What’s an Iron Man 3 celebration without talking about the top 5 Iron Man Marvel Legends figures?
5. Marvel Legends (Toy Biz) 15 Thor Buster Iron Man
This figure only makes the list because of the hard-to-get variant Destroyer. Yeah, you got it — the ultimate unstoppable Thor villian. This Asguardian robot of destruction was a variant that was hard to come by and for those of us lucky enough to get him, he’s become a staple of our collections.
The Iron Man figure is OK. It’s another one of those nice-to-have armors for the armory, but it’snothing to write home to mom and dad about. But Destroyer? With it’s awesome paint apps? Awwww yeah.
4. Marvel Legends (Toy Biz) Series 11 – Legendary Rider Series Iron Man (Hulkbuster)
I did some serious playing around with this spot, but in the end went with Hulkbuster. This massive chunk of plastic deserves this spot, if for no other reason than it was a massive chunk of plastic released on a single carded blister in mass retail stores. It’s not my favorite design, it screams late ’90s early 2000s comic art and it’s bulky and rounded, but the thing is HUGE! All that PVC and ABS plastic! And it’s heavy — it could be used as a weapon. Give one to every deployed American soldier as part of their kit.
That and it is my kids’ favorite armor to play with. They love to make destruction in the Marvel Legends Universe with it.
3. Marvel Legends (Hasbro) Terrax Series Extremis Iron Man
This is really a nicely-done figure. Yes, there are the complaints about the hips, but truth is this figure is about as perfect as they come. It is beautifully sculpted, pretty to look at, and decent hand candy. And the armor design still stands as one of the hipper armors to date.
2. Marvel Legends (Toy Biz) 14 First Appearance Iron Man
Let’s be honest, a big clunky grey or gold tubular armor — does it get any better than this? Yes, there is no skirt. And the head looks funky without the mask on, and it falls off easily and and and… And some of the joints snapped real easy, but let’s be honest, the armor was made. Into plastic. As a toy. Who in their right mind would have ever thought this would happen? Putting aside all the faults, this is one of the more articulated toys around. Certainly they could have scrapped some joints, but they didn’t, Toy Biz went all out and made a great sculpt and a fun figure.
The great thing about the Toy Biz era of Marvel Legends is that they were not afraid to take risks. They made First Appearance figures, and they made characters and costumes that, honestly, would never see the light of day from other manufacturers. FA Iron Man easily earns the number 2 spot.
1. Marvel Legends 1 Iron Man
This figure still sits in my collection as THE Iron Man. Sculpted by Dave Cortez, this figure has yet to be matched in overall bulk, articulation, and love. And I mean love, this figure is a love letter from the Toy Biz crew to action figure collectors of the world. Sure, over time the figure has shown some plastic instability in the neck, but it’s a minor issue when you think about all the posing that you can do with it. I don’t know whether the inspiration for this figure was Gil Kane, Jim Starlin, John Romita Jr., or Bob Layton, or an amalgamation of all of them. It doesn’t matter as you can find a little of each in this figure.
There were a number of variants using this mold, like the variant from ML1, the golden armor with the horned face mask; the Wal-Mart exclusive Stealth Iron Man; Silver Centurion; and War Machine. This mold got a lot use, and that alone is testament to why it deserves spot numero uno!
Fwoosh Sponsor BigBadToyStore still has some of the new Marvel Legends on sale:http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/search.aspx?search=Iron%20Man%20Marvel%20Legends
And you can head to Amazon.com for bunches more: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_sabc?url=search-alias%3Daps&pageMinusResults=1&suo=1366274635352#/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_23?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=marvel%20legends%20iron%20man&sprefix=marvel+legends+iron+man%2Caps%2C350&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amarvel%20legends%20iron%20man
As always you can discuss this further on the Fwoosh forums!