That’s
a ridiculous amount of words for the title of one action figure
review.
Being
that he comes from the Avengers side of the Marvel Universe (as
opposed to the mutants side), I didn’t have much interest in Red
Skull until he showed up in Captain
America: The First Avenger.
Back in the days when Marvel Legends were relatively easy to find and
cost a third of what they do now, I would still pick and choose which
ones I wanted. Unless there was a build-a-figure I had to have
(Apocalypse, Mojo, and the Sentinel are the only ones that fit that
bill) I never bought a full wave. Or series. Or whatever.
If
you remember, the Face-Off sets came in two versions. You would get
the same hero – Hulk, Daredevil, Cap – with a different head
packed in with different villains. In Cap’s case you got either
Baron Strucker or Red Skull. The Strucker figure isn’t bad, but the
Red Skull is weird. He’s wearing this red and purple get-up that
I’m sure is from the comics but just doesn’t look good at all. So
I might have wanted a Red Skull at the time, but I didn’t want that
Red Skull. And that was the last Red Skull they made.
Side
Note: I didn’t buy any of these sets. I wanted Kingpin, Leader, and
Baron Strucker; but twenty bucks was too much to pay for one figure
when I didn’t want the other one (ha ha!).
What
I really would have liked was a movie Red Skull because the design
was so good it could go with my movie or comics figures. But Hasbro
didn’t do 6” scale figures for The
First Avenger.
Instead they took this twice used (or more – I think it was used
for the recent Punisher/Blade figure) Nick Fury body and stuck a Red
Skull head on it. And I bought it because I wanted a Red Skull thanks
to his recent awesomeness in Uncanny
Avengers.
And also because I am a chump.
FIRST
GLANCE
I’m
not a fan of this figure from the neck down. It has some wonky
articulation and the coat just doesn’t work that well.
However.
This
is almost exactly what Red Skull looked like and was wearing in the
Uncanny
Avengers
arc, so I really can’t complain. And I was able to make an
alteration that resulted in a slightly better looking figure.
PACKAGING
I
dig these window boxes. They’re eye-catching in the store and are
big without seeming too wasteful. Not that I’m all that
environmentally conscious, but sometimes you get a figure and the
amount of empty space in the box just seems ridiculous.
Red
Skull fills out his box fairly well thanks to his big coat and a
bunch of accessories.
That’s
pretty much the shittiest blurb ever, as it doesn’t even account
for Red Skull. Also, that is a shitty picture.
LOOKS
The
head and left hand are the only things new here. But they are very
important new things and like I said – this is pretty much what Red
Skull looked like in his most recent appearance.
The
head is definitely very comic-booky and I do like it for that. It’s
ugly and exaggerated, but not screaming or anything. You guys know I
like my faces to be fairly neutral. I don’t mind subtle expressions
– as a matter of fact, I like them when they suit the character –
but it looks really stupid to have a character standing on the shelf
just screaming all the time.
Red
Skull is pretty hideous when you think about it and this figure
captures that. It looks like red skin stretched taut over an
oversized skull. There’s a lot of nice detail in the sculpt and I
love the beady, recessed eyes. Those eyes have a nice paint job and
provide a sharp contrast to the red skull.
As
far as looks go, this is an okay body. The turtlenecked torso is
fine, despite the fact that in the comics Red Skull had a button-down
shirt.
Side
Note: Is it “button-down” or “button-up”? I used button-down
because I button them from the top down. I don’t know if that’s
the right reason.
The
arms are sculpted to be the sleeves of the trenchcoat the figure has
on and there’s not really anything good about them. The sleeve
holes in the trenchcoat are a bit too big so you can see the shirt
through them. The trenchcoat itself is so thick that it prevents the
arms from hanging normally. Add to that the shoulder rig underneath
the coat and the arms can barely achieve less than a 45° angle from
the body. And then you have the arms themselves, which are very
narrow and have soft plastic joints, which means they are deformed
right out of the box.
The
hands are actually pretty good. The right one is posed to hold a gun
but looks okay empty. The left is posed to hold the Cosmic Cube. It
looks a little weird empty, but I’m happy to have a Cosmic Cube, so
whatever. The only problem with the hands is Hasbro’s trademark
poor decision to use a different color for an exposed joint so
there’s this grey wedge right in the palm (and back) of each hand.
The
shoulder rig I mentioned above would actually be really cool if it
didn’t fuck up the figure’s profile so badly. It has a holster
under the left arm and some ammo pouches under the right. But it
really does mess up the arms so I took my trusty nail clippers and
cut it out.
Side
Note: I bought a pair of nail clippers to keep on my toy desk.
They’re great for cutting all of the little rubber bands and wires
used to package toys. Also, the filing part can be used to cut
through tape. They’re tiny, so they can just sit on the desk and
not take up as much room as scissors. Or be as potentially hazardous.
Once
the shoulder rig was out, the figure looked slightly better:
The
trousers have a great shape, but also a texture that I don’t care
for that makes them look like corduroy. I doubt a supervillain like
Red Skull is going to wear pants that make zipping noises when he’s
striding about his secret base making proclamations.
Red
Skull: “And now ve vill launch ze veapon dat vill destroy zose
filthy Americans!”
Red
Skull’s Pants: zip-zep-zip-zep-zip-zep
Hydra
Agents: “Pfft” *chuckle* “Yes sir!” *pfft*
This
is an older sculpt and it seems like Hasbro has finally eliminated
these odd and unnecessary textures from the Legends line. I could
make a whole list of figures with ugly, weirdo textures like this.
And probably will on a slow day.
There’s
a pocket on the left leg and a holster on the right. The holster
looks cool and has a good paint job. The straps and holster are
glossy black and have silver buckles. Skull’s boots are great. They
have buckles and straps and big, thick soles. They look like comic
book military boots. Unfortunately the bottom portions of the legs
were made of black plastic and the grey of the trousers was painted
on. This resulted in some black showing through the grey.
Finally
we have the trenchcoat. The lapels are very cool, but too distinctive
to have been used on as many different characters as this piece has.
The bottom of the coat is just absurd. It looks like Todd McFarlane
(or Todd “McFartin’” as Jonathan Davis from Korn referred to
him) designed this thing. There’s just way too much of it. I
suppose it was designed so open so that it wouldn’t interfere with
posing as much, but it really just looks kind of silly. I would
definitely have preferred a soft goods coat at this scale.
There’s
a minimal amount of paint on this figure, but what’s here is good.
The Hydra logos on either arm look good. The various straps and
buckles are tightly done and don’t bleed over into other areas.
This figure looks fine without any washes or anything like that.
ACCESSORIES
Red
Skull comes with the Cosmic Cube, a pistol, some kind of wacky mad
science blaster, and Mandroid’s left arm.
The
Cosmic Cube is just a translucent blue cube. It looks neat. I suppose
they could have painted some kind of swirls or energy or something on
it. It fits neatly into Red Skull’s left hand and stays put fairly
well.
One
of the high points of the new Infinite lines has been the
accessories. More precisely, the amazing paint jobs on the
accessories. I’ll get into this more with some of the upcoming
reviews, but it’s almost like Hasbro is telling Mattel how lame
they are for not painting the accessories in a pricey, exclusive
collector’s line like Masters of the Universe Classics.
The
pistol is awesome. It’s red and has a black paint app on the grip
that has some sort of little logo detail. It fits perfectly into Red
Skull’s right hand or either of his holsters.
The
wacky blaster – which I’m sure is a specific thing from a
specific story – is also awesome. It has a great, asymmetrical
shape and some red paint. It fits into Red Skull’s right hand, but
neither of the holsters, which means it doesn’t make any sense for
the figure to have two holsters. This is why I had no problem cutting
the shoulder rig off.
I’ll
review Mandroid on its own once I have the whole thing. As of right
now I’m only one piece away.
FUN
This
is where the weird articulation comes into play. Or not to play, as
the case may be.
The
combination of soft plastics and weird joint decisions result in a
figure that is warped right out of the box and not a whole lot of fun
to play with. The shoulder joints are very difficult to utilize and
are severely restricted by the coat. The elbows and wrists, on the
other hand, work quite well. The elbows achieve a nice, deep bend
thanks to the double pivots. The wrists stick out of the sleeves
enough that the pivots are useful.
The
abdominal joint works fairly well and even though it looks a little
ugly, I prefer it to a waist swivel where the oblong sides will hang
over the narrower parts when you turn it.
The
hip joints are terrible. They’re hard to utilize and for whatever
reason just don’t ever look good. And it is difficult to pose the
figure in a regular standing position. The double-jointed knees and
the swivel-pivot ankles do work quite nicely.
This
is one of those figures that has a good amount of articulation that’s
designed in such a way that you really don’t want to bother with
it. It would seem like there’s plenty here, but you have to fight
the figure to get it to sort of do what you want it to. Red Skull’s
balance isn’t all that great, either. So once you do get the pose
you want, he’s probably going to fall over.
I
will say this – despite the posing challenges, I did have fun
taking pictures of this guy. He looks pretty dramatic and just
finding different angles and stuff was a good time.
OVERALL
Once
you find a decent pose for the figure it looks pretty cool. There
aren’t any terrible profile problems and as far as just standing on
the shelf looking like Red Skull goes, the figure nails it. But there
are so many little things that could be better and that at the $20
price point should
be better.
The
bottom line is that the figure is okay for me, but anybody that might
want to actually play with it is probably going to be disappointed.
3
out of 5
I
haven’t seen one of these in the wild since around the time I
bought mine. I’m sure you can find one on Amazon or BigBad, but it
might cost you a bit more. But probably not as much as the Hydra
Agent, who I’ll be looking at soon.
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It never dawned on me that this version does look a lot like his appearance in Uncanny Avengers! I haven't opened mine yet, but I agree with most of your points. Good review.
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