Reader Review: Hasbro's Marvel Legends Ultimate Iron Man

FULL REVIEW: Hasbro’s Marvel Legends series one: Ultimate Iron Man

You kids today and your Ultimate Marvel universe. Bah! In the olden days, we had just the one Marvel universe! And it was so incredibly bloated that fully a third of the population of New York must’ve had superpowers, but we were grateful for it! If we wanted a different take on it, we had to watch the Fantastic Four cartoon, where they took out the Human Torch and replaced him with a happy robot! And we watched it, by gum! You whippersnappers, you don’t know how good you got it! ‘Ultimate Marvel’ – fah!

Ahem. Okay. One strength of the Marvel Legends line has always been the balance it has struck between heavy hitters and secondary characters. And thankfully, this seems to be something that Hasbro intends to continue. Maybe, eventually, it’ll even become like their handling of the Star Wars license, and we’ll get figures of characters that only appeared in one issue of one comic. Go for it, Hasbro! Seriously! Anyway, in the meantime, the new management does seem to be going a step further, in terms of what people in boardrooms might call “the diversification of the brand”: They’re including a larger number of characters from outside the standard Marvel canon. Fully a third of the characters in this first wave - X3 Beast and Ultimate Iron Man – are from alternate Marvel continuities. And three of the eight figures of the second wave - X3 versions of Juggernaut and Jean Grey, and Ultimate Wolverine – are also not from the usual, “616” universe. Compare this to the three movie figures and single Ultimate figure that showed up in all those years of Toybiz Legends, and it’s quite a shift. Will this new trend pay off for Hasbro? Only the future-men know for sure. And they, as usual, are keeping their mouths shut. Stupid, useless future-men!

And now: the second, but not the last, Ultimate character to be produced by Marvel Legends: Ultimate Iron Man.

PACKAGING

The packaging, it is in accordance with the new Hasbro standard, which is perfectly decent-looking. The card is white, and the plastic bubble has a multi-tiered sculpt. There are various portraits of Iron Man (sorry, Ultimate Iron Man) featured, one on the card and four down the side of the bubble. And they’re all very nice, if perhaps a bit repetitive – they focus on the head of the character, which is, of course, incapable of expression. On the back of the card, we learn that Ultimate Tony Stark was born with a ‘chemical mutation’ that gives him a superhuman intellect. Does this, then, mean that Ultimate Tony Stark is smarter than Ultimate Reed Richards or Ultimate Victor Von Doom? It had better not. The very idea is absolutely revolting.

SCULPTING

Younger readers will presumably have no memory of the very first Star Wars figures, the ones that came out with the first movie, just after the Spanish-American War. Suffice it to say, Luke Skywalker resembled the character on film insofar as both were blond, and wearing white tunics. You could tell it apart from the Han Solo figure because Han wore a vest, and had dark hair. C-3PO, however, actually looked like the movie robot. It was a pretty decent likeness, in fact. And the moral of that is: It is easier to sculpt mechanical things, apparently. Which makes sense. They have more straight lines, and geometric shapes, and less need for interpretation. And thus, Ultimate Iron man has quite a good sculpt.

There is even sculpting on the bottom of the feet, which is a nice touch. There’s some treading, and two little holes per foot, presumably for flight-rocket exhaust. What are absent are any holes for pegs, for use with action figure stands; Hasbro has eliminated these from the line. And, though most of these figures do stand very well, it would be nice to have these holes back. In the case of Ultimate Tony here, the holes could have gone in the sculpted exhaust-holes! Think of it! Functional and fun!

PAINT APPLICATION

Generally speaking, the paint job is simple, but good. There’s red, there’s grey, there’s a little bit of yellow and blue, and that’s about it. And it’s all done just fine, with smooth lines and no bleed. There’s a bit of shading to the grey, which is nice. Stark’s face, under the removable helmet, has a few unsightly spots on it, but then, maybe the inside of that helmet is filthy. It’s not like you can put the thing in a dishwasher, after all.

Of course, the really remarkable thing about the paint is that much of it – the helmet, chest, and shin-guards, to be precise – is shiny. Reflective, even. Neato! It could, perhaps, be quibbled that more of the figure ought to be shiny, if any of it is going to be so. But a little bit of this effect is better than none at all. It’s attractive and eye-catching. Also, leave the figure on your porch, and crows will steal it! What more endorsement do you want?

ARTICULATION

This figure has 32 points of articulation, which is right around the default standard for Hasbro’s Marvel Legends. This is a few less than Toybiz’ standard once was – the joints in the middles of the hands and the feet, specifically, are gone. It is, however, a tall, frosty mug of articulation all the same.

One pair of these points – the one that allows the feet to tilt forward and back – is actually practically unusable, due to the shin-guards. And this sounds like a minor complaint, but in practice it’s actually quite remarkable how much the loss of these two joints diminishes the number of poses into which the figure may be placed. Hasbro has provided an unusual option to address this, however: The shin-guards come off, allowing full articulation, but leaving the shins looking not so good. With the guards off, they’re plain grey with two holes in ‘em. So you must choose: Will it be articulation, or will it be sculpt? Choose carefully – there’s no going back. (Actually, yes there is. Totally.)

ACCESSORIES

The only thing approximating an ‘accessory’ that this figure comes with is the removable helmet. It’s a good-looking piece, and stays on well. It’s open all the way round the bottom, meaning that you can get a view of Stark’s fleshy, human head, or chin anyway, if you look at the figure from below. Which is presumably not too comic-accurate. It might have been nice, therefore, if there had been some sort of lip on the inner part of the bottom of the helmet. Still, the piece as we get it is probably not the end of the world, and if it is, the world was most likely on its last legs anyway.

The Ultimate Iron Man figure is packaged with the mighty torso of Annihilus. It is not, however, packaged with a comic book – Hasbro has discontinued this practice – and that’s too bad.

COST & OVERALL IMPRESSION

Hasbro’s upped the price to ten dollars now, which is a pity, but which is also the way it goes. You might wind up having to spend somewhere around $15 for this one online, however. This line is pretty well stocked at Target and Wal-Mart and so forth, but Ultimate Iron Man seems to be the one that sells out first. This may be because it’s a figure of Iron Man, or one of an Ultimate character, or because it’s the shiniest. It’s a mystery of marketing that simple common, folk like you or I may never unravel.

This figure is a decent little figure, an all-around solid, workmanlike figure. A figure that gets the job done. It has no very serious drawbacks. And it only has the one really remarkable feature, in Marvel Legends terms: the shininess. But isn’t that enough?

Review and Images by Matt Kessen