The Target-exclusive Red Hulk wave looked good on paper: it offered the retail chain unique versions of evergreen Marvel properties like Wolverine, Hulk, and Spider-Man, while providing collectors with long-demanded characters like Spiral, Union Jack, and Adam Warlock. It could have been the best wave since Hasbro took the line over in 2007, but instead it fell surprisingly short of expectations.
Fan-favorite Adam Warlock should have been a slam dunk. While Union Jack, Spider-Man, and Silver Savage were all based on Hasbro’s modified Bullseye body, Adam received an entirely new sculpt for his action figure debut. Overall, it’s not bad. Beneath the cape there’s an appealing sleekness to the overall form; the neck tapers nicely into the shoulders and the longish trunk is balanced by the well-defined legs. As far as type goes, the Punisher could have made good use of this body. It’s the choices made on the figure’s behalf that are the real issue.
The head is either ridiculously stylized or something went terribly wrong during the molding stage. Maybe both. You see, Adam has a noggin entirely unlike any other action figure I’ve ever seen. His high, harsh cheekbones are set above what I can only describe as bile sacks.
Or maybe he chews tobacco and never spits it out? Now I’m not being flippant here — I devoted a full five minutes to Internet research to this and I can say with certainty that the human jaw is not supposed to look like that. There’s no rhyme or reason to what’s happening with this face. Adam looks less like a Warlock and more like a jack-o-lantern on meth. Scary!
Adam’s Infinity Gauntlet was obviously meant to appear impressively regal, but the end result looks more like a someone took a Bedazzler to a dish-washing glove. An early foray into the swirled “metallic” plastic that plagued later Iron Man Legends figures, I have to commend Hasbro for at least trying something different here. Unfortunately, the Gauntlet itself is bunched-up and ill-fitting, with what appear to be jelly beans for knuckles. I know, they’re meant to be Infinity Gems, but the soft sculpt and minimal paint apps do little to perpetuate the idea.
Adam is wearing his 1990s-era outfit, which may have looked all right in the comics, but it makes for a boring action figure. Sure, he still has his trademark funky collar/cape combo, but with the other elements of the costume minimized, the cape now seems out of place. His hair also seems pointlessly off-model. And it’s green for some reason. Sigh.
All of the figures I encountered from this series sported lousy paint apps. Here it’s not just the various fuzzy lines and bleed as much as the fact that the paint just lays there. Does that make any sense? The factory sprayed it where it was meant to go without inciting a crisis, but everything is just so dull that it’s hard to care. There’s a flatness to it that showed Hasbro was still learning what worked for them in 6″. I’ll give them a Mulligan on that one, but there’s no excuse for how they handled the character’s skin.
The weirdest thing about this figure is the deliberate miscoloring. Okay, no, I take that back. The weirdest thing about this figure remains his freakish head. But Adam Warlock has always been a gold-skinned dude with feathered blonde hair. Think one of the Beach Boys as a herald of Galactus and you’re there. So why does ol’ Sourpuss here look like he has a Danish tan? It’s one of the seemingly deliberate choices made that keep the figure from meeting its full potential.
Adam sports a ball-hinge neck that provides a decent range of motion. His shoulders are a pin-and-hinge arrangement without any bicep rotation, so they’re a chore. The figure has the dreaded “elbros” and pin-and-hinge wrists. One thing worth noting: entire sections of the sculpt were excised to allow for this style of articulation. It looks jarring and and seriously hurts the overall aesthetic. There’s also chest cap that rotates more than it rocks, Hasbro-style hip joints, pin-and-hinge knees, boot-cuff rotation, and pin ankles.
I just reread this paragraph and that doesn’t seem like a lot. That’s because it really isn’t. There’s very little you can do with this figure other than have him stand there. Yes, he does move, but he doesn’t look pretty doing it.
Adam comes with a staff and he’s Put a Bird on It. I don’t remember him having this funky walking-stick in the comic, but I guess something is always better than nothing when it comes to accessories. Adam also came packed with a BAF piece. It was one of Red Hulk’s legs, which on its own isn’t much fun at all. I dunno, maybe Adam can shake his stick at it?
Collectors were disappointed with Adam Warlock and who could blame them? They’d waited years for their favorite character, only to see him miss the mark. Like the Black Knight before him, Adam was given all of the resources but none of the care. You’ve come a long way, Hasbro.
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