Hydra Soldiers

Hydra Soldiers

Hasbro Marvel Legends

Toys 'R' Us Exclusive

Another TRU exclusive gone by...a Hydra soldier 2-pack!  One is a repack of the older Mandroid Build-a-Figure wave Soldier, the other is a weird repaint of Captain Britain/Nuke?  Strange.  He's an enforcer...whatever...the paint scheme works.  And since army builder fans ate up the soldier on his initial run, this gave me another shot at him. 

 

 

All of the additional heads/accessories are repacks from other figures.  Nothing is new except the paint.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, as they give us plenty of options:  weapons,  clothing, heads.  The repainted Taskmaster head doesn't work for me, so I will be sticking with the standard look.

Same with the enforcer.  The Captain Britain head it is.  The unmasked heads will work for random thug customs here and there in my collection. 

 The Nuke head would make a pretty decent Eddie Brock if you repainted the scar/eye.

I had a couple of Hasbro's earlier attempts at a Hydra soldier way back from the Brood Queen wave.  The figure was oversized, the paint was bland, and the plastic felt cheap.  Oh well...an army builder is an army builder.  They can hang out in the back and still be decent punching bags for the heroes.

 

With Baron Von Strucker and Madame Hydra at the helm, I've got a nice little team going.  For display purposes I can throw in the cool base that came with the Marvel Select Spider-woman.  These poor inaction figures...I would have gladly paid a few dollars more for some legs.

Dark Phoenix and Cyclops

Dark Phoenix and Cyclops

Marvel Legends - Hasbro

Toys 'R' Us Exclusive

I'm a little behind on this one, so if you're looking for this TRU exclusive on shelves now, you may have missed it.  In fact, you may not even have a TRU any more with all the recent store closings.  Makes you wonder why Hasbro would bother giving so many exclusives to a chain constantly on the edge of bankruptcy.  Oh well, I got this 2-pack, and it was worth the trouble... if you love classic X-men stories and don't mind some character variants.

 

The Phoenix is the same body sculpt as the Juggernaut wave Jean Grey, but red in place of green. Makes sense, but needs something more than paint and some red eyes for a sale?  Well how about 3 different head sculpts and fire effect?  That's more like it! 

First, you get a calm, standard Jean.  They could have just repacked the head from the green release, but you get an all-new hairstyle.  The next head gets a little wild with the hair and her face has changed to a malevolent smile.  The final head is the same sculpt as the previous, but with fiery eyes and translucent red highlights in the hair.  Pretty neat little transformation they pulled off there.  The firebird effect clips to her wrist.

 

Cyclops is era accurate and a step up from the old Toy Biz attempt.  TB didn't do a bad figure... but his torso was a holdover from an old WCW Buff Bagwell figure that didn't have an ab crunch.  As an update, its pretty damn good.  They did a nice job with some black detailing in the lines of the blue suit.  The only things missing that would put this from a "maybe" to a "must-have" would be an alternate screaming head and an optic beam effect. 

 

$40 for some variants sounds steep, but these looks are iconic and will probably be my go-to versions of these characters on my shelf.   They do not disappoint... unlike the first attempt to bring the Dark Phoenix saga to the big screen.  I am 100% sure that these figure will top the next attempt as far as enjoyment.  Skip the movies and buy these figures!

DK2 Flash

 The Flash

The Dark Knight Strike Again

Mattel - Walgreens Exclusive

The Dark Knight Strikes Again was pretty bad (not "All-Star Batman" bad), but this Flash figure is pretty decent!  Flash is a Walgreen's exclusive priced at $20, but I held out long enough to find one on clearance for $10 while on vacation.

 

I'm not sure why Barry Allan decided a romper would be a good uniform change, or why to go "Zoom" with the color scheme, but it's different and not wholly visually displeasing.  I mean, it is fairly accurate to the source material, but then again, Frank Miller doesn't make a lot of sense.

My favorite part is the boots.  The lighting bolt off the back is neat, as are the new lifts.  Maybe decades of being a speed demon has been murder on the arches?  Who knows, but the Frankenstein effect puts this retooled/repainted Flash almost a half an inch over his predecessors.  Though cool, the boots also give the figure its only negative.  The leg above the ankle comes from a full-jumpsuit Flash, and its obvious from the weird muffin-top of skin above the yellow.  I guess laces are foreign to him... gotta tie 'em tight if you're gonna break the speed of light, right?

 

For a retooled figure, the changes make sense and isn't bad as far as variants go.  And he comes with a few accessories to sweeten the deal:  a miniaturized Atom figure and an old-man Bruce Wayne head.  Having the Armored Batman from waves back really helped me pull the trigger.  Still, I got him on sale, and wouldn't have paid over $15.