REVIEW: Toy Biz MARVEL LEGENDS "Face Off" Hulk

Released 2006 

Toy Biz SMASHES their earlier efforts with this Incredible HULK figure!

Hulk Airlines

Any collector will tell you, there have been a LOT of Hulk Figures produced since big green saw his debut in May of 1962.  And truth be told, most of those efforts have produced less than stellar results.  But the bulk of these have seen release in recent years as demand for the big guy has steadily grown.

  It's not hard to imagine why the quality of these efforts has been so varied.  While "Huge Green dude" has remained a constant, the DETAILS of the Hulk's design has changed pretty drastically since the 60's.  Part of this is due to the ever evolving skill of the artists involved but an equal amount can probably be attributed to improvements in how toys themselves are made.  We've come a long way.  And by 2002, Toy Biz was going to finally get to take their shot at bringing this beloved character to life via plastic and paint.  Wisely, the Hulk was to be a cornerstone of their brand new MARVEL LEGENDS line of figures... a line that has seen an explosive burst of popularity (amongst comic book fans and collectors at least) in the years since.

CANNONBALL!

  But even Toy Biz had to start somewhere.  And by comparison to their latter day efforts, early Marvel Legends figures still had plenty of room for improvement.  2002 doesn't really feel like that long ago to me, but what a difference four years can make.  That series 1 Hulk was by no means a bad figure, but it wasn't until 2006 that Toy Biz would give us their definitive Hulk Figure as part of their FACE OFF series of two-packs.  And it's that Hulk, that I'm here to review now. 

SCALE and HEIGHT

There's a punchline here about "8 Inches" but I'm leaving it alone.

Face Off Hulk is not the biggest Hulk figure ever produced, but it is one of the bigger figures released in the MARVEL LEGENDS 6 inch scale.  All told, he clocks in at just over 8 inches... enough to make most Legends look small (as they should) by comparison.  He fits in well with Hasbro and Toy Biz MARVEL LEGENDS figures.

 I wouldn't recommend it to be used with the larger scale MARVEL SELECT figures since they are in a 7 inch scale.  You could probably get away with it, but might be better served using the Marvel SELECT Hulk from THE AVENGERS (released 2012).

Sculpt

  In my opinion, the Sculpt is one of this figures greatest strengths.  To be sure, this Hulk is a bit of a time capsule.  Stylistically, he's very much in keeping with the best elements of the Hulk as he appeared in the 1980's.  THIS is the Hulk that reigned alongside the mullet, "The Gipper", BEAT STREET and bandanas wrapped around thighs! It's a very different take on the Hulk than what we see in THE AVENGERS (2012), and that is a good thing (Not that modern Hulk is any less awesome, but I'm all for variety).

A Fantastic Sculpt

 There has been a tendency in other Hulk figures to make them look like EVERY muscle in his entire body is fully flexed at the same time, which is not only impossible, but looks a bit ridiculous.  What I admire here is a sense of realism based restraint in the sculpting.  He still looks massive and powerful, but is not all roid-raged out.  There's almost a look of repose to his physique... the potential for all that power to be released.

Rear view

  You won't find labyrinthine tangles of meaningless (and usually inaccurate) veins or muscles that look like they are about to snap for no reason.  The veins that are there are anatomically accurate and understated.  Hulk's feet are giant (which helps with stability) and his hands are rendered with muscular realism rather than just making his fingers look like fat sausages.

Bob Larkin's classic painting

  And his face... is EPIC, with a wide eyed expression ripped straight from the artwork of Bob Larkin's classic painting (which was used by Marvel's Marketing for years).  Teeth are over-sized, and his hair is messy and disheveled.  The modern Hulk has a much more clean cut hair style and more realistically sized teeth.  More human, less monster.  And I like my monsters.  Face Off Hulk just looks MEANER... scrappier, and more raw.  

The sculpt is otherwise clean.  I didn't spot any messy mold seams or chunks of missing plastic where the figure had been ripped away from the sprues.

  His skin has an almost elephant hide look to parts of it, with well placed wrinkles to seal the deal.  And his pants have an almost burlap feel to them.  This is some quality work, especially when you consider the price point that this figure was released at.

  

Paint Apps 

I know I keep coming back to this, but Toy Biz just seemed to put more "love" into their paint apps than Hasbro does.  For example, you'll find a layer of paint shading over the entire figure along with targeted use of washes to accent certain details.  You just don't see that from Hasbro.

The Face Off Hulk's skin is more of an emerald green than the warm green used for Modern Hulk and shading adds depth to the musculature.  This is more prevalent in the upper torso though, than the ankles and feet.  And fans of the original comics will appreciate Face Off Hulk sporting a snazzy pair of shredded PURPLE pants!  These have been given a wash to deepen the texture, which is a nice effect.

Ready for his close up

A lot of effort has gone into the paint apps used on the head as well.  Rather than just being black, his hair has been given a deep green wash for variety and unlike any other Hulk figure I've seen, the iris's of his eyes POP with an eerie off white color.  It reminds me of the contacts worn by Lou Ferrigno on the old 80's TV show.  Teeth have a brown-yellow wash over them... one more gritty detail unheard of in this era of blinding bleached teeth.

  Paint work overall is thick so none of the underlying plastic color bleeds through, and there are no discernible scuffs to be found.  Edges are crisp and there is no unwanted paint bleed anywhere.  Like the sculpting, the paint apps scream quality.  It's no surprise that this figure is so highly regarded in collectors circles.

Articulation   

  One area where you might expect this figure to fall a bit short is when it comes to the Articulation.  And there you'd be right.  This is not the most articulated figure in the world.  But then, we're not talking spiderman here, so I didn't expect to be able to twist the big guy into Yoga poses.

  It's surprising how many points of articulation the Face Off Hulk actually DOES have.  What undermines his articulation is the range of motion of each individual joint.  So what can you expect from big green?

Now THOSE are some huge Traps

  Well for starters, the head is mounted atop what I can only guess (you can't see it) is a ball-hinge joint.  This allows the Hulkster to look left and right as well as pretty far down... but not up.  That direction is wholly blocked by his massively over-sized trapezius muscle.

Possibly the only outright oversight on the figure is the lack of any kind of torso articulation.  There is no diaphragm pivot joint or ab-crunch to be found here.  I can understand the decision, since including such a joint would detract from the beautiful sculpt... but personally, I'd sacrifice that to get extra articulation.  What perfection this figure would be, with an Ab-crunch and a wider range of motion to existing joints.  So Face Off Hulk 100% cannot bend forward.  Bummer.

Waist Swivel of Justice

  Instead you get a waist swivel joint.  And that's more than Hasbro's Iron Man Figures can say so I'm glad to see it.

  His shoulders rotate and raise just like most MARVEL LEGENDS do, however this is again limited by his massive physique.  This time the limiting factor is purely his bulk.  Still, what's here is serviceable.

Limited Range of Motion

  Biceps swivel as you'd expect.   As for the elbows, those are single jointed and feature less than 90 degrees of play.  It wouldn't be until 2012 when we'd see a Hulk figure with double jointed elbows (Walmart exclusive AVENGERS Hulk).

Hulk SMAS... er, Slap..

  Finishing out the upper body articulation are wrists that swivel and pivot (which is awesome) and hands that feature the tried and true Toy Biz hand articulation.  This isn't on an individual finger basis, but the four fingers  on a hinge paired to a thumb that doesn't move.  Usually, this is a pretty useful set up, but in the case of Face Off Hulk, articulation is sacrificed again on the altar of sculpting.  Fingers are pre-posed into what are basically flat open palms.  These are better for slapping than punching, and folding them into approximations of fists, just doesn't really work.  A noticeable shortcoming in an otherwise excellent figure, and one that pretty seriously limits your options.

About as much motion as you can squeeze out of these joints

  His lower body articulation is similarly limited by his mass.  Hip joints are standard Toy Biz fare... Ball-Hinge joints.  In their default position his legs can be raised to the side and forward (dorsiflexion) albeit by a very limited number of degrees.  This is made a bit less cumbersome by the addition of upper thigh swivels.  Knees are single jointed and suffer the same limited range of motion.

Toy Biz's early ANKLE ROCKER design

Ankles and feet joints were ahead of their time in terms of functionality though the joints themselves aren't as integrated as modern designs.  Each axis of movement sported an independent joint and these worked together towards the over all motion.  His feet don't rotate (the hip swivels allow this by extension) but they do pivot vertically AND support camber adjustment (for that wide heroic stance) via an early ANKLE ROCKER design.  And there are even toe joints.  

  So it's a solid effort overall.  Not groundbreaking, but good enough to meet the expectations most collectors will have of a big ass HULK figure.

Special Features

Unlike modern Hasbro Legends, Toy Biz often rocked a hole in the figure's back that allowed you to get it up into the air with a flight stand.  While some say that Face Off Hulk is too beefy to allow this, Shartimus Prime (look up his excellent reviews on Youtube) proved that this can be done with a little creativity.

Make sure to use a solid flight stand with this

  Of course, when I tried to be cool like him, my (used) flight stand peg snapped off in his back... grounding my dreams of a green airborne meat missile.  So I had to fall back on a heavy duty aftermarket stand to get the big guy aloft.

Toy Biz going the extra mile

  And I have to give it to Toy Biz again for going the extra mile.  Face off Hulk features Foot Peg holes.

Accessories 

  Had I bought this figure new, he would have come with a two-figure flight stand and diorama card to insert into it.  He also would have come with a less than amazing figure of THE LEADER.  But all I was after was the Hulk himself, so I bought him loose via eBay.

Other versions

Open Mouth Variant

  The Face Off Hulk has an open mouth variant (different head sculpt).  The included LEADER figure has an entirely new head as well.  Otherwise, the Variant is identical to the base figure(s).

Size Comparison

Making Spidey look small

  For the sake of continuity I've shown the Hulk here next to Hasbro's Symbiote Black Spiderman.

Next to Hasbro's excellent AVENGERS HULK

As a Bonus, I snapped another shot of Face Off Hulk next to the Walmart exclusive AVENGERS Hulk figure.  Please note that AVENGERS Hulk has a wide default stance making him look slightly shorter, but both figures are actually about the same height.

Opinion, Value and VERDICT 

With the MARVEL SELECT She-Hulk

  This is a harder figure to come by these days.  Be it the superb sculpt, lovingly applied paint apps or decent articulation, it's one of, if not THE best Legends scale Hulk figure going.  Even used (without the LEADER or accessories) this guy can set you back close to $50 on ebay.  A shiny new two-pack runs closer to $80.  So this is not a casual purchase.  But collectors will likely find the Face Off Hulk an irresistible addition to their collection.

  For everybody else though, you could get just as much figure for a lot less money by picking up a Walmart Exclusive AVENGERS HULK figure (review forthcoming).  It's got a great sculpt, and superior articulation, if not the loving paint apps.

Closing thoughts

  Still the best Hulk Figure for your Legends Collection.  Just not the best VALUE.

  For more REVIEWS like this one, keep checking back on yer' old pal Evotaph and GEEKISH PURSUITS.  In the meantime, please COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE!

REVIEW: Hasbro War Machine

Released 2009-2010 

Hasbro makes huge improvements to their Iron Man line

Front View

   If you read my reviews of Hasbro's Mark II and III figures then you know that they were full of suck.  A sub-par sculpt, sloppy paint apps, useless articulation and horrid quality control undermined the vast potential of those figures to kick ass.

Rear View

  So you can imagine that I didn't have very high expectations coming into Hasbro's Iron Man 2 figure line.  And maybe that's why I've been so pleasantly surprised.  While far from perfect, Hasbro made some serious strides with some of the figures in this line... WAR MACHINE being the best of them.  Here's why: 

SCALE and HEIGHT

Six inches of fun

This is an approximately 6 inch figure, and corrects the slight "shortness issue" found in the Mark II-III.  It fits more closely with Hasbro MARVEL LEGENDS figures than the older Toy Biz figures.  But it's close enough to not really matter.

 I wouldn't recommend it to be used with the larger scale MARVEL SELECT figures since they are in a 7 inch scale.

Sculpt

Sharp Detail in the Sculpt

By the time that this figure was released, Hasbro had really upped their game when it came to sculpting.  Finally, we had an Iron Man movie figure with crisp, film accurate proportions and an eye for detail that was in striking range of even Kaiyodo's superb Revoltech line.  More impressive was this level of detail at a fraction of the cost.  This is impressive work by any standard and holds up under close examination.

Sculpt Detail even extends to hidden areas.  Nice work!

  War Machine bristles with weaponry and Tank-like armor plating, all of which is faithfully recreated.  The "pinched" look of the Mark II-III helmets has been fixed and substructure detail can even be found INSIDE the armored knee joints.  Lesser figures would have cut corners here, and Hasbro should be applauded for not cheaping out.

Where's the Love, Hasbro?

  The only real shortcoming can again be laid at the feet of Hasbro's Quality Control.  There are spots all over the figure that have had chunks of plastic literally RIPPED out of the sculpt by rough removal of the figure from the sprues of the mold.  This speaks to the mass market nature of Hasbro's production pipeline.  Kids won't care, but collectors might be disappointed in how their figures took abuse during assembly.

  

Paint Apps 

Here too War Machine impresses.  The broad strokes of color are spot on with a deep semi-matte finish grey that includes tiny flecks of metallic in the plastic itself.  The result is a surface that picks up the highlights around it nicely without looking too shiny or like plastic.

  Silver accents can be found throughout, and are crisp.  There is almost zero paint bleed to be found (even in hidden areas like under the knee armor).  And the paint is applied with enough thickness to avoid the plastic underneath coming through.

Looking Good

  The eyes and Arc Reactor are rendered in white with a red painted outline to give the effect of a glow.  The result is well done and effective.

  But what impressed me the most were the tiny details that most people would have overlooked.  Some of these details are even absent on the MARVEL SELECT War Machine, and Marvel Select are known for their impressive paint apps (if not their limited articulation).

Stencil Markings

  It's really cool to see the stencil style markings all over War Machine.  Markings like "AF57" might hint at an Air Force division and "001" probably denotes that War Machine is the first military effort at this kind of tech.  It's fertile ground for the imagination... and isn't that part of what appeals to us about comics and toys in the first place?

WARNING!

  You'll even find tiny yellow and black "WARNING" style striping on the rear end of War Machine's forearm guns.  Hasbro, certainly went the extra mile here, and it shows all over this figure.

Articulation   

  It's clear that Hasbro made an effort to improve the articulation on War Machine beyond what had been done for the Mark II-III but the bulkiness of the armor does limit his movement a bit.  He's not quite up to Marvel Legends spec due to a few legacy issues, but what is here gets the job done.

Articulation gets the job done, but suffers legacy issues

Again, it's not that the points of articulation are lacking, but that the range of motion of each joint is especially limited... some in ways that were avoidable.

  For example:  AGAIN we have a Hasbro movie based Iron Man figure with NO WAIST joint.  This is just ludicrous.  Say what you will about it interfering with the beautiful sculpt, but I'll make that trade any day.  It works GREAT on Hasbro's HEROIC AGE Iron Man, and there is no excuse for it to be missing here.

What you get instead of a Waist Joint

  Instead you get not an ab crunch but another diaphragm rib pivot joint.  This is the ONLY way to get War Machine's shoulders to rotate off axis from the waist.  Backward bending and Forward bending are much improved and have a decent range of motion.

Looking Down

  The head is mounted atop a ball hinge joint, that also includes a bit of toe to heel play.    As you'd expect, his head does rotate left and right.  Again, you can forget about that flight pose, but looking down is no problem.  Since War Machine is more of a ground level piece of firepower, I don't really miss the flight pose capability.

Shoulder Armor done right

His shoulders rotate and raise just like most MARVEL LEGENDS do and surprisingly his hinged shoulder armor doesn't get in the way.  That's no small feat.  Biceps swivel nicely and elbows are double jointed.

Not bad for all that armor

  War Machine's wrists swivel and extend (via a pivot) far enough for that iconic Repulsor pose, with separately hinged hand armor that gets out of the way when needed.  This is a nice touch, though these pop off easily.

Hand Armor is hinged.  Good call, Hasbro.

  Both hands are pre-posed in useful ways.  See the ACCESSORIES section below for details.

Return of the wacky hip joints

  I continue to be mystified by Hasbro's bizarre choice of hip joints though.  In their default position his legs can't really be raised to the side OR move forward (dorsiflexion) without first rotating the hip joint by 90 degrees or so.  Even then, his leg motion has a slight arc to it and you have to use the upper thigh swivels to get his knee joint top side again.  I can't get my head around what they were thinking here.

  Knees are double jointed and work surprising well.

  Which brings us to the ankles and feet... which are a design hold over from earlier Iron Man movie figures.  Sure you can eek out a bit more vertical pivot from the ankles than before, but this isn't very useful.  Want some camber out of those feet to support a wide heroic stance?  Well forget about it.  But hey, the ankles allow the feet to ROTATE.... though even this is limited by the ankle armor.

The end result is a bit of a mixed bag.  Likely "good enough", but not great.

Kick ass

I was surprised by one cool bit of articulation though: Mini-gun articulation!  And this just kicks ass.  By default the mini-gun is attached to the left side of War Machines back... but let's say you'd prefer it coming over the right side instead.  NO PROBLEM!  The turret arm is on a track which allows it to slide from left to right.  Add to this a vertical pivot and horizontal swivel and you have a gun that can be pointed pretty much anywhere you'd want it.  He's even got a rocket Launcher pod (over his right shoulder) on a Horizontal pivot.   So when it comes to weapons, you have some serious options.

Special Features

Now THAT's a gun!

  War Machine's most obvious special feature is a turreted mini-gun that includes a separate ammo belt (which is a nice touch).  This looks great and functions even better thanks to the articulation options described above.

Missing Foot Peg Holes... Again

  There's just one thing keeping WM from being a home run here and it's the absence of Foot Peg Holes.  I know I harp on this a lot, but these should be standard issue on every Hasbro figure.  You'll find them on nearly all MARVEL LEGENDS figures and yet for some reason they've been consistently left off of the Iron Man Movie figures.  

Accessories 

No shortage of Accessories

  Another thing that surprised me with War Machine was that the figure wasn't an "either-or" proposition.  Previously (with Hasbro), you'd get a crap figure with accessories OR and nice figure with no useful accessories.

Fists

  In the case of War Machine, you get a very nice figure AND some very nice accessories.  For starters, you get 3 SETS of hands (6 total)!  That alone gets you a lot of possibilities.

Partially Open Hands

  You'll find open "Repulsor Blast" hands, Partially Open Hands and Closed Fists.

Rocket Pod and Ammo Belt

  And finally, he includes an accessory that you won't even find on either the Marvel Select OR Revoltech War Machine offerings... his rocket launcher pod!

Rocket Pod cover

This affixes to a hole over his right shoulder and should you decide you don't want to use it (or prefer the mini-gun to slide over to his right instead of left), there's even a little cover that you can plug into the hole.  GREAT WORK, Hasbro! 

Other versions

  I'm not going to talk about HOT TOYS offering here since that is in the 1:6 scale and might cost you a kidney to get your hands on these days.

But there are two other serious contenders in the space that Hasbro's offering occupies.

Only a Revoltech can do this

 Japan's Kaiyodo produced a War Machine in their REVOLTECH line that looks VERY good.  It's got a sculpt that rivals Hasbro's, as well as very good paint and some great accessories.  It also DOMINATES Hasbro's figure when it comes to articulation.  So if you are into ACBA or just love getting your figures into the most dynamic pose possible, make yours a Revoltech.  Yes, it does cost about $55 so it's worth considering if you *need* all that poseability or if a Hasbro War Machine would take care of you.

MARVEL SELECT (Left) and HASBRO (Right)

  The other option is a Marvel Select War Machine (from Diamond).  This is in a slightly larger 7" scale and is positioned as an affordable proposition to the "statue on my desk" audience.  While I don't personally own one (I own their Mark VI) it's clear that the sculpt is excellent.  This is also your only option if you want a figure with the helmet open.  But paint apps have been hit an miss with Marvel Select in the past.  When they get it right, it looks great... but then other times they do things like forget to paint the eyes.  What you WON'T get is articulation.  Range of motion has been extremely limited on a per joint basis in the past, and while their upcoming NIGHTCRAWLER figure gives me hope, War Machine was released prior to these improvements.  Expect a nice desk ornament, but not an action figure.   

Size Comparison

Maybe Bigger IS better after all

I've shown War Machine next to the Mark III.  You can see that War Machine is bigger overall.

Opinion, Value and VERDICT 

Now all we need is 6" Hammer Drones

For fans of the Iron Man films it would be hard to find a better value for money than Hasbro's War Machine figure.  Dollar for Dollar it's just a clear winner.

Closing thoughts

Weapons HOT!

  There are other War Machine Figures out there that fill their respective niches nicely, but you won't find a single figure that does as many things right for the money as Hasbro's War Machine.  Get one before they are gone. 

  For more REVIEWS like this one, keep checking back on yer' old pal Evotaph and GEEKISH PURSUITS.  In the meantime, please COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE!

REVIEW: Hasbro Iron Man Mark III

Released 2008 

Hasbro cashes in again with another sub-par figure

   If you read my review of Hasbro's Mark II figure then you know what to expect here.  If not, it might be worth giving it a look since the Mark III is essentially the exact same figure with different paint.  

  To be blunt, Hasbro's Mark II SUCKED, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of their Mark III since it suffers in most of the same ways.  There's going to be a lot of copy-paste going on in this review (and not just because I'm a lazy bastard).  Overall, the Mark III is a better figure than the Mark II thanks to a bit more fit and finish, but it's still not a great figure.

  What makes this especially painful for me is my love of the Iron Man films and ILM's spectacular work on updating the look of the armor for a 21st century audience.  I want to LOVE the Mark II and III figures... but I don't.  Even considering their original retail price point, they suck.  So how do they fail and why?  Let me explain.

SCALE and HEIGHT

This is an approximately 6 inch figure, but comes off as being a bit short for the scale.   It fits more closely with Hasbro MARVEL LEGENDS figures than the older Toy Biz figures.  But it's close enough to not really matter.

 I wouldn't recommend it to be used with the larger scale MARVEL SELECT figures since they are in a 7 inch scale.  The difference would be glaring.

Sculpt

  As I mentioned in my Mark II Iron Man review, Hasbro's sculpting chops were in a sad state (as was their Quality Control, apparently) when this figure was released in 2008.  And while the overall look of the sculpt resembles the film, it falters under close examination.

  One of the first things you notice when looking at the Mark III is how sickly and anorexic it looks proportionately.  Having re-watched the first film today for good measure, I can say definitively that this was NOT the case onscreen.

  Making things worse is inaccurate detail (flare launchers on the hips spring to mind), womanly hands (that look more like fitted gloves than armored gauntlets), and pencil thin wrists.  Fortunately the spots on the Mark II (where you could see where each part was crudely ripped away from the sprues of the mold) are better covered on the Mark III thanks to thicker paint. Also fixed are the chunky areas that were present on the Mark II.

  

Paint Apps 

I've had two issues with the Paint Apps on the Mark II and both are somewhat addressed on the Mark III.

Better Paint than the Mark II

  First, the paint of the Mark II was simply NOTHING like it appeared in the film.  That's not the case here.  The Mark III DOES capture the Gold and Candy Apple Red seen in the film and Hasbro deserves credit for getting that right.  Also present are silver trim on circular fasteners and around the collar (Though NOT under the arms or between the "ribs" as should be the case).  These are nice touches that help break up an otherwise straight forward color palette.  It's in the film, and it's on the figure.

Sloppy Paint Application

  The paint that IS there is sloppily applied, but it's better than the Mark II.  That isn't saying much though and there are a few places where you can spot either missing paint or some ugly paint bleed.

More Sloppy Paint Apps

But at least you can't see the underlying plastic all over (as was the case on the Mark II).  Apparently Hasbro saved enough money by not including a second "Sperm Launcher" that they could afford a second layer of paint.  There are still scuff marks, but I'm going to tell myself those came from the previous owner, since I sure as hell wasn't going to pay for a new Mark III after seeing the Mark II.

Weird Black Paint on the Head

  Again, this is exactly what it seems like... a cheap way to crank out a bazillion figures to cash in of the films release.  I guess they figured that kids wouldn't care or be able to tell the difference.  It'll be up to the individual collector as to how much they can accept the rushed quality overall.

Articulation   

  The articulation here is identical to the Mark II.  So I'll be pasting in those comments:

Here too, this figure under performs.  To call the articulation here "limited" is perhaps too generous.  And again, maybe I'm expecting too much from a 2008 figure.  But it's not just that the points of articulation are lacking, but that the range of motion of each joint is especially limited in some crucial ways.  Looking to strike that awesome "Ground Pound" pose?  Well too bad.  Pretty much any dynamic pose you'll try will be undermined somewhere by the articulation on this figure.  In the end I just gave up and posed the armor as if it was standing in the Hall of Armor.

  And here's a simple one that boggles my mind:  For some reason, ALL of Hasbro's movie based Iron Man figures have No WAIST joint.  It's not like this is a difficult or complex joint to manufacture.  You cut the damned figure in half at the waist and put a peg in there.  The amount of bang for your buck that this joint gives collectors is immense, and it seems like pure penny pinching to leave it out.

  Instead you get not an ab crunch but a crap diaphragm rib pivot joint.  This is the ONLY way to get the Mark II's shoulders to rotate off axis from the waist.  As for any sort of forward or backward bending, your options are pretty limited. Forward bending is nigh impossible and you can eek out *maybe* five degrees or so of backward bending. WEAK-sauce.

  The head is mounted atop a basic ball joint that's range of motion is so limited that trying to tilt his chin up or down whatsoever results in the head popping OFF.  You *might* get a whole 5 degrees of play out of this joint.  TOTAL.  So you can forget about that flight pose, even if you pop the head off and lightly seat it back on the joint.  His head does rotate left and right.  Whoop-ee.

His shoulders rotate and raise just like most MARVEL LEGENDS do, however this is again limited.  This time the limiting factor is poorly designed shoulder armor which pop off when his arms are raised above say 75 degrees.  Shoulder armor is held in place by a shallow "bump in dimple" type setup which seems to lead to the loss of these pieces on nearly every used example I've seen.  Crap.

  Biceps swivel nicely as this is nearly impossible to mess up and elbows are double jointed.  Thank gawd my Mark III didn't include a decimated elbow joint like my Mark II did.

  But c'mon, this figure couldn't possibly fail in other areas right?  Well you'd be wrong there too.  You see on paper, the Mark II DOES swivel AND pivot at the wrists, just not in any way that is useful.  Wrists flex but don't extend thanks to an overzealous hand armor sculpt.  This makes Iron Man's iconic Repulsor poses physically impossible, forcing limp-wristed poses instead.  And that's not particular heroic looking or in keeping with the way Stark likes to bust a pose.

  Both hands are pre-posed... (into not fists, gripping hands or a Repulsor friendly position, but instead) into a weak looking pointing pose.  Again, not especially useful.

  His lower body articulation is similarly limited.  Hip joints are bizarre.  In their default position his legs can be raised to the side but CAN'T move forward (dorsiflexion) without first rotating the hip joint by 90 degrees or so.  Even then, his leg motion has a slight arc to it and you have to use the upper thigh swivels to get his knee joint top side again.  What the hell was Hasbro thinking?

  Knees (like the elbows) are double jointed and work surprising well, though I do notice that they get loose easily.

  Which brings us to the ankles and feet... which SUCK.  5 degrees seem to be the magic number of rotation on many of this figures joints, and that's about how much vertical pivot you can expect from the ankles.  Want some camber out of those feet to support a wide heroic stance?  Well forget about it.  But hey, the ankles allow the feet to ROTATE!!! (Which is basically useless).

This doesn't make the Mark III a particularly stable figure, nor easy to stand in any position aside from a stiff standing position.

Special Features

SUCKING  somewhat less than the Mark II.

  Want some Foot Peg holes to offset that ankle instability with a stand?  Well me too.  But this figure doesn't have them.

Accessories 

Had I been sucker enough to buy this figure new (I learned my lesson after the Mark II) it would have included a spring loaded projectile weapon known affectionately in collector circles as the "Sperm-Launcher" or "Snot-Launcher".  Somehow, I'm not weeping at it's absence. 

Other versions

Revoltech Mark III

  One company that took the Mark III seriously in this scale was Japan's Kaiyodo.  They produced a Mark III in their REVOLTECH line that looks vastly superior to the Mark III in every way.  It's got a better sculpt, stellar articulation, and even an LED that lights up the Arc Reactor in the chest.  Yes, it does cost about $65.  But you're getting 10x the figure for that cost.  

Size Comparison

Shorter than later movie figures

I've shown the Mark III next to a Hasbro Mark II and Mark VI (review forthcoming).

Opinion, Value and VERDICT 

For completionists, it might be worth adding this figure to your collection.  I know I was bitten by the bug to collect all of Hasbro's movie armor figures.  But after the Mark II, I'm regretting that.  If you can get this guy loose, in good shape on eBay for cheap, then by all means consider it.  But had I to do it again, I wouldn't drop more than $15 on this figure. 

Closing thoughts

  This figure is not as bad as the Mark II.  That said, it suffers in many of the same ways, particularly when it comes to articulation.  And if you can't enjoy posing a figure it's fun factor is pretty severely limited.  Based on how much improvement later figures (Starting with their Mark IV) displayed, it's clear that Hasbro was aware of these problems.  And these days, Hasbro has really corrected much of what made this figure such a wasted opportunity.  Still a shame though.

  For more REVIEWS like this one, keep checking back on yer' old pal Evotaph and GEEKISH PURSUITS.  In the meantime, please COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE!