Marvel Universe by Hasbro

Review by Loc

It’s so strange to see the return of the 3 ¾ inch action figure. Back in the day, this size defined “action figure”. Granted, I’m talking about 30 years ago, but the original Star Wars series brought the world of action figures to life. At this scale, vehicles like the X-Wing and the AT-AT could be made and sold to anxious kids. Soon enough, every toyline in the 80s was aimed at this scaled, with GI Joe capturing my own attention. Those were good times.

In the 90s, the five inch scale took hold. Mostly with ToyBiz and their Marvel lines, you had Spider-man and X-Men filling the shelves. Again, at the time, these were great and helped shift the landscape again. The larger size was aimed to deliver more characters and fewer vehicles. After all, Spider-man had many different costumes, but really, how many Spider-buggies did he drive?

Ah, but then it all changed in the late 90s. Already popular in Japan, ToyBiz brought the six inch hyper-articulated figure to the masses. Marvel Legends was born and with it, over 15 waves of comic goodness. These poseable super-statuettes were simply great, and the innovations kept adding value to the consumer. Stuff like pack-in bases became pack-in Build-A-Figures, and the “adult collector” was in heaven. Check back with me some other time about the “adult collector”.

And now? What’s the next evolution? The 3 ¾ inch scale…wait, what? We’re going backwards? Yes. Why? There’s a lot of speculation, but it’s not for the love of vehicles. More than anything, the tightened economy has forced companies to go back to the smaller-is-better motto. Since plastic is a petroleum by-product, making big toys didn’t make much sense. So, why not force the consumer to enjoy small guys? The saddest part, these little guys are now pushing $8 a pop. In the late 90s, Marvel Legends were…wait for it…$8 a pop. It’s crazy that companies are charging $8 for your choice of a Star Wars guy, a GI Joe guy, or a superhero guy. And whether the market will sustain this price point is up for debate.

So, I’ve wasted more than enough words on how we got to a 3 ¾ inch Marvel line, how are the toys? Well, they’re…decent. The funny thing is ToyBiz put out their version a couple years back, called Superhero Showdown. At the time, Legends were going strong, but the company was experimenting with smaller toys centered around a gaming aspect. These little guys were decent, but charged a whooping $6 each! The collectors didn’t support the line because of the cost, and as the sculpting was hitting its stride in the third series, it died quietly. Oh, the irony.

Yes, Hasbro acquired the rights to produce Marvel toys. And after a couple years of working on their version of Legends, Hasbro has basically dropped that scale and put all their efforts into Marvel Universe. Which makes sense because they also produce the Star Wars toys and the GI Joe toys, so why not keep it going with Marvel. To be fair, the packaged goods looks pretty…good, sorry about that. They’re small enough for the pegs, but big enough to feel you’re getting a cool package. For Marvel Universe, they’ve included a number for each character, so they’re building in the collectability already. There’s also a new X-Men Origins: Wolverine line that has hit at the same time. Again, these are in the same scale and style, so I consider them the a subset of the main line. And you’ll get a couple characters from the Wolverine line that aren’t in the MU line, like Deadpool, Maverick, and Gambit. The MU line has stuck to the familiar faces for now, Iron Man, Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America. Overall, this is going to be a line with an incredible range of characters, so good luck to any completists who absolutely insist on having one of everything.

The figures themselves are decent. Paint jobs are minimal with mostly molded plastic accounting for the coloring. It’s strange because the GI Joe line has a fair amount of paint, and even when it doesn’t, it looks fine enough. But these Marvel guys, they look weird with just colored plastic, a little cheaper than they should look.

The articulation is pretty good. It’s standard GI Joe stuff with elbows, shoulders, torso, knees, and some ankles. It’s better than some of the older “modern” Star Wars, where you had cool looking sculpts and no poseability at all. These MU heroes and villains will be as action-packed as you want them to be. There are some weird things going on with though. Deadpool comes with a boatload of accessories: two swords, a hand gun, a machine gun, and a gigantic Sai! It’s huge! And he can’t actually hold anything but his machine gun, yeah, two swords and hand gun just plop out of his non-closed grip hands. Sucks.

One of the coolest things about MU is the little details they’ve thrown in. Based around a “Fury Files” gimmick, the MU are supposed to contain codes that you can log in with and get more information about the character. Cool enough. But the Captain America included a faux-note written by Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic to all of you, that gives his recommendation to Tony Stark. The note states it’s not a good idea to simply take a “Captain America” from another dimension and place him on our Earth. This is cool in a couple ways: first, this other Captain America is designed as the Ultimate universe version of Cap, a spin-off comic series; second, this also plays into the fact that Captain America “died” in the Marvel Comics and this note seems to speak to Iron Man’s attempts to right a wrong. Nice little Easter Eggs to those geeks like me.

Overall, these are cool toys. For so long, fans have asked for GI Joe-scaled superheroes and now they got them. However, those prices are ridiculous, especially juxtaposed against Marvel Legends figures that were on the shelf as little as six months ago. It’ll be a tough tough sell to get fans to buy into these when a lot of people are keeping an eye on their wallets. So with that, buy the ones you like, or just look at them cause they cost too much for you. Shivers.