Top Five: Marvel Legends
Forgotten Avengers
We are in the ENDGAME now. Well, maybe for the Avengers movies, but when it comes to toys, there are still a LOT of Avengers to get to in Marvel Legends. We are living in the golden age of the public’s awareness of the Earth’s Mightiest, but there are still those who seem to be forsaken in our favorite Marvel toy line.
You cannot blame us if the site is taking an Avengers tenor this month. With Avengers: Endgame coming on April 26th, they payoff for the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is coming, and we cannot wait. So, naturally, we celebrate by talking about toys around here, and if you haven’t been paying attention, you have missed TatooineSandworm’s fantastic run-though of needed figures for the MCU. To counterbalance that, I want to look at some of the comic and comic version of characters who have yet to get a piece of this amazing run of Hasbro Legends.
Let’s face it, the Avengers roster has swelled over time, and there are a LOT of Marvel characters who have spent time on one iteration of the roster or another. So, while I am limiting my list to just five entries, I am positive you are aware that there are many more awaiting their due. It is a bit silly to be all “where the @#&% is this guy or that guy?” at this point because Legends is still KILLING it, but if the team is considering who should make the line under the Avengers banner next, these are the five I would like to see.
Part of this list will be characters that have NEVER made the ML line in any form, but a couple have seen spots many, many years ago, and are most certainly due for an upgrade. So, here are my five, I am positive your list will be different, but that is what keeps this line going.
JACK OF HEARTS
It is kind of a shame that many people know Jack Heart mostly from the kick-off of Avengers: Disassembled, but he had a pretty memorable Marvel run prior to that, which, obviously, included a turn as an Avenger. His look takes its influence from the Jack of Hearts card suit, so there is a lot of ornate detailing to it, which would stand out, even in our already massive ML collections. He is another one of those guys who has never been an “A-Lister,” but he makes the fabric of the MU all the most interesting, so I want him.
JOCASTA
Okay, okay, YES, Jocasta has a very strange origin, but man, I find her look to be very sleek and very cool. So, you know how Vision was “born” of Wonderman’s brain wave patterns? Well, Jocasta is like that, too, only with the Wasp. And Ultron created her. And he created her to have a robot girlfriend/lover. And yes, Ultron was aware of the whole Oedipus thing, and named her thusly. I know, it is a bit inane, even for comics, but in the end, she looks cool and made for a good Avenger, so let’s do it.
GILGAMESH
He popped back in my head after he came up in the latest Fwooshcast discussion I had with Robo. It was only in passing, but ever since then, I have not been able to get the “Forgotten One” out of my mind, and after some thought, he would make a great Legends figure. Sure, he has been out of the spotlight for bit, but his classic look most certainly lends itself to an interesting toy design, so let’s get him.
MOONDRAGON
Heather Douglas is a badass, plain and simple. Telepathy? Check. Martial artist? Check. Shaved head? Check. Yeah, don’t mess with Moondragon. There is absolutely no doubting her unique look, so in terms of requirements for a cool figure, she has the big visual appeal down cold. Plus as a character, she has EARNED her abilities, so her badassness extends itself to self-discipline and work, not some hocus-pocus accident or some such. She has been around since the early 1970s, so she is certainly due.
FALCON
Yes, I get it, Falcon has had a couple of ML figures at this point. So, I can hear you saying, “don’t waste a slot on a character who already has a figure!!!!1!!11!!” and all that. However, the only CLASSIC Falcon figure we have gotten in ML sucked mightily, and it was back in the Toy Biz days, so we are talking more than a decade since it happened. Sam has a had a pretty good run in the MCU so far, and despite being “snapped” in the last movie, I still have a sneaking suspicion his best movie days are still to come.
It pains me to leave off Quasar and new versions of Tigra and War Machine, not to mention people I usually associate with other teams like Crystal and Firestar. However, in the interest of keeping to form, I only chose five, but those guys would round out my top ten, so they get honorable mention status.
