TF06 Get ready to Face-Off with Marvel Legends

Toy Fair 2006 in NY was a huge show for Marvel Legends fans. New build-a-figure sets, new 12” Icons, and the new Face-Off line just to name a few. Face-Off is classic hero & nemesis figures in one pack with the articulation and detail we expect from our Legends. Each set comes with a cardboard backdrop that lets you set up your favorite scene. Looks like they all come with the plastic poser towers so flying kicks and aerial moves can be frozen in time. A comic book is also included to help spread the addiction to future generations.

Toy Biz official press release lists these classic match-ups.
• Kingpin Vs. Daredevil
• Hulk Vs. Leader
• Captain America Vs. Red Skull (Oddly enough they had an amusing type-o in their PR to turn him into Red Skrull. Try to find the pages that still haven’t found it. Hee hee)

This is great news all by itself. Yeah, yeah I know, we all have Hulk, DD, and Cap, but, Kingpin, Red Skull, and Leader, come on that’s cool!! And there’s more. Way more! Most of these are new builds, new head sculpts or at least new paint jobs. The Red Skull is not a rehash of the poorly articulated and hard to find chase figure from ML5, it’s a beautiful new fully articulated build. Even the Cap is a nice combo of Ultimate and Classic.

More you say?? OK. It appears that each of these sets has a variant. Yep, and not just a “Hulk with belly button” little variant, but both hero and villain figures are different in some sincerely cool ways. Daredevil gets the hood back treatment like the Wolverine variant from ML12 and we see his trade-mark shades, and the Kingpin goes from white suit to black suit and gets a nice angry head, too. Hulk in a minor change goes from grimace to yell, but the Leader gets a complete make over from the long “Marge Simpson” head(which appears to be the variant based on the press shots from Toy Biz, but who knows which will be which), to the odd testicle head in the pict above. Cap gets the old hood back (By the way, the face sculpts on all these are truly art) and Red Skull gets switched to Baron Von Strucker in his Hydra color scheme (Thanks Garrett, for that correction). The villains change the most, but as variants go, it looks like you’ll dang sure get your moneys worth on these.

Even more?? Toy Biz will oblige. Not covered in their press release, but on the show floor were three more sets. Punisher vs Jigsaw (in his ala Punisher suit), Wolverine (with his kitty wiskers) vs Sabertooth, and Ironman vs Mandarin. Hope we get a classic green suit Mandarin as this one is in yellow. I like my Mandarin green, please. All in all this looks like one serious line for us die hard Legends nuts. Oh, yeah, they will be $14.99 SRP. Not bad for all you get. Looks like the first wave should hit somewhere in March/April/May with the standard ambiguous release schedules as usual, but start putting away money now so you’ll be ready. This is the biggest Marvel Legend year ever as Toy Biz seems to be dumping everything they got before they hand off to Hasbro.

Oh, and go look at them at the Figures.com Toy Biz Gallery to see more. Seeing is believing.