ML Mandroid BAF: Baron Zemo

The second villain in the roster of the Mandroid BAF that Hasbro just dished out from to concur with the release of the Winter Soldier movie. This is one of those figures I was really looking forward to in the wave. I don't know that much about the villain, but I think he has a enigmatic prestige that goes along with that diabolical mind of his. So how does this figure stand up to my liking of the said villain? Let's delve into the review then.

So this is the Agent of A.I.M. set. Again I'm not too knowledgeable with Zemo's role in the Marvel Universe minus that he was part of the villain-hero masquerading team called Thunderbolts; and the fact that he had strange magical stones during the Civil War arc(and also he resembles a foot soldier's face from TMNT). With that said, I'm only interested in him and not the A.I.M. soldier.

In my opinion, the yellow could've been a bit darker but it is comic book accurate enough. The body mold is a norm used for Hasbro and it being a very versatile body, it does a job and I can see why Hasbro recycles it a lot. Color scheme flows well except of the yellow complaint I had, again it's comic book accurate so I have to complain about the costume design in general and not Hasbro's work. He has belts and plenty of holsters and the annoying sculpted weapons which are more for designs than actual accessory which is a minus in my book. Overall, it's a good looking figure.

Accessory wise he only has two weapons and the right arm of Mandroid. Again with the weird weapons like the leopard spot designed pistol; odd for a masculine Masters of Evil leader. The sword isn't too bad, not a whole lot of paint detail, but the blade is sturdy and doesn't get distorted as easily.

Now there is a reason why Hasbro recycles this mold aside from versatile and average Marvel male bodies: articulation. It has all the standard movability that one would ask for to create dynamic scenes with these figures, however there is one flaw with my figure: the ab joint is LOOSE! I must've received a defected one because any slight movement would cause Zemo to either lean forward or back. It could be worse (but it could be a LOT better) since it is compliant enough to allow certain pose that I would want. Other than that, it's not bad; no hinderance in his costume design.

Though I don't remember Zemo being agile and Spider-Man like so him doing simple poses like shooting and swinging his sword would suffice.

Captain America V.S. Baron Zemo(classic rivalry!)

Shield v.s. Sword! Now I get why these two are rivals! Okay it's deeper than that but Zemo's seemingly trademark weapon is a sword. So maybe I'm just shooting far  fetched logic… oh well.

If there wasn't that ab crunch flaw I'd love this figure more. It's not noticeable with these pictures but it's very prominent when holding him and it bugs me. Still, I won't treat this figure frivolously since it is a good addition to my marvel Villains collection! 

ML Mandroid BAF: Red Skull

Here comes the wave of the Mandroid BAF. I know! I mentioned in the past that I wasn't that interested in completing this wave but, here I am with one of the four that I recently purchased. I'm only missing one now so… here we go!

Here's the new standard Hasbro box of our Marvel Legends renamed: Infinite Series. Of course I completed the Amazing Spider-Man wave and the Winter Soldier being the next movie for Marvel Studios to come out, the Legends here sure delivers a few Captain America goodies. Of course the alternate is an Agent of Hyrda and the Hydra guys are the ones that are flying off the shelves. Collectors are trying to army build and truthfully, I could care less about the Hyrda guys. Moving on to Red Skull then.

I like the details with this guy as much as I am not fond of this mold. Even without owning Nick Fury and the Punisher Hasbro Legend, it's pretty obvious that they share the same mold. This is more or less a casual Red Skull rather than the leader/tyrant visage he puts up with his usual other trench coat. With that said, the skull is amazing both in paint and sculpt. The Hyrda logo on his shoulders bodes well and everything else is pretty decent despite me not being a big fan of his mold.

He actually comes with a decent amount of accessories along with the Madroid left arm piece. The most fan service and accurate accessory has got to be the Tesseract(cosmic cube for you long time comic fans; also insinuated in the movie line that it's an infinity stone). The guns… well what to say about these guns? Let's just put it this way, Hasbro took the path of radical thinking when giving some of the characters in this wave weapons! I mean, Red Skull… red gun. It makes perfect sense! I don't even know what to say about the other gun.

Just to talk about his accessory let's observe this picture above! Look at that intimidating red gun! Watch out! Oh if you guys ever find this in the lost and found you know whose gun it is.

And that is his laser gun! I don't know what the heck to say about this gun because it's science fiction based… and I have no qualms with science fiction based guns but… it's odd.

Articulation wise, he doesn't exceed in that notion either. He is really stiff and there are too many hinderance in his mold that deters good dynamic poses. I'm not expecting the Red Skull to be doing moves like Taskmaster now, but the mold doesn't make certain Red Skull themed poses seem natural! I am left with some gun pointing action and 'let me show you my cube' pose for crying out loud!

In conclusion, I've said a lot of things that makes it seem that I abhor this figure and honestly, it's not my favorite. With that said though, this is my first Red Skull figure and the other Toybiz versions of him don't appeal to me. Like many of my other figures, he is aesthetically good enough and he is a BAF piece so I suppose if one is really adamant about Mandroid, he is a must. Other than that, not much to say about this figure except it's almost below mediocre. 

ML Infinite Series: First Avenger

The first Avenger was a good adaptation of Captain America in my opinion. While it wasn't the most action packed out of all the Marvel movies, it had the heart that made Captain America lovable. With that I pay homage to his First Avenger costume in the form of Hasbro's Infinite Series: WW2 Captain America!

This Captain America is actually part of the Mandroid BAF series but it comes with no BAF. The back of the box clearly states that it IS part of the set though despite it missing the said piece but… oh well.

With no BAF, this Captain America comes with a gun and his famous shield(DUH!). Lacking in the accessories department, but here we are. Sadly most WW2 Cap comes with distorted shields thanks to the packaging.

I'm not the biggest fan of his costume in both Avengers and First Avenger. Then again I have never been a huge fan of his comic book outfit at all(just recently changed it to make it more suitable for modern age; adheres to the Avengers movie design actually) so for the movie costumes to remain true to the comic book is a good and bad thing. One thing is for sure if I was just to look at it from the standpoint that the movies did a good job, well I guess all things accounted for it did a fantastic job! The figure does the same thing and being immaculate in both detail and paint job that one will recognize it as the First Avenger costume almost immediately! From his shield to his costume, it is the Chris Evans adaptation of Cap.

Articulation wise is where this one's greatest flaw is. I would've let the weird chest joint and the way it made his upper body look distorted with every pivoting go. The peculiar way the arms poses at times wasn't a big deal nor was the hinderance of certain costume designs was a big deal to me! What made things a bit difficult is the fact that there was no ankle pivot! Yes that minor subtraction of a simple foot movement made things difficult to pose Cap!

That and his shield being distorted in the packaging wasn't an easy thing to let go! But there are more than a few poses that I found him worthy to have.

Bucky Cap, Marvel Now Cap, and Terrax BAF Steve Rogers

While I still have a couple of Captain America in packages(Toybiz, Diamond Select, no Hasbro I think), I would like to say I have enough Caps to form a boy band. This doesn't include an "Iron Patriot" I have from the original Iron Man series that has a shield like Cap as well! The saints come marching in!

No Mandroid BAF piece, lack of ankle pivot, distorted shield and a bit of awkward articulation here and there I would say that the better Captain America I got from this wave so far was the Marvel NOW Cap. There is another one in this wave that I am on the fence about buying and that is the Winter Soldier Cap outfit. So was this a loss? No, not really. Not my favorite one but I have it as a homage to a movie I really liked and Captain America is a character I admire despite him not being on the top list. But for any 'casual' Cap fan(less casual than me anyways), I say this is a pass. 

Collectors' Strife: Toy Hunt or Online Purchase?

The true meaning of toy hunt began again!

It's been a long time since I actually went out on the field and performed what many collectors like myself call: TOY HUNT. There's no hidden meaning behind the phrase, it is as the said words imply: It's the act of hunting for toys. For us collectors, there's more to it than just that! While yes the main goal of toy hunting is indeed to acquire figures that would add more zest to one's collection display, to some it's also the 'act' of driving hours and hours to every retailer to find some rare action figure. That was me some time ago before life took all of my spare time away so here I am now collecting through the means of buying sets online or just buying anything online that I find note worthy to add to my collection. While I can pretty much access anything I want to add to my game room, there is one slight problem: prices sometimes gouge instead of save! So when the new Marvel Legends for the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie was finally confirmed to have retail release dates(also named Infinite series; and all ML's from here on with the exception of the Jubilee BAF will concur with any major Marvel movies), I decided to jump right back to the thrill of toy hunt! Great idea? Bad? Saved some money? Lost? Well… let's scrutinize.

Shartimus Prime is a toy collector/reviewer that is VERY adept at the game and he almost always have luck in grabbing sets. He was kind enough to provide me the item number that Target uses for these figures(Thank you Shart!) so suffice to say I jumped right on that, calling target damn near everyday to see when they will be receiving these things. It was a pestering six days of calling and following up, appearing on the scene or what not, inquiring, so forth, etc. and finally on their new floor set, I found four out of the six(Amazing Spider-Man, Superior Spider-Man, Beetle, Electro). What made things even sweeter is that I got them for the 'older' MSFRP price and not for the current price that Hasbro is asking for their figures. So what about the rare Black Cat and Carnage? I decided to merely wait on them since I thought that Target would be replenishing their supplies. That and perhaps other local retail stores would be able to provide what Target(my two close targets) didn't have! Walmart and Toys R Us did very little to aid my quest for these guys, sadly. So what the heck did Target provide for the next coming weeks?

An empty peg with that clearly labels: Spider-Man 6 inch Build A Figure on the new marked up price of the said figures! For weeks this is what I have seen and I called a couple of times just to see if they would replenish it from their shipment. Turns out that it wasn't even scheduled to come in! Now I don't really give a damn if it's the old price($14.99) or the new price, the fact of the matter is that they never stocked up! Why is that? And why is it this is all I see in my local target damn near everyday:

These are the new 'Super Hero Mashers' that Hasbro seems to be going on a trend with since the Iron Man 3 assemblers. They seem to be better quality than the Iron Man 3 one, but these things are obviously for the younger audience and not for collectors like me(or you if you are one). These parade the toy section along with:

More than enough 3.75 inch Spider-Man toys that are clearly not for collectors! All of these gadget filled, function exuberant 'action figures' are great for young children! And it's not big secret that I'm no longer a huge fan of Marvel Universe and their 3.75 pint size toys but they are a collectors' favorite in many places of the world! For a while that was the only thing we go when 6 inch was out of commission! So why do they ONLY get this much attention now?

I mean…. come on! If we are truly going for the whole what kids love and what is cheaper for parents to buy, aren't these guys fit that description? Or wait! There's no functions or gadgets right? Three dollars isn't worth to cough up for more details and more characters? No. Here's the bottom line that I see: retailers like Target doesn't seem to cater much to collectors. The shipment of the Amazing Spider-Man BAF only came in eight pieces(yes, I was told the number of what they are receiving), and since that time I bought those four, I never once saw them again in my local target. I DID find Black Cat at another target an hour or two away from my location. So what does that say? Do some Target order more than others because of demographics? Demand? Management calls? Or perhaps the true shipment will arrive during the release of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie? I don't know the answer to that right now but I do know is that I did spend quite a bit of time and gas searching for the set when in the end I ended up depending on eBay to finish my set.

So what does that really say? What is the better option as a toy collector? Speaking for myself, I don't have the patience(or the time) as I used to for toy hunting. Hell, I don't have patience, PERIOD. So will I get my next BAF set on sites like Amazon and BigBadToystore? Probably. Is that a better option for everyone out there? If someone has the money up front to SPEND THAT much all at once, then I personally feel that it is the more viable option. Driving around is tedious, takes up a lot of time and never a guarantee(unless you call in advance and hold, but even then). One always has to factor in gas money and again TIME! But there are some things about online shopping that makes it fallible like perhaps you get a defected item, or the delivery takes too long, or perhaps you end up buying into a not so legit seller…. who knows?! Personally I will always go the route of online buying. 

I'm loving this set of BAF don't get me wrong but… it was a freaking headache finishing it. And still is(yes I'm done with it but… yeah.) Anyways, hopefully some reviews coming up soon here!

So fellow collectors, what route is better? There are a lot of factors that will decide which is more adequate for you.

ML Ultimate Green Goblin BAF: Superior Spider-Man

So far, it's the last of the Ultimate Green Goblin BAF I have. Again, Carnage and Black Cat still remains out of my grasps and their prices are still sky high in my local online stores! But moving on to this guy… You know the story line that involves "Superior Spider-Man" is intriguing. It got a enough backlash from fans and some praise from others. Regardless of where it stood, it lasted a good few 13 months and a bit more until the second movie come out in theaters(that was predictable). One thing for sure that I like from that story line(despite me not reading ONE issue) is that Spidey got an updated suit!

There's two box theme for this series. One is the more comic book themed like we have seen in Beetle and Superior Spider-Man here, and then of course there is the movie theme that we have seen from Amazing Spider-Man and Electro. The symbol and the side art is the distinguishable signs that of what is movie and what is not. Curious, they only have 2 out of the 6 movie related and the running change variations don't have any other movie versions as well.

I'm a big fan of this costume design! Okay so a lot of the preferences I have for this thread is the fact that it adheres to my two favorite colors: red and black. If I remember correctly, Superior Spidey also has extra 'limbs' like Iron Spider-Man suit. I'm sure with Dock Ock being inside Spidey's body, that would make sense since that would feel right at home with his tentacle ways in his original body. Wish they added that in with the figure! But as a new mold and the paint job being above mediocre, I can't complain that much. Though he is missing something on his forearm which I assume are advanced web shooters or something… not entirely sure. Again, didn't read the comics(don't read comics anymore).

He comes with another leg of Ultimate Green Goblin and a pair of alternate hands. Again I'm glad they have these variant hands which adds a lot more pose options, but if only those 'tentacles' or 'spider pegs' were added in here!

On the articulation department, he reminds me a lot of the Amazing Spider-Man figure on this wave. He has the same amount of articulation with the same new mold that they use for a skinnier and more nimble looking Spidey!

And he is rather pose able might I add and very joint friendly! Though I will say now as a qualm I have with the other Spider-Man figure, he lacks the webbing accessory that would've made these web slinging shots a bit more convincing! I mean he has the flexibility for it, adding that web line would really make a few more great shots!

And those extra legs on his back… it would've been really nice!

Superior Spider-Man in red light!

Superior vs Scarlet!

In conclusion, I really like this figure despite the minor set backs or the lack of things that would've made this figure just plain 'perfect'! Basing it off on the character and the costume design and its action figure adaptation, I would say that this is my favorite so far of the four. But again, Carnage and Black Cat are still running rampant out there and not in my grasp so I'm sure there might be a change of opinion once I finally have them! As of right now, that's all in regards to this BAF. I will build him, just a matter of time! 

ML Ultimate Green Goblin BAF: Amazing Spider-Man

Four pieces out of six in my grasp! Amazing Spider-Man is going to lead the charge on my review. But let me just say right now before I continue, I am absolutely surprised with how good this figure is!

Again I think this will be the new trend with Hasbro's Marvel Legends boxes. Just like the Captain America Mandroid BAF piece I reviewed, the new box is indeed something to fancy over. It's open friends, the embossed pictures and logos are quite nice and one is able to see the figure and the piece that comes with him rather easily.

Speaking of the piece, Spidey comes with Ultimate Green Goblin's right arm and the flame affect. the accessories are two alternate hands: fists and web hands. This is where I will praise Hasbro for their efforts on getting some influence from import toys! With Hasbro not being very keen with finger articulation like Toybiz was, it would be behoove of them to have alternate hands to go along with their toys! I mean just with the few Figmas and Playarts Kai toy reviews I did, having alternates adds more fun factor to the action figure! More pose options equals more fun factor! I mean it might not be as much as what the imports supply but for the price I paid for these figures, it's something to praise! That and the flame affects makes the entire piece a bit more enamoring! So good job on that Hasbro! Keep it up!

So I'm going to be honest when we move on towards the details: I don't like this new costume. Okay so it's classic Spider-Man! It looks like the comic book counterpart so what's there to not like? Well, truth to be told I stopped being a huge fan of Spidey's outfit a long time ago. I appreciate the nostalgia, but it's just not my favorite so with that said, I like the first suit in Amazing Spider-Man a whole lot better! It was a new take on the suit and separates him from McGuire Spider-Man. Apparently there was a backlash from fans so we get a more classic look for the new movie. The symbol is the only thing 'distinct' about it. As a figure, it's good. Lines are sculpted in there as well as the Spider-Man insignia on the front and the back. It's a good sculpted figure, again the suit is what irks me.

Now the articulation is what we are all going for right now and let me just say, this figure is FUN to pose! There are a lot of things this figure offers! A LOT! It is a definitive of a good(not expensive) Spider-Man figure! Minus the finger articulation, this figure basically took what Toybiz Spidey's were mostly good for in the articulation department and then put the fancier paint and voila! We have this Spider-Man! I mean…

That's just a warmer up too.

And I barely scratched the surface with what this figure can do. I don't have the proper accessories like the webbing to make more Spidey famous poses, but hell, just with what I have it does well enough. This Spider-Man is also joint friendly so suffice to say, it's easy to pose him around with whatever one can think of.

Yes, that is an old Toybiz Spider-Man action figure for the Spider-Man 2 line.

So in conclusion, while I'm not the biggest fan of this 'new' suit, the action figure offers a lot. While just being the first, I just want to say that there is high hopes for this BAF. With above mediocre painting, a new mold, alternate hands, and great and friendly articulation, it's definitely a huge improvement from the last few Spider-Man related action figures that Hasbro has been dishing out.