Marvel

Review – Marvel Legends – Wal-Mart Falcon (6″)

Poor Falcon, Major player in 2 Captain America Movies with a guest bit in Ant-Man. He’s even probably getting groomed up to be the replacement Captain America, if Bucky doesn’t get there first. Like Scarlet Witch, he’s gone for too long without getting a 6″ figure. I imagine a lot of this reason is his huge wings. This sort of accessory really doesn’t work too well with the current model of figure + BAF part. That’s probably part of why his release was a Wal-Mart exclusive along with a better repaint of The Winter Solider, in their own little wave.

The core piece here is of course, the wings. The wings are certainly very huge and very nice looking, however there’s no articulation in them. This is probably both good and bad. It of course sucks for pose variety. On the other hand, articulated wings on figures this size tend to amount to a hinge in one point that results in some funky gaps when extended too far in one direction or another. At the very least, some sort of hinge at the backpack would have been nice so the entire wing could swing up, down or straight out, but alas, it’s not there.

You can sort of fake a forward and backward sweep to the wings. The way the pegs work, they can peg on the front side or backside of the backpack, which will make them swing forward or backwards, depending on how they are pegged on. If the top and bottom holes were the same size you could fake an up and down sweep as well, though the coloring would be upside down with them turned upside down. Alas, you can’t actually do this since the pegs are different, probably done because of the coloration issue.

The base figure is decent, it looks like Falcon, he’s nicely poseable for flying and standing poses. He doesn’t come with any weapons though I imagine the budget mostly went into the Wings. He does include his little remote drone which showed up several times in Civil War.

This is the first and only 6″ MCU Falcon figure we’ve gotten so far. It’s a decent depiction, though the backpack could be better. I doubt we get a better version in the future though, any future Falcon figures will probably just use a repaint of this same wing pack now that they have the mold.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Deadpool

Feb 20th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m a little torn on Deadpool here. He’s a pretty great figure. Not the perfect Deadpool necessarily due to a few minor design issue but he’s solid. He also comes with a ton of accessories and no Build-a-Figure piece for Juggernaut. Which is why I’m torn. What Deadpool represents is essentially what I wish we got from Marvel Legends as a line. Dump the dumb BAF aspects, load up more accessories, alternate heads, weapons, effect parts, alternate hands.

Yeah, it’s a dumb reason to dislike a figure, it’s more that I dislike the concept he is presenting, because it’s what I want from every figure. How much cooler would Havok be with a screaming head and an energy blast that strapped to his chest somehow. How much better would that boring Phoenix be with a flaming base and fire ball parts to strap on to for dynamic attack poses? How about a nice Ice base for Iceman to thrown down on? Is Deadpool representative of what we could have without BAF bits?

Enough talk about non Deadpool things though, that’s sort of tangential to the main topic here, and not totally some weirdly meta thing for a Deadpool related review. Also, referencing that it’s a review within a review isn’t meta and 4th-wall-ish either.

Deadpool has one really great thing going for him, his accessories. He has so many accessories that a few of them seem really pointless and dumb and out of place next to the others. The swords, the pistols, the knife, all have nice built in storage on Deadpool, which is great. The rocket Launcher could even peg onto his back. The alternative head makes sense, Deadpool with and without mask. The Taco’s fun. Then there are the two screw silver guns, they look ugly, they don’t really fit too well with the theme of everything else, personally, and they just don’t even need to be there.

Which just exacerbates my previous frustration, not only does he get a mess of accessories, he has extra mostly useless crappy accessories!

Honestly Deadpool only really has two real flaws. One, he has this goofy pinky finger sticking out hand. This problem could have easily have been fixed with a spare, normal hand, maybe in place of one of his useless extra guns. But it didn’t happen, it’s kind of really weird.

Then there is the part where he’s crazy hard to find, because, well, Deadpool. He had a super popular movie, he doesn’t have the saddle of a BAF piece and he’s a really good figure all around.

Review – Marvel Legends – Walgreen’s Punisher

Feb 13th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Walgreen’s has quickly become a pretty hot spot for toy collecting. They have continually been getting some really good exclusives for Star Wars and Marvel Legends and more recently Transformers. These often, though not always, aren’t just mild repaints or useless variants of other characters from a mass release, especially on the Marvel Legends side. They also have started having a good track record of getting waves earlier than other retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Target. The Punisher here is one of those exclusive figures.

This Punisher is such a mixed bag of hit and miss. He’s mostly good, the skill and belt bits work well, Punisher often has the same problem of Venom, where his large chest logo overlaps a waist cut and gets ugly when the waist is turned. He has a decent assortment of accessories, with his two guns and rocket launcher. He even gets two heads.

The heads though could be a little better. He’s The Punisher, he really could use one good grimacing head. Both of these heads seem a bit too… heroic, and almost friendly.

The worse offender though, which pretty much makes this figure a pass unless you are a huge Punisher fan, is the hands. Let me reiterate, in case I have not done so enough yet, this is The Punisher. His “super power” is pretty much 100% “Bad Ass Mother Fucker with Guns”. His hands DO NOT HAVE TRIGGER FINGERS. Of all of the figures who get trigger fingers who don’t use guns or need them (Daredevil), the Punisher absolutely needs trigger finger hands.

You can sort of fake it but cutting the index finger free with a razor blade, but the tension and sculpt just isn’t quite there and it just doesn’t work. It’s such a travesty that a mostly decent figure is pretty much rendered complete garbage by a simple oversight.

So yeah, he’s nice, if you’re clever you can cut the finger or maybe even swap hands with another figure (Maybe Nick Fury who shares a mold I believe), but out of the box, he’s ruined by his inability to properly use is included accessories.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Phoenix (Jean Grey)

Feb 6th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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This may be a bit of a short one on the text. I honestly have very little to really say about Marvel Legends Phoenix. In fact, the main thing I have to say is something I really don’t say too often about anything. I think I legitimately hate almost everything about this figure.

I’m not even sure it’s an upgrade from my old Toybiz Phoenix figure. Sure that old Phoenix has some issues, and is far from perfect but this update just has so much that I don’t particularly like that makes for the perfect storm of dislike.

For starters, her sculpt is kind of nasty. The head is weirdly skinny and angular and the hair looks unnatural. This isn’t helped by how completely bland her design is. At least the old Phoenix has a few extra flourishes here and there to keep her from being so blandly green.

She also can’t stand for crap, which only really helps to push my dislike of this figure down farther. In fact the only reason I bothered at all was that she was the only figure left that I needed to complete the Juggernaut Build a Figure. There isn’t much else to say, he’s just extremely bland and kind of ugly on the paint and sculpt, which is a shame because several other figures in this wave are excellently done.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Havok

Jan 30th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Someone working on this wave seems to have a hard on for Cyclops’ family, we’ve got his wife, Jean Grey (Phoenix), his son from the future, Cable, and his brother, Havok. There isn’t a Cyclops, but we got one in the first wave of X-men with Jubilee and there is one in the next wave coming in 2017. He’s Cyclops’ younger brother in the comics but older brother in the movies, though this is a decidedly comic book design.

He definitely doesn’t have the most amazing design for a super hero. There’s nothing complicated going on here, he’s a dude in spandex with a funky helmet. It’s a pretty well done figure, he’s just a little on the boring side.

He does have a pretty cool power, though not really any good way to portray it in toy form. He absorbs energy and re-releases it. As he absorbs energy he gives on energy waves, for the figure this is depicted using these attachable bubble effects. These are similar to the circular effects we’ve seen a lot lately with Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch, though it’s not the same effect piece. Also, given how his power work, I find they work best attached higher up on his arms than on his wrists, since it looks more like he’s “emanating energy”.

Considering Hasbro seems to be against including things like fireball effects with these figures, there’s not much else he could have come with to make him more exciting. Articulation is decent, though if you put the effects higher up on the arms things can get a little limited.

I do like his design though. He’s pretty basic but the effect parts work pretty well and there’s something elegant about his design despite it’s blandness.