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| Packaging - ***
Sturdy clamshells are ToyBiz’s favorite packaging these days and ours too. They’re durable, they stack, and they look pretty decent, if not a bit cluttered with the stickers, card, and comic stuck back there. This is the bilingual series from Canada so the labels will be different on the US release ones. Sculpting - ****
Holy mother of God… What ToyBiz may of lacked for in the past, they’ve made up for with some absolutely spectacular sculpts this time around! If you’re familiar with Marvel legends, you know how detailed they can be, but never before have I seen them this detailed! One particular thing I noticed is that all the sculpts have a different texture to them, even if it’s minute. The plastic actually feeling like scratchy fabric that gives the character a matte look. Bravo, no slick toy-looking figures here!
There’s good and there’s bad however... well not ‘bad’ per say, but different. My expected favorite character(s) turned out to be correct this time around! Just like Mike, usually the character I think I’m going to love is changed when I get them into my hands. Not so this time! The three ‘gems’ of this series are Green Goblin, Blackheart, and Onslaught. It seems ToyBiz went with particular artist renditions this time around, John Romita Jr’s art was mirrored in the Green Goblin and Blackheart in particular.
Loki starts us off with a terrific sculpt taken from the new Loki miniseries. All the creases on his costume are there with different levels of texture for the outside of his cape (fur) and inside of his cape (patchwork leather). His face is old and weathered to depict him as he appeared in the miniseries, not the usual young Loki we’re use to. Kinda reminds me of the old man that sat on his porch all day and yelled at the kids coming home from school. Those horns of his look great and so does his sword.
Next up is the massive Abomination, who many consider to be one of the better figures. He does indeed have a terrific sculpt with deep, segmented lines and little bumps all over him. His skin has that texture I spoke of earlier and really looks like reptilian skin to me. His face is excellent, barred teeth and a growing expression that just screams ‘lemme at the Hulk’! I’m not too keen on seeing they changed his hips to smooth ball joints to match his shorts. The earlier prototyped showed him with sculpted hips, but oh well, he still looks fantastic.
Blackheart’s one of the gems in the set and for good reason, his sculpt is mind blowing! His design is taken from the John Romita look, coupled with how he appears throughout the marvel universe in different comics like Ghost Rider and the X Men.
Blackheart’s legs resemble the new SMC Lizard’s with propped up heels, making him stand on his toes and gain a pretty good height over normal sized figures. His face is downright creepy with slanted eyes and no mouth, framed by a mane of spines. And what a mane it is! The mane is made up of five different layers of spines, each one tapering back and filling out his head really well. Blackheart’s body is covered from head to toe with a gritty, bumpy texture, even on the inside of his shoulder and hip joints, giving him a ‘complete’ appearance.
His bendy tail needs to be addressed however, it sticks straight out from his rear and it’s HUGE, as long as tall as the character is tall. This makes it easier or difficult to make him stand, depending on how you pose it. Even tho it’s bendy, it doesn’t flex too well because of the stiffness of the plastic and you may need to work with it a bit. Other than that, Blackheart truly shines!
Green Goblin is next with another home run sculpt done right out of the comics! Contrary to what people think, he has a completely new sculpt and doesn’t reuse anything from the new SMC Hobgoblin. I carefully matched up the gloves, boots, and legs to find that while the sculpt was VERY close in parts, it was totally different. Bravo ToyBiz!
Goblin’s scales are flawlessly executed all over his costume and each wrinkle of his boots and gloves look very nice. And his face, WOW! The ears are incredible and Goblin has a menacing, maniac face like we’ve all been waiting for! Yes the Pumpkin bomb is permanently attached to his left hand, but you’ll be posing him with it anyway right? He has peg holes in his toes, unlike HobGoblin did, but his glider doesn’t have pegs to utilize these, just foot straps.
Lady Deathstrike’s sculpt is one of those love it or hate it types. Her legs, vest, and shoulder pads are micro-textured (ooh, think I’ll use that word now) and sculpted really well, as are the long sleeves that are wrapped in a ribbon. Her arms and hands are kinda plain however and the metal looks soft, which of course it is.
Then you hit her face… ouch! Where the skin on her body is microtextured, her face is totally smooth with soft features that remind you of a cartoon character, throwing off the whole look. Her expression doesn’t help either, almost smiling but not quite. Her doo-rag is pretty nice tho with wrappings that fan out behind her in place of hair.
Pyro is next with a very decent, clean sculpt to him. It’s classic Pyro all the way, the upwards-flowing hair, big goggles, and large collar. The backpack and hoses are well done and are permanently attached to him, everything having that microtexture to it. His index fingers are a bit long, but part of the reason for this lies in the articulation of his hands. I would of liked bigger flame units on the back of his hands, tho the ones there work. Overall a very clean sculpt with detail in all the right places.
Now… Onslaught. Where do I begin. He’s sculpted with more detail than all the other BAF’s combined. Think I’m over exaggerating? Think again! There’s bumps, groves, crevices, slants in his armor, tiny exhaust vents, bone looking designs on his fingers, clamshell-like ridges on his feet, and more… whew! His design is flawless and his head is something ToyBiz should really be proud of, design and articulation wise, (more on that later) looking very menacing with opened jaws and beady eyes! He may not be as big as the other BAF’s, but what he lacks in size he more than makes up for in sculpt! Paint - Abomination ****, Loki ****, Blackheart ***1/2, lady Deathstrike **, Pyro ***1/2, green Goblin ****, Onslaught ****
The paint job on all of these figures is flawless. Out of two complete sets I didn’t find any major slop, bleed, or oddities. I don’t think any other series has impressed me that much, whatever issues with paint quality control ToyBiz had, it’s gone now. Each figure has been given a special soaked-in wash of some sort of a darker shade of whatever their base color is. It reminds me of airbrushed work but it’s obviously a wash, just done so precisely and so faintly in some cases it’s amazing.
Abomination has a great detailed wash over him, if not a bit too dark. However this makes him look pretty menacing and grimy like he just popped up from the sewer to start some trouble.
Loki has a basic green/yellow/brown look to him with no slop and good metallic colors for his armor. The horns could of used a wash, but that’s being picky.
Blackheart’s not black! Whaaat? Yep he’s a deep, deep navy blue with highlights of lighter blue. Odd because if this is the Romita/marvel universe version, he was always done in solid black. Only his Marvel vs Capcom version was primarily blue. Weird but acceptable because of his great design. Those eyes are sweet as well, deep reds that look like blood.
Lady Deathstrike kinda suffers in the paint area, not from slop by from choices. While her browns and whites are great, they reversed the shading on her robotic arms and used black for the highlights, obscuring much of the metallic detail where they should of gone with a wash instead. Her face is plain unfortunately, looking quite cartoonish and the deep eyebrows/eyeliner don’t help. Ack, what happened?
Pyro is Pyro, lots of yellows, reds, and a dark brown that I don’t remember him wearing. It works for him tho and looks really dynamic. Unfortunately his joints are painted, not molded in color and I can see where they may start to chip or wear over time. This is especially true with his hips that are yellow over brown, and his ankles where the brown can already be seen if you tilt his foot to the side. His face and head are flawless tho, as is the rest of his brightly colored body.
Green Goblin has a dark paint job, that special wash applied flawlessly under each one of his scales and in the wrinkles of his fabric. Wow, and the face is clean, a perfect Goblin grin painted on there. The copper pumpkin bomb looks sweet as well, really standing out in his hand unlike Hobby’s.
Onslaught again takes the cake, mainly because of the detail work the paint seeps into and stands out on. His purple armor has a black wash while his red sections have a dark reddish brown wash. There are huge, cool looking red gems on either of his arms whose colors fade into the main purple. The face is perfect with deep blue eyes on a shining silver. They could of done a wash inside the mouth and on the teeth, but it probably would of clogged it up too much. Articulation - Loki ****, Green Goblin ****, Pyro ****, Lady Deathstrike *** ½, Abomination ** ½, Blackheart ***1/2, Onslaught ****
Articulation varies between figures and I’ll do my best to cover the weak and strong points without going over each separate point of articulation. They’re what you’ve come to expect with the Marvel Legends, exceeding in some cases. ToyBiz is using a new type of ankle joint, one that’s permanently fused into the foot without the separate under sole holding it in. I don’t know how they did it, producing the ankle and foot together at the same time, probably just like they do the shoulders and hips now. Works GREAT! How come they can’t do this for the elbows and knees?
Ok, Blackheart first. He has all your normal amount of ML articulation which is good and bad. He has a hard time standing at first because of his toes. They’re articulated, but the split is right down the center leaving him no way to tilt forward on his toes without there being a large bump that throws his balance off. This can be fixed by laying the bottoms flush and supergluing them in place. I highly recommend it because removing the toe movement won’t take away from the overall foot/ankle articulation due to the design of his feet. Other than the toe problem, which really isn’t anything big, he’s perfect!
Green Goblin has all the sweet spots just like HobGoblin does and can achieve some awesome poses on that glider! His head tilts almost all the way back too so you can have him hunched over as far as you like.
Lady Deathstike has an actual ball-in-socket hip joint that works pretty well, but not perfect. It gives only a decent range of motion and she can’t take a perfect sitting pose with her legs at a 90 degree angle from her hips like most characters. Her vest slides back and forth on her shoulders when you move her torso, ala Deadpool’s bandolier, looking quite good. Her arms are nicely articulated, if not a bit spindly and soft-feeling when you move them.
Abomination takes a hard hit in articulation unfortunately and is my big gripe of the set. He lacks torso, wrist, and shin articulation. The wrist really hurt, as all Abom can do is hold his hands straight out to punch and can’t make an uppercut pose. The hips are soft plastic unfortunately and I can’t get mine to click, they just bend all the way forward and back so he’s stuck standing, bleh! Then comes the gunshot waist. Why do I call it that? Because it sounds like a gunshot every time you turn his waist, IF you can turn it being as the joint there is so tight! BAM! CRACK! CLICK! A chiropractor’s nightmare. Everything else on his works fine and looks good.
Loki has all the articulation of a normal ML figure and is a bit hindered by his costume, the cowl reducing his neck to a swivel and the shoulder pads keeping his arms down for the most part. The loincloth that hangs down is soft rubber and doesn’t impede the legs very much at all thank goodness. |
| Pyro is nothing to write home about, sporting all the usual joints but looking great while doing so.
And again, here’s where Onslaught shines! He’s got Almost 47 points of articulation, all of which work. The feet and legs can be spread out for perfect balance and have nice sturdy joints for such. Every claw of his hand is movable and the arm contains multiple swivels and tilts. The waist doesn’t turn, but this isn’t a big deal because he’s simply far too massive anyway. His crab shell is articulated on the shoulders and the back flap, coupled with his torso range, makes Onslaught the first figure I know of that can look completely straight down without tilting his legs!
Now comes the fun part. As you know Mike loves ball-jointed neck and so do I. Onslaught sports one that’s in four different parts! That’s right, see the ‘collars’ there around his head that extend back? Each one of them moves so you can swivel his entire head to look any direction, like a snake’s. Props again to ToyBiz as they could of just made this one piece. Accessories (sans Onslaught chunks)- **??
This is going to be really hard to give stars too because of the missing backdrop, the fact that Onslaught can’t really be called an accessory to the particular figures, and that only two figures actually come with anything.
Pyro, Blackheart, Abom, and Lady D only come with the comic, card, and little plastic stand the backdrop is suppose to sit on, as do all the figures in the set however. Loki comes with a great removable cape and sword he can hold great in either hand. The sword has little Norse runes on it and is made of soft plastic so you may need to heat it up and bend it straight. Green Goblin blows everything away tho! He comes with a satchel, a bomb (tho permanently attached), his glider in three parts, and a glider stand! The glider is made of hard, sturdy plastic but looks a bit weird because the wings dip down to make a complete upside down ‘U’ shape, reminding me of a horse’s saddle. He sits great upon the glider, which sits great upon the stand. You can’t go wrong.
It’s a shame ToyBiz didn’t give us flame blasts for Pyro or green/red minions for Blackheart. Perhaps this is because they didn’t cost out, or because they didn’t have time. The missing backdrop may be included with the American releases, it may not, only time will tell. I’m going to call ToyBiz and ask. Value - ****
At seven or eight bucks you get a wave of just villains, all with out of this world sculpts and with a really cool BAF figure to make. Sure we’d like them to be cheaper but you get your money’s worth with these figures. I picked up a case for $112.00 at the Outer Reaches in Canada and I’m sure you can find them at Wal Marts around the country when the hit the USA. Things to Watch Out For -
There’s three variants in this set to look for, melted face Abomination, unmasked Green Goblin, and Crown of Lies Loki. I didn’t have any paint issues but since these are a mass market release, always check yours. Oh, and glue Blackheart’s toes in place so he can stand! Overall - ****
I’m just going to give the whole series four stars because you really need to buy them all to complete Onslaught and truly appreciate the set. Some figures are just ‘eh’ like Lady Deathstrike, others are the best ML figures made so far like Green Goblin and Blackheart. There’s that neat ‘microtexture’ on all the figures and the new one-piece ankle joints. If we get the backdrops in the US release of these figures, I’m going to say this is the BEST series ever released. Period. And trust me when I say that because Lord knows I’ve bought more marvel legends than most people will in their lifetime!
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