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.
Henry “Hank” Pym has received quite a lot of plastic over the years with Goliath & mini Antman (series 4), mini Antman on Hawkeye’s arrow (series 7), mini Yellow Jacket (Series 11 Wonderman), Antman (Wal-Mart wave), Giant Man (Wal-Mart wave), and now finally at long last, a regular scaled Yellow Jacket.
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 not do its origin. I’m still waiting for DC Superheroes to do something similar with their packaging.
Sculpt: I think for a character as simple as Yellow Jacket, Hasbro did a pretty good job with the sculpt. It’s a rather silly design to start with, especially the high collar, but they managed to make him look confident enough to be taken seriously.
Paint: Lack of paint appears to be the motto for Hasbro’s Marvel Legends and Yellow Jacket sports a total of three colors. Fluorescent yellow, black, and skin tone peach. The yellow is really too bright to be a real color for a costume and the paint is also too bland, making him a very two-dimensional figure.
The one thing going for it is that all the lines are clean. But somehow I would prefer a tad more slop if it meant getting more depth into these toys.
Articulation: At long last, we finally get to a Marvel Legend with 38 points of articulation, which is closer to what the Marvel Legends figures used to be like. Yellow Jacket sports what used to be the standard double jointed elbows and knees, as well as the bicep swivel that I miss so much. There’s also a toe joint, that has been missing from over half of the series.
Accessories: Zilch.
No comic, no base… just Blob’s right leg.
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: Yellow Jacket is one of the few saving graces of the Blob series. It’s a simple character, but has a decent sculpt and a high amount of articulation. Now if only the paint was more detailed….
CLICK HERE for more images of Yellow Jacket.
Review and Images Courtesy of David Yeh
