Captain America was released in 2002 as part of the first series of Marvel Legends to hit the shelves. You might remember this really old archive with some really old pictures (slowly updating it with new pictures) that we posted back in the day! As we go through the archives and update them, as well as create some individual entries for figures, I couldn’t believe we overlooked Cap! Without further ado, here is a long overdue review of the figure that started it all!
Captain America still holds up as an incredible figure. I love the sculpt of the figure and there is so much personality in the face. The muscles are big and burly and they just pop. Being an early figure, scales are painted and not sculpted, but designers would figure out how to add sculpted scales later on. The proportions are a bit off, in that the abdomen is short and narrow and the arms a bit long. And for a traditional heroic build, the shins are a bit short. At the time, none of this was noticeable, and no one really cared about proportions. We were just super-excited to get this figure.
And I’m still excited about this figure. I love this figure so much that I put him at the top of my top 5 Captain America figures list on the Fwoosh! He’s just that great. Time hasn’t been perfect to him, however. His chest wobbles a bit and he’s got some loose knees and ankles, but he’s a stable figure.
The articulation on this figure was revolutionary for the time. The only figure besides Iron Man that we’d seen with this level of articulation was Iron Man of the same series and the Spider-Man classics before it. Featuring 32 points of articulation, this guy could outpost anything else in your collection. Some of the joints are loose and some of them could use a different design. The chest and neck, while they work OK, would be even better with modern engineering — just look to any Figma figure to see the advancement. But that sentence alone needs to be re-read: any modern figure (at the time of this writing) improved the engineering, not the design or the concept, but how the joints fit and work together. This figure was so far ahead of its time that it still inspires current figures. Here’s the articulation breakdown:
Rocker ankles
Hinged ankles
Swivel calves
Double knees
Thigh swivels
Ball hips
Ball waist
Ball chest
Ball shoulders
Swivel biceps
Double elbows
Swivel forearms
Hinged wrists
Hinged fingers
Ball neck
Ball head
While the figure didn’t have a huge amount of paint on it, the paint that is there is well done. The scales are painted on, and if I remember, there was an early run and late run of this figure. The later run had different scales, and I think this figure has the later scaling. The original pics in the archive, I think, are the original figure. And, yes, I made a ton of customs from this base. So many that I don’t think I have the original figure anymore.
As mentioned, this is a great figure to have in your collection and still holds up as a decent representation of Captain America. Amazingly, you can still pick this figure up on:
