Toy Review – Marvel Legends Madame Masque By Hasbro

Continuing the theme of characters that I have never heard of is today’s new Marvel Legend figure – Madame Masque.

I had to look her up on Wikipedia because a masked woman is just too interesting for me to resist. Her story is very cool, to the point where I’d like to try and track down some of the pertinent issues.

   
Masque was the daughter of a crime lord who didn’t want his child to be raised in such an environment. He gave her to a wealthy couple to raise as their own. Years later Masque’s father showed up and wanted her to take over his empire. She refused, but her fiancée – a politician – dumped her when he found out about her true family. Masque ended up taking over her father’s operation and was a successful criminal.

Her face became hideously scarred after a failed assault on Stark industries and Masque ended up working for another criminal and adopting the gold mask to cover her injuries. She later met Tony Stark himself and he was able to look past her scars and see the beautiful soul inside. Or some such bullshit.

Ever since then they’ve been back and forth with Masque being a criminal or Stark’s love interest.

First Glance: This figure is very striking. I like the look of the mask and her colors remind me of Taskmaster, always a good thing to be reminded of. I really wanted Madame Hydra more, but now I like this one, too.

Sculpt: Madame Masque uses the same buck that every other female Hasbro Marvel Legend has used. It’s okay.

The figure has ball joints at the neck, shoulders, and hips. I have called these ankles ball-jointed before, but that’s not really true. They are pivots with swivels at the top, which is really what most of the things I call ball joints are. Her elbows are the same way. She has swivels at the top of her gloves and her thighs and a sort of rocker joint on her upper abdomen.

Madame Masque’s gloves look great. Lots of detail. But I cannot stand the fact that her wrists don’t move. Or that she can’t hold the assault rifle very well. The pistol fits fine, though. That’s okay. I just added the rifle to Deadpool’s pile:

I also can’t stand that her boots are painted on.

Her head looks great, though. The hair is a nice piece with good, consistent detail. The face is awesome. There are little bolts around the edges of the mask that are creepy as heck. I don’t know if this lady’s mask is actually bolted onto her face or is that’s just a Destro kind of thing, but it looks cool. I like the way her eyes are done with flesh showing rather than just her eyeballs and I also like that the mask ends before her hairline starts. These are just nice little details that give the figure more character.

Her upper torso is also pretty cool. There is a harness thing around her shoulders that doesn’t make a lot of sense but looks neat and the zipper in front looks good. Her boobs are very 60’s-looking. The only thing I don’t like is that ugly joint that separates the upper and lower torso.

Her belt looks good as long as you keep it pushed down on her hips. I like that it is sort of dainty and small. It isn’t some giant man-belt stuck on a female figure. The holster is narrow and works perfectly.

Design: I might not be crazy about some of the sculpt decisions on this figure, but the paint is all good.

Masque’s head is obviously the most important thing here and it delivers. The hair is very subtly shaded. The gold of the mask, while one color, is clean and looks good. Her eyes are amazingly detailed; complete with lashes and surrounding flesh. They are also centered.

The rest of the figure is a deep, purplish black and white. The colors are separated well. The white has some nice, bluish highlights that break it up nicely.

Accessories: Madame Masque comes with an assault rifle, a pistol, Arnim Zola’s torso, and part of his story.

The assault rifle is quite nice and actually features more than one color. Of course, what would be great would be if she could hold it properly.

The pistol is a pretty cool gold color. I initially thought I would have liked some shading on it, but then I realized a golden gun probably doesn’t need it.

I really badly want to talk about that Arnim Zola torso, but it’ll have to wait until next time.

Packaging: A plastic blister taped to a cardback. The Madame Masque/Madame Hydra (“Marvel’s Madames”) artwork is possibly the best of the new series. I like that they’re putting both variants on the cards.

Overall: I ended up liking this figure quite a bit. My only real gripe is about the wrists. I don’t like the abdominal joint, but I can live with it. I would like it, though, if Hasbro could work out a rocker joint for the waist of its females. It would be at a point that is a natural contour change and could be a covered by a belt on a lot of the figures.

4 out of 5

I’ve seen a ton of Madame Masque while I’ve yet to see a single Madame Hydra. Or Piledriver, for that matter. Actually, I still haven’t even seen Steve Rogers from the first series.