When Hasbro first obtained the Marvel license, one of the issues that plenty of folks were hoping would be corrected by them was distribution. Toybiz did a mighty fine job on Marvel Legends, but it seemed to be a complete crap shoot as to when – and often, if – your store would ever get them in. One chain might get them in weeks before another, and worse, one area of the country could see them months before another. That was just downright annoying, and Hasbro managed to avoid any of those issues with their first wave of ML figures.Unfortunately, with wave 2 it seems that they are swimming in the same pool of distribution muck as was Toybiz. I finally…FINALLY…found a full set of these after other parts of the country have been happily playing along with them for months now. Prior to this, I had one sighting of one of the eight figures at a local Wal-mart, and that was weeks ago. The third wave is actually due to hit anytime, but I won’t be holding my breathe to see them any time soon.
Hasbro Marvel Legends Series 2 – She-Hulk, Xorn, X3 Juggernaut and Ultimate Wolverine
There are eight figures in total in this second wave. I’ll be covering four here today (She Hulk, Xorn, Ultimate Wolverine and Juggernaut), with the other four being covered tonight at my other site, MROTW. Those four would include Thor, X3 Jean Gray, Yellowjacket and Quicksilver. Collect all eight and you can put together the Build A Figure (BAF) of the Blob.
These are now hitting Target’s in pretty decent quantities, but it’s still very hit or miss which stores have them. At ten bucks a pop, you’ll be dropping a wad of cash to get all the pieces to the fat guy, and I’m not sure any BAF is worth eighty bucks.
Packaging – ***1/2
I know some folks have hated the new packages, but I’m still a fan. There’s a ton of personalization here, with plenty of character specific graphics on the front of each. The bubble/cardback design is so sturdy it’s practicallly a clamshell, yet you can rip into it without a knife. Yea, they’re still a bit oversized and a bitch for any MOCers to store, but generally speaking, I like the direction.
Sculpting – Xorn ***1/2; She Hulk, Ultimate Wolverine, Juggernaut ***
The majority of the sculpts are solid, but the paint work doesn’t support many of them. That’s too bad, since folks can get a bad impression of the sculpt work from a quick glance.
Juggs is a perfect example. I think the head sculpt is actually quite good, but it’s very hard to see under the awful eyebrows and hair. It appears that they managed to pull off the actual actor’s likeness, certainly as well as they did with series 1 Beast, but it’s tough to tell. He’s sculpted in the smaller scale of the X-men movie lines (at just under 7 inches tall he might seem to big, but remember, he was huge in the movie), and has some pretty interesting unique hand sculpts.
The Wolverine almost has the constipated look, but they managed to get away from it a bit by going with some seriously snarling eyes and eyebrows. I really like the expression, which is unusual for something so extreme, but with the awful paint work again it’s hard to be sure how good the sculpt really is. His scale is in line with other recent Wolverines, making him smaller than the regular figures, but he’s not quite as tiny as some recent versions, standing about 6 inches tall. The sculpted claws look good, although they suffer from the usual plastic warping.
She Hulk has a beautiful face sculpt, showing that you can make pretty female ML figures, but she’s got a bit of the NECA hair going on. It looks worse in close ups though than it does in person, and has some good detail for this scale. Again, they’ve done some nice sculpting on the hands, and she’s at a good height for posing with the rest of the series at about 7 1/4 inches tall.
Last but not least in anyway is Xorn. He’s my fav of the bunch in this category, with some very nice detail work on the helmet, underlying face, and even the chain/chest. Again, there’s some paint issues, but at least on this figure I could see past most of them to find the underlying quality of the sculpt. His hands have unique poses too, which is a huge plus. None of these figures have simple fist or open hand poses that are just reused. Instead, they all have interesting and different poses, unique to their characters. Xorn stands just a hair over 6 inches tall, falling into the middle range of figures.
Paint – Xorn, She Hulk ***; Ultimate Wolverine **; Juggernaut *1/2
Ah yes, the paint. With the first wave, the big complaint with the paint was largely with what was NOT painted. The shiny, cast-in-the-color plastics used for large areas tended to be cheap looking. Unfortunately, the paint ops that we do get this time around are often poorly executed.
Of the set, my She Hulk and Xorn had the fewest issues. There’s still a bit of slop here and there, and the dry brushing they added to She Hulk’s hair may or may not have been such a terrific idea. But the eyes, lips, hairlines and other small details are relatively clean. This isn’t the kind of work that would stand up next to good specialty market toys, but it’s reasonable when compared to most other mass market stuff.
Xorn’s Magneto face isn’t quite as nice as the rest of him though, with the color cast plastic skin looking a bit too shiny and cheap. I don’t expect most folks to pose him without the helmet though, since it makes up so much of his personality. It’s also extremely well painted, with a nice dark wash used to bring out the sculpting details and very clean lines around the eyes.
Ah, but then we get Wolverine and Juggernaut. Juggs has two eyebrows the size of snakes, writhing over his eye sockets. Add to that the expression of surprise in which they’ve been painted, and you have a recipe for ruining any sculpt underneath. Ah, but his bad paint job doesn’t end there. Take off the helmet and you get Hasbro’s attempt at his uber short buzz cut. It appears as though they’ve dipped his bald pate in crap. Literally. And they didn’t even take the time to do it evenly.
Move down to his torso, and you get some awful work on the chest, arm and belly hair. Again, it looks more like dirt than hair, and given the choice, I’d vote to skip it altogether on this figure.
Wolverine’s only saving grace is actually his arm hair. This is something that is normally poorly done, and you can look no further than the aforementioned Juggs for proof. But I really like how they handled the very small lines of hair on his arms, and it confuses me as to why they could do this, but couldn’t handle Jugg’s eyebrows.
Unfortunately, Wolverine’s face paint drags the figure back down again. The hair line isn’t just uneven, I have a whole side edge that’s missing paint! The eyes, brows and teeth are all sloppy, and he’s certainly not a ten buck figure with this kind of work.
To add to all the issues with the small details across the line, there’s still the issue of the casting the plastic in the color of choice. On Xorn and She Hulk this works out better than it does on Wolverine and Juggernaut, and I think that’s because the color that works the worst in this type of casting is normal skin tone. Since those two figures don’t have any (I’m pretending you’re leaving Xorn’s helmet on), they end up looking better.
Articulation – Xorn, Ultimate Wolverine ***; She Hulk **1/2; Juggernaut **
Marvel Legends have always set some sort of standard – good and bad – when it comes to articulation. If you hate articulation in your ‘action’ figures, then these aren’t for you. But if you like to see what can be done in this scale with a great design, you’re looking in the right place.
All of these figures have very similar articulation – ball jointed shoulders and hips, double jointed knees, pin and post elbows, pin and swivle ankles, pin wrists, cut waist, clicky chest, and even a psuedo ball jointed neck. I say psuedo, because these are the standard ML necks that have a pin, so that the head can tilt forward and backward along with turning. However, unlike a true ball joint, there’s no tilt. I’ll point out any additions or reductions in this sort of standard set up as I mention each figure.
Once again, Juggernaut was the biggest disappointment in this area He’s got all those joints, no problem, and in fact adds cut calves to the picture, but I had one Hell of a time getting any sort of reasonable poses. The legs and hips were the biggest issue, and even with the ball joints they simply wouldn’t move into reasonable places. You can have all the articulation in the world, but if you have trouble just finding a pose that can keep the figure standing, that’s not good. And while he adds the cut leg articulation, he has only pin elbows with no peg inserted into the bicep.
Wolverine didn’t have nearly the same issues with posing. He loses the joint on the arm side of the shoulder ball (clearly for aesthetic reasons), but has the peg and pin elbow to allow the lower arm to turn. There’s no swivel to the ankle, and because of the design of the boots it operates only as a cut joint.
She Hulk has some serious issues with her leg articulation as well, although eventually I was able to get them to work in a few poses. The arms and hands were much better at posing, but she loses the arm side joint at the shoulder ball, the cut waist, and even the rocker aspect of the ankle. Her hair pretty much completely removes the usefulness of the neck joint, but that’s not particularly uncommon. Still, she’s one of the least articulated Marvel Legends so far.
Finally, there’s Xorn. Like Wolverine, he poses pretty well, but there was still more effort involved in getting the leg joints in just the right place to keep him standing and make him look interesting. He adds a cut joint at the calves, along with double jointed elbows.
The articulation is a huge selling point for this line of figures, and I do believe that Hasbro has improved the quality of the joints themselves. They stick less, and are far less likely to rip or break under tension. Still, the joints have to actually work for them to be much of any real use, and quite a few of these figures have real issues when it comes to finding multiple great looking poses.
Accessories – Ultimate Wolverine, Juggernaut, Xorn **1/2; She Hulk **
For most of these figures, there’s really only one accessory – their piece of the Blob. This BAF is much smaller than past BAF’s at just 8 1/2 inches tall (compare that to Sentinal’s height of 15 inches!), but he’s still pretty damn cool once you get him all together.
Of course, that’s the trick. You’ll need to spend eighty bucks plus tax and/or shipping to get him, so that’s mighty expensive for a figure. On top of that, if you’re not interested in building the Blob, than what accessories are here are useless to you.
Once you get past the basic Blob parts, there are a couple more accessories. Juggernaut and Xorn both have removable helmets, so I’m boosting they’re score slightly because of it. Wolverine also gets a slight boost here, because he gets both large halves of the torso, making up in plastic what he lacks in amount.
Fun Factor – ***
Okay, they aren’t so perfect for collectors, but kids will still find these great fun. That is if they actually know who any of them are. I supposed that the Movie Juggs has potential, but considering that he’s the lamest of these four, it’s certainly wasted potential.
Value – *1/2
Ten bucks? What did I pay ten bucks for? A basic mass produced action figure with really one accessory – a chunk of the blob. And considering how much smaller this BAF is then BAF’s of waves gone by, I gotta say that we’re getting charged at least two bucks, maybe three, too much. Unless you spend eighty bucks, the accessory is completely worthless to you, so for the person just looking for a couple of these guys, they’re getting seriously pinched.
Things to Watch Out For –
Paint of course. Some of the joints were stuck, but they are sturdy enough that freeing them up shouldn’t raise too much of a risk.
Overall – Xorn ***; She Hulk, Ultimate Wolverine **1/2; Juggernaut **
Of this set, Xorn was the only one I thought really stood out. I don’t mind adding him to the line up, and for such a B (or C or D) character, he really was a nice surprise. I’m not thrilled with the head underneath the mask, but I’ll only be displaying him that way anyhoo.
She Hulk is going to be well liked by lots of folks, at least until they take her out of the package. I finally did find a pose I like, but the articulation really made her a tough poser. Still, it’s not like we’ve been treated to any better versions of her in this scale.
If your a huge Wolverine fan, grab this Ultimate version. He’s nothing to be staying up late and writing long letters home over, but the sculpt and articulation are solid. If you can find one with a reasonable paint job, all the better for you.
And Juggernaut? Unless you absolutely have to get all the X3 figures you can lay your hands on, skip him. Bad paint and worse articulation annoyed the Hell out of me. Who really liked this character design all that much anyway?
But if you want the Blob – and there are good reasons to want the Blob – then you’ll just have to stomach buying the full set and find something to do with the ones that are bad (Juggs) or merely uninteresting (see the other review for a good example). As with series 1, the very best figure in the full bunch is the one you have to buy all of them to get.
Where to Buy –
As I said earlier, your best bet right now is the local Target store.
Related Links –
I’ve had more than a few ML reviews:
– Let’s start with the reviews of series 1, first at MROTW and then here at QSE.
– you’ll want to check out my review of the other four figures at MROTW.
– Hasbro has also released several of the 12″ Marvel Legends Icons, including Punisher and Doom, and my favorite, Thor.
And if you still pine for the days Toybiz –
– in the 12″ Icons line, there’s Spider-man and Beast, Wolverine and Venom.
– The Face Offs series 1 (with Hulk/Leader in one review and the other two sets in another) and series 2 both had guest reviews.
– there’s the guest review of the Fearsome Foes of Spider-man boxed set, Urban Legends box set, X-men Legends boxed set, and the Fantastic Four boxed set, along with my review of the Monsters boxed set.
– The previous Sentinel BAF was guest reviewed.
– then there’s the various series reviews, including the Wal-mart series, series 13, series 12, series 9 (including Galactus), series 8 Captain Marvel and Doc Ock, series 7 Vision, series 6 Juggernaut, Wolverine and Deadpool, series 5 Blade, Nick Fury, Sabertooth and Colossus, along with series 5 Red Skull, Silver Surfer and Mr. Fantastic, series 4 Goliath, Punisher, Beast, Gambit, and Elektra, series 3 Daredevil and then the rest of the series, series 2 Thing and Namor, and finally, from three and a half years ago, the series 1 review.
Comments: 1 Comment
One Response to “Toy Box: Hasbro Marvel Legends Series 2”Leave a Reply |
February 27th, 2008 at 10:16 am
i have juggernaut,jean,wolverien,and xorn i wish i could get the rest.