accents of his X-Force suit, and the result is something rather spectacular. Now I’m not saying I prefer brown and mustard to blue and yellow, but I still dig it a whole lot. Gone are the flared boots and in their place rugged combat boots with matching heavy gauntlets. I’m pretty sure this figure just recycles all the body sculpt from the Wendigo Wave Wolverine, which in turn borrowed a lot from the Juggernaut Wave Wolverine. Damn, I’m really terrible about keeping all these Wolverines straight! There sure have been a lot of them!

At least the belt looks new! It’s a simple brown belt with a leather-like texture and a red and yellow X-branded buckle. The belt is sculpted separately but fits the waist quite snugly and stays in place. Also worth mentioning are the beefy battle claws! We’ve seen some rather frail and anemic claws on Wolverines in the past, but these are just great. They’re nice and straight, not too bendy. Sure, you only get the one pair of popped-claw fists, but that’s all I need!

Only one set of hands, but two heads! You get a younger Wolverine portrait with Logan grinning a broad and toothy grin. I dig this portrait a lot as it looks like Wolverine is smiling as he’s imagining what he’s going to do with his adversary’s entrails, but he’s not letting anyone else in on the joke. The paint around his skin and the cowl could have been a little tighter here, but the sculpt is top notch stuff. Just look at how deep the eyes are set! Awesome!

And you also get future Wolverine where he’s sporting a beard and looking a lot more grim, dour, and crotchety. Hey, Mother Mold… Come get your damn Sentinels off my lawn, bub! Everything I said about the paint and sculpt on the previous head rings true here. The paint around the cowl could have been a little sharper, but everything else is fab. They didn’t go nuts on the beard, but I think it looks good. And yeah, this is likely the head I will be using to display on the figure most of the time.

Here at FFZ we recognize that Legends Wolverine Fatigue or LWF is a real syndrome, but it’s just not one that I happen to suffer from. Wolverine always makes for a fun figure, especially since he’s always got those extra shoulder crunches. Whenever I get a new one, he usually hangs on my desk for a while before getting retired to a shelf or tote. I just love playing with them, and this figure is no different! Let’s move on to Cyclops!

Cyclops’ costume got a rework in this book as well and while I wasn’t especially impressed by it in the comic panels, I have to say I’m really liking the way it turned out on this figure. The dark body suit has very little in the way of sculpted detail, but those bright blue stripes look really spiffy. Cyclops is also sporting a pair of silver arm bracers and an X-branded belt with some pouches. I never really think of Scott as a pouch kinda guy, but the belt looks good and I guess he has to carry around his smug self-righteousness somewhere. The tiny snaps on the brown pouches are painted silver and the buckle is red and silver. Like Wolverine, Cyclops only comes with one set of hands: A right fist and a left visor activating hand. Which brings us to…

A pretty solid head sculpt! There’s nothing crazy going on here, but the lower half of his face looks great. Unlike Wolverine, there are sharp lines between his face and the cowl, and the visor looks like it might be sculpted separately from the head.

Cyclops comes with a second head with gritting teeth, some effect parts around the corners of the visor, and a slot for the really big effect beam. I dig the way this looks, and despite being pretty substantial, Scott can still stand just fine with it inserted into his head. Pretty damn cool!

I really wasn’t expecting too much out of this pair, but once I got them opened and in hand, I fell in love with them pretty fast. Neither is my favorite look for the characters, but they do make for some cool variations. And besides, it’s nice to have figures from one of the best Marvel books that I’ve read in quite a while. Yeah, that’s not exactly high praise, considering my stance on Marvel’s offerings these days, but it was meant as a compliment! As for next week’s Marvel Monday, I may be taking a slight detour of the 3 3/4-inch variety before getting back to the Legends and the rest of this wave…

Jun 9 2021

Marvel Legends (Tri-Sentinel Wave): Magneto and Professor X by Hasbro

That’s right… Welcome to Marvel Monday on a Wednesday! As I’m fond of pointing out in some of my Marvel Legends reviews, I stopped being a regular reader of Marvel Comics a while back when they decided to stop focusing on things like decent art, good stories, and respect for established characters. As always, there are exceptions to the rule, and I did poke my head in a couple years back to read Jonathan Hickman’s House of X because… well it was Jonathan Hickman and the art looked pretty good. I enjoyed it enough to eventually pick up the collected hardcover edition, and naturally I was pretty thrilled to see the book getting a full wave of Legends. Enough so that I pre-ordered this one, instead of hunting them down individually. So here we go, embarking on this wave with the two heavy hitters first… Magneto and Xavier!

House of X is full of all the standard Hickman-isms that I’ve grown to love. You get high concept stuff about evolution, the rise and fall of empires, secret knowledge, time travel, and lots of great nuggets of world-building, sometimes leaked between the pages of the actual story. I get that some people don’t dig his style of story telling, but I do. It keeps me invested in the story and getting the most out of it means my reading has to be less passive and more aggressive. The package branding looks great and even includes the characters’ name scrawled in the Krakoan language! I really wanted to keep these boxes, but in the end, space is too much of a limited commodity around here so into the bin they went! Let’s start with Professor X…

Cards on the table, Xavier’s appearance creeped me the hell out in this story. He’s out of his wheelchair sporting a lanky body in a tight body suit with the latest version of Cerebro worn pretty much all the time and covering most of his head. The combination of lanky body and giant head piece makes him look like some kind of cyborg-meat-lollypop and I just find it unsettling. And yeah, considering what Xavier gets up to in this book, that’s probably exactly what the look was going for. And while this figure conveys that look pretty well, it also means there’s really not a lot to it at all. From the neck down you get a completely generic black buck with no paint apps or detail at all.

At least they used one of the more articulated bodies, complete with those lateral crunches in the shoulders. You also get an extra pair of gesturing hands: One regular pointing hand and one “I’m pointing at my head because I’m concentrating” hand. On the downside, the joints on my figure are extremely soft and gummy, especially in the knees. It took me a bit of time to straighten them out enough so he would stand.

And while Hasbro banked a ton of time and effort on the body sculpt, the Cerebro head sculpt is quite excellent! The bulbous silver head piece includes a mess of wires and gizmos on the back, and a giant blue X-branded visor on the front.

You also get a head without Cerebro and with some psionic effects radiating from Xavier’s head. It’s a nice bonus to add some value, but it doesn’t do a lot for me. Ultimately, this figure accomplishes what it needs to do, but unless you’re a big fan of this story, I’m not sure it’s going to be worthy of a pick up. Sure, Cerebro looks awesome, but the rest of the figure is so drab and generic. I’m happy to have it, but I’m curious to see if it’ll be a peg-warmer around these parts. Moving on to Magneto…

Unlike Professor X, Magneto retains a lot of his classic costume design in this story, but he trades in his darker colors for a white-and-black outfit. And just as Xavier saved Hasbro the cost of a lot of new sculpting, much of Magneto here is just a repaint. I was, however, surprised to see some new stuff here. The boots and wrist bracers are different from the previous Magneto releases, and he also has a new belt with an X-branded buckle and some pouches. The cape, however, is a straight repaint from the his appearance in the three-pack with Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

I was expecting the head sculpt to be a straight repaint from that three-pack version as well, but it looks like it’s been reworked here. His Barbute-style helmet has been reshaped in a few areas, but unfortunately the paint on mine is pretty sloppy. It’s not too bad when viewed with the naked eye, but the closer you get, the worse it looks.

Magneto does not come with any effect parts or an un-helmeted head, but he does come with three pairs of hands, which I thought was oddly excessive. The token fists and power-casting hands are to be expected, but the third pair of accessory-holding hands seems pointless, since he comes with nothing to hold. Whatever the case, I found this figure to be a lot more photogenic and fun to play around with than Professor X. Sure, his look is a lot less imaginative than Xavier’s, but as an action figure, Magneto gets the nod as the better figure.

I was extremely excited for this wave, but I’ll confess that it feels to be off to a rocky start. I want to like the Professor X figure a whole lot more than I do. I can’t fault the design, as it looks just like his appearance in the book, but it just doesn’t make for a great figure. Magneto, on the other hand, at least isn’t a total quick-and-dirty repaint, and I’ve found that I like this look for him a lot. Next week, I’ll keep the reviews on this wave rolling along. I doubled up today because I knew I didn’t have a whole lot to say about these two, and I’m not sure if next week I’ll tackle another two figures or just focus on one!

Apr 26 2021

Marvel Legends (Retro Style): Silver Samurai by Hasbro

I’ve spent the last bunch of Marvel Mondays wandering through some of Hasbro’s 80 Year Anniversary releases, and it’s almost time to dig into another regular wave. But before that, let’s squeeze in at least one more! This one is actually a double dip, as it’s not only an 80 Year release, but also one of them Retro Carded figures!

I am by no means a completist when it comes to these Retro Carded figures. The inner turmoil over whether to open them or keep them carded takes too much of a toll on my frail booze-addled nerves. But, when it’s a first time release like Silver Samurai here, there’s no question I’m going to pick it up and tear into it. The package art harkens back to the old Toy Biz X-Men line, and even though I was already in college when that line was out, I still get the nostalgia feels from seeing these. The character art is nothing mind blowing, but the figure sure looks awesome on the card. I’ve had some luck in the past carefully razoring the bubble halfway around to slide the figure out without too much damage, but I still wound up tossing the card eventually.

As a character, Silver Samurai is almost as old as I am. I’ve actually got a couple years on him. Even still, I find that I haven’t encountered him all that often in my decades of Marvel meanderings, but I’m always pleased to see him turn up, mostly because I love his armor so damn much. He’s had run ins with all sorts of characters from Daredevil to Elektra and Spider-Man to Wolverine. And it turns out that he makes for a remarkably unique and beautiful action figure! I mean, just look at this guy, shining in all his silver glory!

I’m used to Hasbro using the Retro Carded waves for a lot of repacks and repaints, so it’s odd to me to see a figure like this, one that uses nearly all new tooling, to not get a regular boxed release. And yet here we are! Most of Kenuichio Harada’s armor is sculpted as part of the figure’s body, although the armored skirt and shoulder are attached separately, giving an already complex sculpt a bit more added depth. And boy do I love the detail on this armor. It takes a pretty traditional looking Samurai design and casts it in brilliant silver, complete with sculpted rivets, as well as the tiny ties and straps that are meant to keep it on. I particularly appreciate how Hasbro colored many of those straps white to distinguish them from the silver armor. It’s a little touch that they could have left out and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. It just shows that extra bit of care.

And speaking of colors, some of you may know by now that I’m quite the afficiando of premium silver paint on my action figures. Hasbro has been using some nice stuff lately, and it’s certainly on display here. Some of the pieces, like the shoulders and skirt have been left as plain gray-silver plastic, which contrasts nicely with the snappy silver painted parts. He also has the brilliant crimson Rising Sun emblazoned on his chest and a red orb on the crest of his helmet.

The head sculpt is every bit as good as the armored body, with the majestic helmet covering the top half of his face. The exposed lower half shows a down-turned mouth and a grim expression. The overlapping plates that make up the sides and back of the armor have more sculpted rivets, and his deep-set eyes are painted without pupils.

Silver Samurai comes with his two swords, which the package identifies as a Katana and Wakizashi. At first I was going to cry foul, as I thought they were the same length, but the Wakizashi blade is a tad shorter than the Katana, but not by much. The blades and Tsuba are left the same bare plastic color as the skirt and shoulders, and it’s a solid color, not that weird semi-translucent gray plastic Hasbro sometimes uses for accessories. The blades are soft, but don’t seem too prone to warping. The sculpted grips are painted black, and the belt includes a loop for each sword on the left hip.

Despite a big build and a full set of armor, Silver Samurai still has great articulation. All the usual points that I expect from my Legends dudes are represented here. He even has extra swivels in his lower legs. The shoulders aren’t as restrictive as I would have guessed, and the way the skirt is designed, he still enjoys a lot of range of motion in his hips. The joints all feel solid, and he is ridiculously fun to play around with. He is, however, not the best balanced figure out there, and I do sometimes have difficulties getting him to stand in the more extreme poses.

Silver Samurai is a prime example of me not needing to have a deep relationship with a character in order to love a figure. Indeed, I would imagine that even if I weren’t collecting Marvel Legends, I would have still picked up this figure if I encountered him on the pegs. He’s a great design, which Hasbro has nearly flawlessly recreated in action figure form. And since I was never able to find the Marvel Universe Wolverine/Silver Samurai Comic Pack, getting him in the 6-inch line feels like an extra treat!