It's ridiculous how much I paid for this toy, but let me tell you right up front, that I don't care. The near perfectness of its design just kills all regret for me. I just look at this thing on my desk and I don't care that it was marked up to more than 200% of its retail price.
That's how good Hasbro's version of the character is. You just marvel at it and ask, "Why can't all toys be this pretty?"
The current Marvel Legends packaging hasn't lost any of its charm since the last wave of Marvel Legends. It's still dominated both front and back with the feature artwork by X-Force artist, Clayton Crain, who does one hell of an Archangel in the book. They're pretty sturdy, don't deform too easily, and have some nice lines. Other than the fact that you can't stack them on top of one another because of the slanted top of the bubble, they're everything I want in my packaging.
They're also easier to open than most. A quick slash of a knife along the side tabs, and some careful cutting at the bottom, and you can slide the inner tray out of the bubble no problem. It's great if you want to display or store the figure back in its box. Or, if you're really a bastard, you could glue it back up and pass it off as mint to some new guy. Of course, that would mean other collectors would be well within their rights to kick you in the nads, but hey, easy money.
The tray is huge, which means when you get it out, it looks kind of empty. It has to be that big to accommodate the X-Man's wings, though, which are housed in their own tray in back of the figure. Not sure what else they could have stuffed in as accessories (maybe some feather blades?), but if you realize how much more this figure probably cost than the others, they're not missed.
The wings of Archangel attach to the figure's back via a straight up peg. There's no fancy glue or socket or lock. It's just the hole, the post, and friction. The little mount is shaped to hug the muscles of his back. The seal isn't permanent when you plug it in, so it's easy to remove later if you need to store it someplace.
The sculpting on the figure is the best thing about this toy, and that's saying a lot as the wings are absolutely beautifully done. It's more realistically proportioned than the DC Universe Classic figures, while still maintaining the superior articulation of the Marvel Legends line. The shoulders aren't big and super round, the hips are far less obvious, and all the joints are useful.
He's got a swivel-hinged head, ratcheted double swivel-hinged shoulders, double hinged elbows, swivel-hinged wrists, a ratcheted hinged torso, swivel waist, ball-and-socket hips, swivel thigh cuts, double hinged knees, swivel leg cuts, and those fancy angled swivel-hinged ankle joints that I found so awesome in the Marvel Universe Jim Lee Cyclops.
The great thing about this Warren Worthington III compared to all the other previous Marvel Legends figures is that the wings don't weigh more than the figure itself, and because they extend down to about the same length as his legs, you can stand him up just fine by using the points of his wings to support the extra weight.
Even with out the extra support, you can still balance him fairly easily without a stand if you care to try.
The most awesome thing about the wings of the Hasbro Archangel is that you can fold them to wrap around his body. They're articulated, with a swivel and hinge combination that attaches each wing to the mount on his back (an extra pinion is tacked onto this hinge to give the whole assembly some depth), with an extra hinge down the middle of the wing. Those two points of articulation are enough to do this:
But that's just one advantage it has over the old Toy Biz version. If you count the superior sculpting (and you have to, since the old one always made me grimace), that's two. Oh, three, since there's also the weight issues. Four if you count the fact that he's not encumbered by that silly rocket gimmick that the X-Men Classic version was stuck with. Five if you count the fact that the wings attach much closer to his body and don't come with that awkward, hinged "backpack" attachment.
The only thing you could do with the old one that you can't with the new is place it in a pose where it looks as if he's sweeping his wings forward and firing flechettes at the camera.
Like I said, the extra layer of feathers on his back do a lot for the figure. Just that one extra layer of "feathers" makes him look so much more like the images I remember for the hey day of the 90's X-Men/X-Factor books. The time when there were panels of him screaming through the sky, with his wings looking like speed lines straight out of a manga book.
Frankly, I can't believe Hasbro even bothered to put them on, since it probably added a lot to the cost of the figure. Thank you, Hasbro dudes!
In "flight", the figure looks perfectly menacing, as you'd expect Apocalypse's Horseman, Death, to look. Those speed lines come into play and make it look like he's zooming off somewhere to lop off someone's head with his razor sharp feathers. You couldn't do that with any of the other Angel figures from Toy Biz. The best you could do was pose them as if they were coming in for a landing, or hovering like some kind of lazy Sunday flier.
You can do that with this one, too.
In the end, even if I did pay Php 1,850 (about $40 US or so) at RToys (VMall, Greenhills), I don't feel bummed about parting with the cash and having to eat cheap this last week. I don't even feel bad that I saw it at Babes (also in VMall, Greenhills) for a hundred bucks cheaper the other day. Considering the SDCC Uncanny X-Force box set (which Dominic Dimagmaliw reviewed on GeekOut.ph, making me insanely jealous) is now going for almost $200 US, I'm just glad I was able to get my hands on one for my collection.
Here's hoping I can get a Psylocke.
No comments:
Post a Comment