Superhero Times: a service of Action Online
For anyone who’s counting, this is Hasbro’s second series of Marvel Legends and for long time collectors, the 18th set of Marvel superheroes. Hard to believe that it’s been that many but here it is.
There have been nine previous build-a-figures so far, which makes BLOB, the build-a-figure for this series the tenth. There are eight figures needed to build the X-enemy BLOB.
-Thor
-Ultimate Wolverine
-X3 Jean Grey
-Xorn
-Quicksilver
Six regular heroes and two from the films add to the variety making it harder to be picky if you want to build Blob.
It felt like we just bought a Thor from the Wal-Mart series, but this time … he’s got a beard!
Packaging: Hasbro has certainly made the transition into their hands known to the buying public. Gone are the clamshells and comic books, welcome back to the card and bubble. Fortunately for us, the cardstock used is THICK and with individually designed artwork for each character and bios, it’s a change that I’m most certainly okay with.
It is too bad that the comic books are no longer around, as I enjoyed browsing through those the most as if they were some sort of trip down memory lane. Hasbro at least has put some comic book art as part of the packaging as a good nod to its origin. I’m still waiting for DC Superheroes to do something similar with their packaging.
Sculpt: This is actually one of the more impressive sculpts in the line. Standing tall, Thor is looking mean and ready to rumble with a determined expression. The rest of the body is decent enough, with some scaling on the upper torso that adds an extra bit of oomph.
Paint: The paint application on Thor, for what’s there, is generally pretty good. All the lines are clean, but what is lacking is the problem. Toy Biz had a way of painting most of the figure so that each part looked much more detailed than it normally would. Hasbro’s method is having molded plastic in the appropriate colors. This would be great if Hasbro actually added a wash or a few more details, but it’s pretty darn plain. Solid blues, solid gold, solid skin tones. It’s pretty disappointing to see a great sculpt with such a boring paint application... Or a lack of paint would be more accurate.
Articulation: With about 29 points of articulation, Thor isn’t as impressive as many of the other Marvel Legends. The worst crime of all is the elbow articulation, which works for Star Wars, but not so much for Marvel. Gone is the cut above the bicep. Replacing that joint is a cut at the elbow, which makes for an anatomically incorrect joint. The rest of Thor is as expected from the Legends line.
On the positive side, all the joints are tight and much sturdier than the articulation found on Toy Biz figures.
Accessories: Thor comes with quite a few things, which is a step up from the rest of the series. He comes with a removable cape, an axe, and his famous hammer.
Also included is the head of Blob.
Value: These figures will run you $10-12, about $3-5 more than the Toy Biz versions were sold for. So far I’m really missing Toy Biz.
Overall: Bearded Thor is a pretty good figure despite his flaws and probably one of the better figures of the wave. So far though he’s the harder one to find but I’m sure he’ll start showing up in larger numbers.
CLICK HERE for even mor eimages of Thor. Review and Images Courtesy of David Yeh
